Keyword Research in SEO: Part 3

Summary of Part 3

Doing an in-depth analysis of the keyword phrases found in part 2 and narrowing down the list. Then, examing the narrowed down list to help determine which keyword phrases that you want to try and rank for.

Exploring the List

In part 1 of “Keyword Research in SEO,” we decided to do research on ‘SEO Tools’. In case you missed it part 1 of how to pick your main keyword theme to research is located here.

In part 2 we generated a list of possible keyword phrases to use from numerous sources and run them through SEMRush’s Keyword Magic Tool.

In Part 2 of my keyword research articles, 3,239 keyword phrases were discovered and I narrowed it down to 551 keyword phrases.

To add the groups to SEMRush export the keyword phrases to the tool PPC Keyword Tool.

With the Keyword Manager Tool in SEMRush or by adding a category in your spreadsheet, we can group the keyword phrases by category.

(# of Keyword Phrases)
(Category Name)
(Examples of Keyword Phrases)

Note: The keyword phrase ‘website grader’ was actually the name of an online tool so it is in the category ‘Brand Tool’. When in doubt Google it!

• (39)
  (Brand Tool)
  (Ubersuggest, KWfinder, Moz SEO, etc.)
• (2)
  (Competition Analysis Tools)
  (SEO competitor analysis tool, competitor keyword research, etc.)
• (2)
  (Content Tools)
  (SEO writing tools, SEO tools to check duplicate content, etc.)
• (10)
  (Keyword Tools)
  (keyword tool, LSI keywords, etc.)
• (5)
  (Linking Tool)
  (backlink checker, google backlink checker, etc.)
• (4)
  (Local Ranking Tools)
  (local SEO software, local SEO tools, etc.)
• (33)
  (Ranking Tools)
  (google rank checker, keyword rank tracker, etc.)
• (5)
  (Reporting Tools)
  (SEO reporting software, SEO reporting tool, etc.)
• (59)
  (SEO Tools)
  (SEO tools, SEO software, etc.)
• (16)
  (SERP Tools)
  (SERP checker, SERP tracker, etc.)
• (4)
  (Video SEO Tools)
  (SEO tools for youtube videos, SEO tools for youtube, etc.)
• (16)
  (Website Checker)
  (domain authority checker, SEO checker, etc.)

What we can deduce from how many keyword phrases there are in each category is that people are looking for brand name SEO Tools, Ranking Tools, and SEO Tools in general. This will help you get a mindset on what the general population is looking for.

Here is an example of the top 10 phrases according to search volume. When looking at this chart you can see what is the most popular and that Brand Tools and general SEO Tools are the most searched for phrases.

This table below shows it sorted by groups, then the number of searches.

When you look at the above table sorted this way you will discover that the one that you want to try and rank for is ‘SEO analysis tool’. It may only receive 880 visits per month but your chances of ranking for it are greater than ‘SEO tools’.

If you remember in my article Green is the easiest to rank for then followed by Yellow and lastly Orange.

This way you can write topics that have to do with ‘SEO Tools’ and write your first article with the title being ‘SEO Analysis Tool’ then write the content for it.

The first thing you want to do is check the SERPs (search engine results pages) for the phrase ‘SEO analysis tool’. You will notice that the first positions ‘above the fold’ are nearly all ads. So you may want to consider opening up a pay-per-click campaign for this particular keyword phrase.

If we scroll down (below the fold) we see the following results. I have my Moz Toolbar and SEOQuake for SEMRush turned on to give me a quick overview.

From looking at the DA (domain authority), PA (page authority), and quick links in the SEOQuake toolbar I can see that there are a few open spots on the first page of Google that we may have a chance to rank, but it is still tough-looking competition after looking at the number of backlinks per site. Of course, you have to know the stats of your own website to compare with what shows up in the SERPs.

This brings an end to the keyword research article I wrote. The next steps would be to do some competition analysis on the websites that show up in the SERPs and find out why and how they rank then do one better than them. I hope this in-depth three-part article gives you some detailed insight into how keyword research is done and gives you some tips and ideas if you would like to do this on your own.

Sincerely,

Michael