To write engaging content that meets the needs of people interested in your niche, you need to know what they’re looking for. I’ll show you how to find keywords in Lesson 2. My first tip for keyword research would be: Know your niche! Keyword research allows you to gain a deeper understanding of subtopics and topics in your niche.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the following tools and platforms that you can use to find your keywords: Google Keyword Planner | Keyword Tool | Google Suggestions | AnswerThePublic | YouTube | Google Search Console | Reddit | Forums | Amazon (Click on the link to go to each section)

Let’s say you have a blog about hiking. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one of the keywords you want to rank for is “hiking” or “hiking trails.” The problem with these keywords (sometimes called “fat head keywords”) is that they are inherently very competitive.

But if you dig deeper, you’ll find that people interested in hiking may also be using keywords like:

• “GPS watch with heart rate monitor”
• The best Android app for geocaching
• “How long does it take to hike the Damavand trail?”
• How many calories does walking burn?

These are all so-called long-tail keywords. A typical long-tail keyword has these characteristics:

• Consists of 3 or more words
• It has lower search volume but usually also has less competition.
• More specific = higher engagement and conversion rates

As you can see in the image, visitors coming from long-tail keywords can represent a significant portion of your total organic traffic. The internet is a place to provide information, answer questions, and solve problems. The goal of your content strategy should be to answer all the questions you could possibly have about your niche. Long-tail keywords are a great way to find them.

Pro tip: Long-tail keywords represent specific subtopics within your niche. This doesn’t mean your content should always follow the “1 long-tail keyword = 1 blog post” pattern. There are an almost infinite number of possible long-tail keyword combinations for a topic. It would be impossible to create a post for every one of them. Instead, you can create long-tail content that covers the entire topic and will rank naturally for long-tail keywords. I’ll talk more about using keywords correctly in Chapter 4, so don’t worry!

Let’s take a look at a few places that can help you find keywords that people naturally use when discussing topics.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner has long been a go-to free keyword tool for many people. Over time, keyword research has become more sophisticated. Today, most SEOs have replaced GKP with more advanced tools. To use this tool, you need to create a Google Ads account (if you already have a Google account, it will take a few seconds).

After registering, go to the Tools section in GKP.

Select the Discover new keywords option and enter your initial keywords to get suggestions.

After that, you will see a list of keywords sorted by relevance to the seed keyword.

Google Keyword Planner is a great tool that provides a lot of valuable data for PPC campaigns (you can see a beginner to advanced SEO tutorial here).

For SEO, it offers hundreds of keyword ideas but it doesn’t completely replace the Keyword Tool. It can still be a useful tool, as long as you remember two things:

1. Search volume is often grouped based on similar keywords. Also, you’ll only see search volume ranges (e.g. 1-10k) unless you spend enough money on Google Ads.
2. Google Keyword Planner is part of Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords). Its Competition column does not reflect organic difficulty, only competition in PPC campaigns. Hey, I say PPC, you know what I mean? It stands for Pay Per Click!

Keyword research tools

The most common way to find great keyword opportunities is to use a keyword research tool. There are many tools on the market: KWFinder, KeywordTool, Long Tail Pro, and more.

You may be asking, should I pay for a keyword research tool? Of course, the answer to this question depends on many things, but here’s my advice:

If your website or blog makes you money in any way, a keyword research tool (or an SEO toolkit in general) is a great investment that will pay off in the long run.

Key benefits of using a professional keyword research tool:

• This saves you time (you get hundreds of keyword ideas with one click)
• Provides data you won’t find elsewhere (like keyword difficulty, search volume, SERP data)
• This gives you a competitive advantage (against those who don’t use any keyword tools)

I mentioned that any keyword research usually involves three main steps: finding, analyzing, and using keywords. With the Keyword Research Tool, you’ll cover both the first and second steps. There are two basic ways to approach research in the Keyword Tool:

1. Search by seed or main keyword
2. Competitor based research

1. Search by seed or main keyword

As mentioned, this method starts with the seed keyword. This can be any phrase that describes the topic. If you want to create content about coffee makers, just enter the keyword coffee makers into the tool.

Suggestions are based on topical relevance as well as the autocomplete feature, keywords containing the seed keyword + (one or more) other word(s). In addition to keyword suggestions, a quality tool provides SEO metrics that help you analyze and select the right keywords.

You can quickly check the exact search volume, keyword difficulty, and search engine results page (SERP). In the third part, we talked about what these metrics mean and how to analyze your keyword.

2. Competitor-based keyword research

Competitor keyword research is one of the most valuable features of keyword tools. Why? Because finding competitors’ keywords manually is a very tedious task. You literally have to go page by page and guess what your competitors’ keywords are. But this can be done in a few clicks with a very easy tool.

There are two basic ways to do it:

a) Check your competitor’s domain to get new ideas for the topic

By looking at the keywords your competitors are ranking for, you can find new and interesting ideas that you can cover with your website. For example, I entered the domain of a popular coffee blog, homegrounds.co. The tool gave me a list of hundreds of keywords that this website is ranking for.

B) Check URLs to get keyword ideas about a specific topic.

This technique is usually used if you already have a topic in mind. Let’s say you want to write an article about “coffee roasting” for your coffee blog. Just type the keyword into Google and see who is ranking for it. If not you, then your competition?

Once you find a competitor, just enter their article URL and you can see what other keywords the article is ranking for. All of them are keywords that are closely related to your main topic.

Google suggestions

Google offers a lot of keyword suggestions right in search to help people find the most relevant results. Let’s take a look at 3 features you can use to find new keyword ideas:

Autocomplete

You’ve probably noticed that Google tries to suggest related search queries right in the search form. Since these are based on real searches people make, they can be great inspiration for interesting keywords.

Start by typing your main keyword into Google Search and add letters (or numbers) to see suggestions.

We can try different combinations:

• Email marketing a,b,c…
• Email marketing ab, ac, ad…
• Email Marketing 0, 1, 2…
• The best email marketing…

People also ask

One feature you can find in Google search results is a section called “People Also Ask.” Most of the questions appear and suggest other related questions. These can serve as inspiration for long-form question-type keywords.

Pro tip: If you click on one of the questions, more related questions will appear. This way, you can load an “infinite” number of questions.

Searches related to…

This feature is very similar to autocomplete, but the suggestions are at the bottom of the results page.

 

Pro Tip: Besides Google, almost all other search engines offer their own suggestions and related terms. You may not get as many keywords as you can find on Google, but it’s worth it. You can try Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo.

General answer

An even simpler way to automate autocomplete suggestions is to do it yourself. One tool that does this for free is AnswerThePublic. Just enter your seed keyword and it will generate autocomplete suggestions from Google and Bing for every letter in the alphabet.

The feature I like the most is the ability to generate keyword suggestions based on:

• Question words (when, how, where, what, can, will…)
• Prepositions (for, without, to, with,…)
• Comparing words (like, versus, and, or,…)

YouTube suggestions

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Although keyword research for this platform has its own characteristics, it can also be useful for Google keyword research. There are thousands of searches behind the most popular topics. There is a high probability that popular YouTube topics also have high search volume on Google. Let’s take an example.

If we search for “water filter” on YouTube, we’ll find an obvious keyword idea in the title of one of the video results – “artificial water filter.”

A quick look at search volume tells us that this term is also very popular in Google search. Another way is to use YouTube’s autocomplete feature. When searching for videos on YouTube, people tend to use search terms that are more “practical.” If you compare Google’s and YouTube’s autocomplete suggestions, you’ll see that they are different.

Google Search Console

A great way to find keywords is to check how you’re already ranking in Google Search Console. If your article is already ranking for some keywords, there’s a good chance you’ll find other long-tail phrases as well. Let’s take a look at 2 ways to find keywords with the best potential:

1. Check for keywords that have high click-through rates but low click-through rates.

Keywords with a high number of views and very low clicks may indicate that there is a lot of traffic potential but you are not ranking well enough (or you have ranked for a short period of time and no longer do).

Note: This applies to keywords that you rank for on the second SERP or lower. If you rank on the first SERP, but clicks are very few, this is a problem with low click-through rate.

Go to your Search Console and select Search Results in the Performance section. You can check all the keywords you are ranking for by domain (the default Queries setting). Or you can go to Pages, select a specific URL, and then go back to Queries to see the keywords you are ranking for with that specific URL.Next, sort the results by number of impressions. You should look for keywords that could be relevant to your content but have a low number of clicks.

Analyze the keywords to see if they are worth the effort (especially in terms of search volume and difficulty, see Chapter 3). If they are, you can improve the article’s optimization for these keywords.

2. Check in SERP, second or third place!!!

By checking the average position for searches, you can find out if you are ranking second or third in the SERP for keywords that are not the main focus of the article, but are still getting you impressions and clicks. All you have to do is select the average position in the Performance section (not displayed by default). Then sort the searches by this dimension.

While this is by no means the most accurate way to see your rankings, it will help you find the few keywords you are already ranking for. Let’s say you have written an article about types of coffee machines.In Search Console, you find the keyword “4 cup coffee maker” with an average position of around 2 or 3 SERPs. Since the keyword is relevant and has a high search volume, it can be a good source of traffic for your blog.

There are two things you can do:

1. You can improve the current article to put more emphasis on the keyword. (However, you probably don’t want to cover such a specific subtopic in a general article.)
2. You can write a new post focusing on “Best 4-Cup Coffee Makers” and link to it from the original article.

With a quality article dedicated to the topic, you have a high chance of ranking for the keyword in a better position than a generic post.

Reddit

Reddit is one of the largest online communities, covering almost every topic imaginable. As such, it can be a great place to find people interested in your niche and discover the topics they’re discussing.

You can select a specific subreddit and look at the most popular posts. Alternatively, you can search for question-type posts within the subreddit. Search terms you can use:

• “Question”
• “How can I?”
• “How do I do it?”
• “Suggestions”
• “Tips”
  You will find various questions related to your article. They can be inspiration for your next content based on what people are discussing online.

In the screenshot above, you can see possible topic ideas for an aquatic or aquatic space article.

Suitable discussion forums

Although forums are not as popular as they once were, various forms of narrowly focused discussion boards remain. You can use these search terms to find forums related to your topic:

• “Forum keyword”
• Keyword + Forum (Fourm)
• Keyword + Forum (Fourm)

Here is an example of an active community on a board game site:

Look at the number of posts/comments and last post dates to determine if the forum is active. By diving into a specific category, you can find lots of topics and possible keyword ideas based on what people are actively discussing.If you see a forum that looks like it came straight from the 90s, with thousands of topics and the last post being from an hour ago, you’ve found a gem.

Amazon

Did you know that Amazon has its own search engine called A9? Similar to Google and YouTube, it collects data about popular search terms and provides automated suggestions. You can search for them manually or use one of the many free tools that do it automatically.

The relevance of the suggestions is based on product conversion rates and purchasing behavior. These keywords may be specific to content that Amazon has available for sale. Are you an affiliate marketer? Do you own an e-commerce store? Don’t forget Amazon.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a great source for keywords. Thanks to its nested structure, you can go from a broader topic to subtopics. Browsing the table of contents and subchapters is a great way to do this. Here’s an example of a search from a broad keyword to a very specific topic:

Sports (Main Topic) – Fitness (Subtopic) – Physical Fitness (Article) – Aerobic Exercises (Article) – Types of Aerobic Exercises (Chapter) – Indoor Rowing (Article) – Indoor Rowing Techniques (Chapter)

I went from a broad topic like sports to a specific sub/key topic like indoor rowing techniques in a matter of minutes.

For some large topics, you can find a comprehensive table of related subtopics at the bottom of the Wikipedia page. This can give you a great insight into the structure and depth of the topic.

Last but not least, you can use a free tool (like this one by Karooya) that will scrape Wikipedia topic and keyword ideas for you: a pretty great source of keyword ideas, right?

Of course, there are many other sites that can be a source of keyword inspiration. Places or sites that we can get inspiration from:

• Twitter threads
• Quora question
• Facebook groups
• Content management platforms
• and so on.

Keyword ideas can be found everywhere. But not all keywords are created equal. How do we analyze them to find the ones worth targeting? Stay tuned for part three!