The word keyword is an essential term for digital marketers, SEO professionals, content writers, or even entrepreneurs looking to improve their business’ digital presence. To rank in high-caliber search engines like Google and generate organic traffic in 2021, content creators must learn how to create relevance and topical authority in content that matters to their brand and audience.
The foundation phase is keyword research, where you are finding keywords that best describe your business. But how do we find them?
What is a keyword?
A keyword is a focus word used to improve both the quality and quantity of organic traffic that reaches your website.
It is a vital SEO element that targets your website’s organic (unpaid) traffic via a search engine. Keywords describe your website’s content and help crawlers identify how valuable your content is to your audience.
What are ‘seed’ keywords?
Seed keywords are the ones from where all your other keywords grow from. Without the right ones in place, your keyword research strategy has no strength. As they act as a base, they are short and usually a maximum of two words without modifiers.
What are related keywords?
A related keyword is essentially a synonym or deviation of the primary keyword that you use to rank in SERPs. Often, they are long-tail keywords or just an alternative keyword that similar businesses use to target their audience.
Content creators and SEO specialists seek out and optimize these keywords to increase their organic traffic. Building topical authority helps both search engines and your audience to understand better the topics you write about.
Optimizing single keywords in the modern SEO world is an outdated method. Doing this can limit you from expanding your site’s footprint.
How do you find keywords?
Google Keyword Planner
Perhaps the best free option out there that helps users research and discover new keywords. It is possible to create a list and refine them to find the ones more relevant to your content. The Keyword Planner allows you to search both volume and competition keywords.
To access the Keyword Planner, you need to create a Google Ads account. Google offers several other useful, free trends like Google Trends, Search Console, and Google Analytics.
SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool
This magic tool was created by SEMRush and is a favorite amongst many. Similar to Google Ads, you can use it to generate the relevant keyword quickly. The tool can be used to monitor keyword SERPs, competition, stats, and identify trends.
SEMRush Keyword magic tool allows you to find keywords that generate organic traffic and offers valuable insights on trends. The tool is not free, however.
KeywordTool.io
KeywordTool.io is a free alternative to Google’s Keyword Planner. It can generate over 750 long-tail keyword suggestions every time you search a term.
Users can specify the Google domain name as well as their language preferences. This allows for a more refined, relevant search.
