Now that you have dozens of keyword ideas, your main task is to choose the ones that will bring you the most value. You don’t want to optimize for hundreds of keywords, right?

Every time you create new content, you should give it a focus keyword. A focus keyword is the keyword that best describes the topic of the page and has the best SEO attributes. There are three key aspects to consider: popularity, difficulty, and relevance of the keyword.

I like to think of these 3 aspects as the 3 legs of a tripod, so I call it the Keyword Tripod Rule.

Just like any tripod, your keyword tripod only works if it is stable on all three legs. Let’s take a closer look at these 3 legs:

1. Keyword popularity

Keyword popularity is usually defined as search volume. This is the number of people searching for the term in question. It is usually calculated as a monthly average based on the past 12 months. There are two main sources of search volume data used in keyword research tools:

• Google Data: Search volume data from the Google Keyword Planner database
• Clickable data: Search volume data based on internet user behavior (collected from browser extensions, plugins, etc.)

Different keyword tools use different sources and different methods of processing data. As a result, there may be differences in search volume values. Both sources have their advantages and disadvantages, and neither is 100% accurate.

Note: Don’t forget that well-written content is likely to rank for many more keywords and will have higher overall search volume. Don’t be a slave to search volume, consider it as a lead.

You should also look at the longer term by looking at keyword popularity trends. A great tool to help you with this is Google Trends. You simply enter a specific keyword or topic and the tool will show you the interest over time on a scale of 1 to 100. Take a look at these four very different charts that show different types of search interest over time:

For example, the keyword 3D TV may have a good monthly search volume (in fact, it’s around 2,400 searches per month worldwide). But if you look at the long-term trend, you’ll see that interest has been declining over the last few years.

Google Trends can also help you identify keyword seasonality. Seasonal keywords are keywords that are limited to a specific time of year (summer/winter, holidays, annual events).

Look at the keyword garden pool in the image above. This is a natural search volume that occurs during the summer and there is less interest in the winter. You should consider this when creating your content plan.

Last but not least, you need to consider click-through rate (CTR). CTR largely depends on the position of your website. There are other things that affect it, especially rich snippets. These include:

• Google ads
• Featured snippets
• Answer boxes
• Map packages
• Many other pieces

Here is a chart showing the organic CTR on results pages with and without rich snippets. As you can see, the CTR of organic results is much lower if the snippets are present.

Let’s move on to the second leg of our lovely tripod!

2. Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is a metric that estimates how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. The higher the keyword difficulty, the more difficult it will be to rank for the keyword on your website.

The difficulty metrics used in keyword tools take into account the ranking authority of websites in SERP 1. If there are many low-authority websites in the first SERP, there is a high chance of ranking for the keyword.

How is website authority calculated? In most cases, the calculation takes into account two things:

• Number of backlinks: How many pages link to a given website
• Quality of backlinks: Depends on the authority and relevance of the linking pages

There are several metrics that are well established. The most popular are Domain Authority and Page Authority by Moz and Citation Flow and Trust Flow by Majestic.

These metrics try to aggregate the authority of a page into a number on a scale of 1 to 100. If you consider the ranking authority of all websites for a keyword in the first SERP, you can estimate how difficult it will be to rank for it.

There are a few important things to remember:

• Don’t take keyword difficulty as your only clue. The metric should only be used as a guide, not an absolute value. If your content is better and more relevant, you can get an edge over websites with higher authority.
• Don’t compare numbers between different tools. Each keyword research tool uses different data to calculate keyword difficulty, so the values will vary. Instead, compare difficulty metrics between keywords.
• Don’t forget about subjective factors. No single metric can tell you exactly how hard it will be for you to rank for a particular keyword. There are many subjective factors to consider, including:

• Your SEO skills
• Authority of your website
• The relevance of your content

Pro tip: Find competitors with similar strength to yours (for example, you can compare DA/PA or CF/TF). Then, look at the keywords they rank for and create better content to rank higher.

Alternative methods for estimating keyword difficulty

Although the difficulty metric is probably the most reliable way to estimate competition, there are other ways:

• Domain Age: You can focus on the age of domains to find SERPs with relatively young ranking websites. For example, a keyword with a 6-month-old website can easily rank in the first SERP.
• Keyword Golden Ratio: This method allows you to find long-tail keywords that you should be able to rank for immediately.

Pro Tip: Sometimes, if there is no relevant content, Google will simply display semi-related websites with high authority. If you check the difficulty metric, you will see a high number. (Remember? Difficulty is calculated based on the authority of websites in the SERP.) This doesn’t mean you can’t outperform them with highly focused and relevant content. You should always do SERP analysis and not rely solely on the difficulty metric.

3. Relevance (search intent)

SERP analysis should be an integral part of any keyword research. Firstly, you can better assess the difficulty of a keyword by looking at the authority of the ranking websites. Secondly, it helps you uncover the search intent of the keyword to see if the keyword is relevant to your content.

There are 4 main categories of search intent:

• Navigation: User is searching for a specific website/brand
• Informational: The user is searching for general information.
• Transactional: The user wants to buy something online.
• Commercial: User wants to research before buying

Here are some examples of keywords and content types for each search objective:

The best way to discover the intent of a keyword is to search for it in Google and see what it ranks in the first SERP. Sometimes, a keyword may be topically relevant to your page, but not relevant in terms of search intent. Let me give you an example:

Let’s say you own an online aquarium supplies store and you want to find a focused keyword for the product page of a new advanced aquarium filter from AquaClear. You find the keyword “best aquarium filter.” It has good search volume and seems very easy to rank for.

AquaClear: The Best Aquarium Filter for Your Fish Tank! A very catchy title, right? However, a quick look at the SERPs will show you that the keyword you chose is not relevant to your content. Why? The search intent is not matched.

Google clearly understands “best aquarium filter” as a commercial keyword, all results are reviews and buying guides. You can’t rank with your product page, because it has a transactional nature. Now you have two options:

• Find a focus keyword with the right intent (e.g. “buy aquarium filter”, “aquaclear filter price”)
• Create new content to match the search intent (e.g. comparing the best aquarium filters with links to your online store)

The main goal here is to match the search intent to your content type.

Pro Tip: Don’t just focus on transactional and commercial keywords. Write informative blog posts and offer some value for free. Some of your visitors may not be interested in buying right away, but when they are ready to buy in the future, they will remember you as an authority on the subject.

We’ve covered the first two steps, namely finding and analyzing keywords.

It’s time to move on to the third step, which is how to use keywords on the website. Stay with the Giraffe Digital Team, Yours sincerely, Mehdipour