In order to get more traffic, you must build a bridge between what users are searching for and the valuable content you provide. And that’s done with SEO keywords.
By strategically inserting relevant keywords into your content, you can improve your visibility on search engines, drive qualified traffic to your website, and ultimately achieve your business goals.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to effectively identify, use, and optimize SEO keywords to boost your web presence and capture the right audience.
Disclaimer: If you buy any products through links on this site, I may earn a commission. But it doesn't make any difference to your cost, and it helps me keep this blog running. So you could always read my articles for free.
What are SEO keywords?
SEO keywords are the terms or phrases that users enter in search engines when looking for information, products, or services.
These keywords play a central role in search engine optimization (SEO), as they help websites rank near the top in search engine results pages (SERPs).
By targeting the right keywords, you can increase the exposure of your content and attract more visitors to your site.
For instance, if you’re running a blog about sales, some common SEO keywords might be “sales development” or “sales funnel.”
When you incorporate these keywords into your blog posts, you’re aligning your content with what users are actively searching for.
Overall, SEO keywords help bridge the gap between what people search for and the content you provide, making it an essential part of your website’s optimization strategy.
Why find SEO keywords?
Finding and using SEO keywords is a crucial part of driving traffic to your website.
When you sprinkle your content with relevant keywords, you help search engines understand the context of your page, improving its odds of ranking higher in search results.
The right keywords can attract users who are actively searching for information, products, or services that you offer.
For example, if you run a website about fitness, targeting keywords like “best home workouts” or “fitness tips for beginners” can help you reach a more specific audience.
These terms are more likely to connect with people looking for that type of content.
By finding and using SEO keywords effectively, you ensure that your content aligns with what people are searching for, which can ultimately lead to better visibility and engagement with your website.
So, where to begin? That’s what we’ll talk about next.
Keyword research: discovery phase
The first phase of keyword research involves generating as many relevant keyword ideas as possible. And I’d like to emphasize the word “relevant.”
Many people make the mistake of starting with really broad concepts like real estate, health, social media, or hotels. Make sure to avoid that route.
Brainstorm your seed keywords
Before you start using any keyword research tools, you’ll need to brainstorm some SEO keywords on your own, or with your team, first.
These keywords will act as a starting point to research more keywords. They are, therefore, known as seed keywords.
Macro-level seed keywords: If you are trying to generate ideas for multiple pieces of content to write in the next few months, it’s good to have at least 4-5 seed keywords to begin with.
Asking the following questions might help:
- What would people search for to find your website homepage?
- What is your website about?
- What is your main value proposition?
- Who are your target audience?
Micro-level seed keywords: If the purpose of your research is to pick keywords for a single piece of content, even just one or two seed keywords can do the trick.
For example, some time back, I wrote an article on picking a niche for your blog. But before I wrote the piece, I conducted keyword research with the following as my seed keywords:
- pick a blog niche
- choosing niche for blogging
- define target market for blog
As you can see, you can think of your seed keyword ideas without using any tool if you apply a little creativity and resourcefulness.
It also helps to try to think of alternative words to the words that come to your mind. For example, “choose” is an alternative to “pick”, and “target market” is an alternative to “niche.”
Use keyword research tools
Once you have a short list of seed keywords to get started, the following tools can help you discover hundreds of new, relevant SEO keywords.
I have only included the tools that are free or have affordable price points, which means you will not find big names like Semrush or Ahrefs in this list.
There are differences in interface, features, and the number of keywords returned by these tools. But on a basic level, they all work the same way.
Once you access any of these tools, you’re expected to enter your seed keyword. The tool will then return keywords related to the one you entered.
To get even more relevant keywords, you can repeat this process by entering another of your seed keywords.
Answer The Public (ATP) [Free]
ATP is great for discovering a huge number of keywords. In fact, ATP gives more keywords than some of the paid tools in this list. And the unique landing page doesn’t hurt, either.
Since this tool is free to use, there are some features that are lacking. For example, you can’t see data on how many searches happen for the keywords per month, or how easy or difficult they are to rank for.
Moreover, when you enter a seed keyword, the results are generated in a circular format, which isn’t very helpful.
Luckily, there is an option to change the layout to present the keywords as a list. And even with missing features, ATP provides a lot more value than what can be expected from a free tool.
Google Keyword Planner [Free]
Google Keyword Planner used to be a good, free option. It was possible to get some decent SEO keywords out of it, but that’s not the case anymore.
Moreover, the keywords don’t have an SEO difficulty score, which tells you if you have a chance of ranking in Google top 10 for that keyword.
The search volumes and competition metrics returned by this tool are also not very useful.
This is because a while ago, Google started combining tightly related long-tail keywords together and presenting them as one keyword.
In other words, it ends up hiding a lot of keywords from you. And the search volumes you see are not for each separate keyword, but a group of combined keywords.
This may make more sense for Google advertisers, but not when you’re conducting keyword research for organic SEO.
KeywordTool.IO [Freemium]
This tool lets you research keywords for not just Google, but a lot of other platforms. For instance, you can see data for YouTube, Twitter, Ebay, and Instagram.
You get a lot of keyword ideas from the free version. The premium version allows you to see data associated with each keyword like search volume and ad competition. Another tool where you can get keywords from different networks is Soovle.
UberSuggest [Free]
This is arguably the best free keyword research tool available at this time. It gives you a lot of SEO keywords and data to analyze at no charge. It also has a paid plan that’s really affordable for everyone.
Another feature that is unique to UberSuggest is that you can see the keywords that your competitors are ranking for. There’s also a backlink checker.
KWFinder [Premium]
While free tools have their value, we can’t argue with the fact that paid keyword research tools can do more to benefit your business.
That’s why I use KWFinder. Apart from a great interface and premium features, it’s also very affordable. This makes it my top recommendation.
When you enter your seed keyword in KWFinder, you don’t just get keywords, but also the SERP (search engine result page) explorer on the right.
You can select any keyword from the keyword list on the left to see its SERP data on the right.
Moreover, you can also click on the Autocomplete or Questions tab to discover additional keywords.
Keyword research: selection phase
Now you know how to generate hundreds of relevant SEO keywords. But as we discussed, to get your content noticed via search engines, you need to choose the right keywords.
But what would you call the “right” keywords, exactly? How would you select the keywords to target for a piece of content?
From search volume to SEO difficulty, let’s see how to select the most profitable keywords for SEO.
Consider competition/SEO difficulty
Before you decide to target a specific keyword, you need to have an idea of your competition and chances of ranking organically for that keyword.
You want to do this for all the keywords relevant to your content, and then pick the ones that are easier to rank for in the top 10 search engine results.
There are two ways to get a sense of a keyword’s difficulty:
SERP Checker: Use a SERP checker tool to view the top-ranking pages for your keyword. The idea is to get a sense of the reputation of high-ranking pages.
If the top 10 pages belong to big brands in your niche, you can estimate that it’s going to be hard to compete and rank for that keyword.
But if there are some results with low-authority websites, that means your content is more likely to get into those results as well.
SEO difficulty score: The second way is to use a premium keyword research tool, because most such tools have a metric that indicates the ranking difficulty of a keyword.
For example, here’s the difficulty score shown by KWFinder, when I search for or select the keyword “yoga for kids.”
However, you’ll be wise to not rely only on the difficulty score shown by a tool. Those are not always accurate because they base the competition 100% on backlinks, and give less weightage to other ranking factors.
Consider search volumes
In addition to low SEO difficulty, the next factor you want to look for is a high monthly search volume.
The more people search for an SEO keyword, the more traffic you can get if you’re ranking high for that keyword.
You can easily get this data from any of the premium keyword research tools. For example, here’s what KWFinder shows you when you put in a seed keyword.
You can also click on the column name to sort the results by data in that column. Clicking on Search, for instance, will sort the keywords by their search volumes.
So when choosing keywords to target, I’d recommend striking a balance between low competition and high search volume.
Final thoughts on SEO keywords
Keywords are the foundation of an effective SEO strategy. Without researching and optimizing your content for the right keywords, search engines will find it hard to understand, index, and rank your content.
Hopefully, this guide will help you pick the right SEO keywords every time and start making a splash in search engine result pages.
Did I miss anything? Did you try these tips? Do you have any questions or comments? Share your thoughts below in the comments section.
