Like most business owners, you probably wouldn’t mind having more website visitors. The thing is, that will only happen if you have the right keywords on your website that people are searching for.
Not only that, you need to learn how to use them correctly and optimize your site to help Google index your web pages for these keywords..
In this SEO guide we’re going to help you find what people are searching for. To do that, we’re going to need to use a keyword research tool called Ubersuggest.
Table of Contents
What Are Keywords?
Keywords are what web-users type into search engines. Google searches its database of website content to try to show the user the most relevant pages, along with promoted sites that have paid to be shown when someone types in a particular keyword.
The top search positions for short keywords will always show content from popular and well-established websites, so you need to think in terms of 3 or 4-word phrases that searchers might use.
But first, you need to know your current search engine rankings, so you can plan how you want to proceed.
If you type your domain name into Ubersuggest’s home page form, you get a list of the search terms your webpages rank for in search, along with their position in Google’s search pages.
The screenshot above shows the keywords that Hubspot.com ranks for in the U.S.
How to Do Keyword Research
The next step is to work out which keywords you are going to try to rank for in Google.
When you first visit the Ubersuggest home page you see the screen above. Enter a short keyword phrase that is relevant to your users, and your most important visitor location. You get a LOT of data that is shown in the three screenshots below.
The image above shows the results when you type ‘Bitcoin’ into Ubersuggest. You cannot compete with the top ten websites that appear in search results because these sites have massive numbers of backlinks (which Google sees as an indication of high-quality content). However your chances of appearing as a promoted site are pretty good if you pay around $4 per click. With 1,830,000 searches for ‘Bitcoin’, you would get plenty of visitors if you are prepared to pay.
When you scroll down the page, Ubersuggest gives you a list of keywords to consider targeting either in organic (unpaid) search or in paid search.
You can click on the ‘See all keyword ideas’ link to see 577 more ideas. You get the first 100 free, but you need to upgrade to a paid account to see the remaining 477.
When you click on one keyword in the list, the screen on the right opens with a list of the top 100 web pages that rank in search engines for that term. You can see all 100, but only the detail on the first 10 until you upgrade to a paid account.
Look at the links at the top of the left-hand panel above. RELATED (232,414) means there is that number of related keywords you might want to look at.
If you click on the first item in the ‘Related’ list, ‘Bitcoin price today’, a panel opens giving you details of the top 100 webpages in Google for that keyword term.
Can you compete with them successfully? Probably not.
You need to drill down and find longer keywords that are less competitive. Click on the ‘Suggestions’ link. ‘Bitcoin price prediction today USD’ looks more feasible. These longer keyword phrases are called long-tail keywords.
Clicking on the ‘Questions’, ‘Prepositions’, and ‘Comparisons’ links open similar panels with yet more keyword ideas.
What Do You Write?
If you decide to target ‘bitcoin price prediction today USD’ then click the Content Ideas link on the left of the page
You can see that both the suggested articles look at the general topic of current bitcoin prices and trends, though neither is doing well in terms of Pinterest or Facebook links. It might be better to try another subject.
If you take another look at the initial Overview page on Bitcoin you see the panel below.
There is a range of content ideas that are currently proving successful in terms of links and social media shares.
Many web pages never get a single hit, not one reader, because nobody is interested enough in the topic. This list tells you what people in your target market are reading. You can then write about similar subjects from different angles.
Look at the last item in the screenshot above.
This content idea looks promising. It has good numbers of links from social media, which you should be able to replicate if you include relevant images and videos.
If you click on the ‘Keywords’ link the panel below opens and you can see the keywords people are typing into Google before landing on that page.
You can see the SEO difficulty column has lower numbers, meaning it should be easier to get on the first page of Google search for these keyword phrases.
How Do You Write?
Keyword stuffing is DEAD! It will get your web pages sent to the bottom of Google (page 5,000 or similar).
You need to write naturally for your readers, rather than for Google.
Include your target keyword phrase in the title and no more than two times in the article. Use variations of your target keyword where you can, because you will get more hits that way.
About Carson Derrow
