Don’t you just hate it when you’re stuck on figuring out which keywords to target?
I mean, let’s face it, doing keyword research isn’t exactly sexy.
However, despite how monotonous the task might seem, you still need to go through it and find the right keywords since these little nasties can single-handedly make or break your marketing campaigns — regardless of how much time and money you pour into all the ensuing tasks.
Keyword research is just that important.
Fortunately, there’s a way to make keyword research faster and more reliable in terms of generating profitable results. And that, my friend, is what we’re about to talk about.
Allow me to share with you an easy-to-follow keyword research workflow that can help you snag lucrative keyword ideas every single time — in no time.
1. Unearthing Long-Tail Keyword Opportunities
Any self-respecting marketer knows that targeting overly competitive keywords is a bad idea.
That’s why the first step in any keyword research effort is always to expand a seed keyword into long-tail keywords. These are keywords that contain three or more terms — pertaining to a more specific topic and catering to a more specific audience.
For example, if “auto repair” is your seed keyword, then “affordable auto repair service” is a long-tail keyword you can target.
Of course, you’re not supposed to guess what and what works as a long-tail keyword. What you need is a tool like Ubersuggest that pulls in long-tail keyword suggestions from the databases of AdWords Keyword Planner and Google Suggest.
To use Ubersuggest, simply fill in your seed keyword, adjust the proper localization, and then click “Look Up.” These are the first three things you’ll see on their site, so they’re impossible to miss.
Within seconds, you should be able to spot a number of long-tail keywords from the keyword suggestions.
Neat, right? But are you sure they’re profitable?
To determine which keyword suggestions deserve to be used in your marketing, let’s look at the numbers.
2. Understanding the Metrics
Apart from the keyword suggestions themselves, there are only three things you should worry about in Ubersuggest: the search volume, CPC, and competition.
- Search Volume
First off, the “Search Volume” metric gives you an idea on how popular a keyword is in search engines. This can be anywhere from zero to hundreds of thousands.
- CPC
If you know a thing or two about PPC campaigns, then you should already be familiar with CPC. Short for cost per click, the CPC metric measures the average amount advertisers are bidding for a keyword.
- Competition
Thirdly, Ubersuggest scales the competitiveness of a keyword from 0.0 to 1.0 — the latter being the most competitive. A competitiveness score of 0.4 means the keyword has low-medium competition, which is good for small brands and marketers on a tight budget.
When doing keyword research, a rule of thumb is to find the balance between keyword demand and competitiveness. However, there’s one more factor you need to consider when picking up keyword suggestions:
3. Finding Keywords with High Commercial Intent
Just because a keyword has high search volume and low competitiveness rating, doesn’t mean you should go all in.
You should also consider the user’s intent behind the keyword’s usage. For example, you may notice that the keyword “audio speakers” has 33,100 searches and only 0.26 competitiveness rating.
With such impressive figures, why do you think it only has an average CPC of $0.91?
Because advertisers find it hard to monetize — that’s why.
Not only is the keyword unspecific, it’s also used normally for informational search queries. These are when people use search engines mainly for the sake of research.
They could only be interested in the types of audio speakers, how they’re made, or how they work. In other words, they probably don’t intend to make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter, or engage in any form of transaction online.
The keywords you need are those used for transactional search queries, which contain commercial or question-based terms like “how much,” “buy,” “how to,” and so on.
Fortunately, you can easily inject these terms in your Ubersuggest keyword search. All you need to do is enter them via the filters on the left:
The bad news is, most if not all of the keyword opportunities in the portable speakers space are already saturated. So from this point forward, let’s go for the seed keyword “pet accessories” and add the commercial terms “buy,” “store,” “order,” and “price.”
At this point, you should now be able to locate keyword ideas that are truly profitable.
As far as search volumes go, most of them may not be jaw-dropping. But when it comes to competitiveness and conversion potential, a lot of them are solid keyword targets:
Of course, it’s not as if you’re only going to optimize for one keyword per page, right?
To maximize traffic, it’s common practice for marketers to target multiple keywords in one piece of content.
Now that we got that out of the way, there’s just one more thing you need to do to finalize your fresh haul of keyword opportunities.
4. Prioritizing Keywords
Just like any other commodity, the demand for keywords may also change over time.
While there’s no way to accurately predict these changes, you can always look at the keyword’s performance in the past year to determine where it could be in the following months.
In Ubersuggest, this can be done by moving your mouse pointer over the “graph” icon to the left of the search volume metric.
In the pets niche, it’s perfectly natural for most keywords to plateau. For seasonal and trendy niches, however, keyword demand changes are definitely more pronounced.
To put things in perspective, let’s revisit the “fidget spinner” fad and how its keywords performed over the past year:
It’s not rocket science.
If one of your target keywords is exhibiting an upward trend in terms of search volume, then prioritize it by all means. But if it’s the opposite, then you should consider putting an active campaign for that keyword on hold.
Keyword demand fluctuations may not apply at all times, but they sometimes make the difference between tons of traffic and a website that gathers virtual dust.
Conclusion
There you go — the only keyword research workflow that you’ll ever need. Once you memorize these steps like the back of your hand, you should be able to execute them in 30 minutes or less.
Did you get profitable keyword suggestions using the steps above? What suggestions do you have to make the workflow more efficient?
Whatever your thoughts, feel free to comment about it below!
Jimmy Rodela is a Freelance Writer and a Content Marketer. He is the Founder of the Guild of Bloggers.
He is a contributor on websites with millions of monthly traffic like Yahoo.com, Business.com, Monster.com, Business2Community and SocialMediaToday.com.
Follow him on: Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Google +,Read more about me
