What Are Keywords?
Keywords are the words your target audience types into their favourite search engine (like Google), to look for more information on topics you can help them with. It’s the cornerstone of any SEO strategy. A great place to find relevant and ranking keywords is Keysearch! Let’s review how keywords work and how to use a keyword research tool!
Keywords and Key Phrases
Before we go any further, I think it is important to note that we’re not talking about single words here. You’re not going to rank for “beauty” for example, even if you are a beauty blogger and that’s what your customers are looking for. Instead, what you want to go after are longer key phrases that give you a good indication of what your people are looking for.
For example, let’s say you are a small beauty blogger who shares reviews about how to make a DIY face scrubs. A key phrase you may want to look at for a blog post or informative article could be “DIY face scrub recipe” or something along those lines.
If I’m blogging about SEO and trying to find people interested in a training program or a short guide to help them find out what their customers and readers are looking for, I may use a phrase like “the best way to find targeted keywords” or even “how to discover what people are searching for online.”
How To Find These Keywords
The next question is of course where you find those keywords. How can you find out what your target audience is typing into their favourite search engine?
It starts with a guess. I hope you know enough about your topic and niche of choice to come up with a list of several words and phrases that you think your readers may be using. From there you have options. One of your best and most free tools is Google. Start to enter one of your keywords and see what the autofill options are. Play with different terms and start making a list. Once you have that list, search each term and scroll down to the bottom of the first search results page. You will see a list of related searches. Add those to your list of keywords and key phrases and choose several that make sense for you and the type of content you want to create.
Another option is to use a keyword tool like keysearch.co.
What To Do With Keywords
The best keyword strategy includes finding low-competition keywords and strategically placing them in your content!
What you want is low-competition keywords, with a high search volume. This is the magic combination! Low-competition keywords are easier to rank for because the competition for those keywords is… you guessed it- low! But, you don’t want to use keywords that easily, if no one is searching for them. If no one searches for it, you won’t show up and therefore you won’t get clicks!
So how do you find low-competition keywords? It’s hard to do on your own. You can try and use some free tools, and get mixed results. Or you can use my favourite keyword research tool- keysearch.co!
This post contains affiliate links to a product Steph uses herself, keysearch.co. If you click through and make a purchase, she will make a commission at no cost to you.
*I went from 10-20 search engine views a day, to about 600 daily! I’m ranking in the top 10 for several high-volume/low-competition keywords. All thanks to the product I’m about to tell you about.
The Benefits Of Search Engine Traffic!
Traffic from search engines takes some effort and knowledge, and you likely won’t see the results immediately as you do with Pinterest or Facebook.
Frustrating, I know. But, visitors from search engines are usually looking to solve a problem. And if you can help them, by answering their questions, you can convert your visitors into subscribers and customers and end up boosting your traffic and authority.
Also, once you get the ball rolling, and start racking up ranking keywords (that’s a bit of a tongue-twister), the traffic is long-term with little upkeep! Meaning- once you start ranking, the traffic will be consistent, without the effort social media traffic entails!
What Are Long Tail Keywords?
When someone searches for a term in a search engine, you want your site to actually show up on the first page or two for that term.
Long-tail keywords are a string of words that people are searching for. For example- ‘how to make iced coffee’, or ‘popular kids Halloween costumes’.
It’s easier to rank for long-tail keywords, rather than just one-word or two-word searches because the competition is often less steep. Your blog is much less likely to rank for the term ‘Halloween costumes’ compared to the long-tail keyword term ‘popular Halloween costumes for kids’.
But if you’re just picking long-tail keywords without doing the proper research, you’re likely choosing terms that are too competitive for your site or keywords that no one is searching for.
So how do you know which keywords to choose? Keysearch has helped make it so easy to find low-competition keywords, that I can actually rank for! Now on to the Keysearch review!
Keysearch Review
I was doing keyword research but it was not working because the competition for those keywords was too steep for my little blog!
The big bloggers, with high domain authorities, were out-ranking me! And so I wasn’t seeing much organic, search engine traffic.
But, I have been able to triple my ranking keywords in just two months and am out-ranking those big bloggers thanks to this keyword competition checker!
See for yourself- over 700 ranking keywords and growing!
*Update: I now have over 1,000 ranking keywords and growing! My search engine traffic has exploded!
Now, I never write a post without using this tool first to find the long-tail keywords I can actually rank for. The keywords those other bloggers aren’t even aware of!
Here’s How I Got Over 500 Search Engine Visitors A Day!
** UPDATE: Since SEO is a long-term game, it has only gotten better! My website regularly receives over 500 views daily from search engines alone.
How To Find Low Competition Keywords
Step 1. Sign up for Keysearch.co. Go do that right now, I’ll wait…
Step 2. Did you get the Keysearch.co? Ok, good. Now you can research your topic to find relevant, low competition keywords that you can rank for.
Simple- type in a search term in the search bar. For example- Valentine’s Day hashtags. You’ll see just how easy that term is to rank for. For Valentine’s Day hashtags, the competition is fairly easy!
You’ll also see the search volume. If you can find a volume over 1000, with an easy competition level- jump on it!
Keysearch analyzes your website metrics to show you which terms you can rank for and which are out of your league!
I recently wrote a post about Valentine’s Day hashtags. I did my key search research and found a few different terms I could easily rank for using the suggested terms.
Step 3. Include those keywords in the relevant places- H1 And H2 headlines, opening paragraph, ending paragraph, alt text and meta description. Be careful to make the words flow, and not to keyword stuff. You only need to include keywords 2 or 3 tops (including headlines) throughout a typical 800-1,000 word post. This is what works for me!
Use your keywords and key phrases where it makes sense in the title and content of your blog posts, articles, video descriptions, and the likes. Don’t force it. Always write for your reader first, and search engine second. If you can use it in the title, and definitely use it within your content, multiple times or several variations of your main keyword within the content depending on length. Don’t overdo it, but help both your readers and the search engines see what your content is about.
Step 4. Publish and wait. It can take anywhere from a few weeks, to 6 months to rank in the top 10, depending on Google and your post.
Below you can see my Google analytics for the week of Valentine’s Day. I am ranking in the top 5, for pretty much all of Valentine’s hashtag searches, just a month after I published.
These are just results from GA, not Bing, Yahoo etc. In total I was receiving over 500 search engines visits a day.
What Is Keysearch.co?
It’s only hands-down the best $17 I spend a month as a blogger!
I know, money is tight for us bloggers. And investing in another product might not be within the budget. But, if you’re going to invest ANYTHING, invest the $17 in a good, keyword research tool.
Sure, there are tons of free keyword research tools, but they aren’t custom-tailored to your website and they won’t give you the insight that Keysearch.co does. Believe me, I’ve tried them and wanted to love them because I’d rather not spend more money. But, they didn’t show me exactly which terms I could rank for.
Here’s Why It Works
Keysearch.co analyzes your website metrics to identify terms you can rank for based on your domain strength.
You can also see the top-ranking sites, for the terms you’re researching, and where they’ve included the keywords! This gives you the advantage to find areas where you can one-up them!
Keysearch.co allows you to check your competition’s URL metrics. You can see their ranking keywords, domain strength and more! It sounds a little stalkerish, but it can be helpful to see how far behind (or ahead) you are!