In this step-by-step guide we will cover:
How to study keywords
How to evaluate keywords
Keyword Ranking
Evaluating Organic Keyword Opportunities
Keyword Research Action Plan
How to review and refine your keyword research
1. How to study keywords
Keyword research for SEO involves gathering all possible variants of keywords that might be relevant to your current site, content, products, services, etc. and/or relevant to your ideal customers or users, but not directly related to your current offerings.
An example of keywords that are interesting to a site's users but are not directly related to a website's products might be keywords related to small business marketing or recruiting when the site you're researching sells small business accounting software. In this case, the small business marketing keywords might not seem relevant to the actual website, but they are relevant to the very people the site is trying to attract.
After an initial list of all potentially relevant keywords is built (most tools will generate large lists of keywords that may or may not be relevant to you), the list needs to be narrowed down to terms that are actually relevant to the site you are researching and to your potential users. The terms then need to be grouped, sorted, and prioritized.
Please note that we are focusing on organic keyword research here rather than PPC keyword research. While the two may be similar, there can be significant differences, particularly in regards to competitiveness.
If your site is new and very small and your competition for a particular search term are sites like Wikipedia and Amazon, ranking for that term might be a long-term strategy, or a lower, short-term priority for organic rankings and traffic. Whereas for PPC, the decision you have to make is simply whether you can afford to bid competitively on a term.