How To Do SEO in 2024 – Keyword Research

August 12, 2024 12:19 pm Published by admin

Competitor and Industry Keyword Research

All right now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s move on to some more hands-on SEO work.

Some of the first things to start thinking about for SEO success is:

Who’s my target audience?
What problem do they have that my business can solve?

and most importantly…

What exactly do potential clients and customers enter into the search bar when they’re trying to find my products/services?

Analyze Your Competition

You probably have a general idea of the answers to the above questions, mainly the first two.

However, I always recommend starting by checking out the competition, specifically, the top performers in your industry. If you have a physical storefront/service area, analyze your top local competitors.

I don’t necessarily mean the competitors that first come to mind that seem to do well. I’m talking about the competitors that are crushing the SEO game. How do you find out who that is?

Simple. Google your industry/service/product including the service area, if applicable. For example, “real estate agent in Wilmington NC.” Whoever shows up in the top few spots organically (not a “sponsored” result or part of the map section) is most likely putting some effort into their search engine optimization.

This means those competitors have already identified and are targeting significant keywords.

Before resorting to any online tools, start by simply looking through your top competitors’ websites. These websites are performing well for a reason, so they can help guide your efforts.

As you’re looking at each website, take some notes on things you like, things you dislike, and if there’s anything your business offers that they do not (so you can capitalize on this later).

Dominate your SEO game using our free checklist below!

Tools for Keyword Research

Now, let’s move on to some keyword research. There are tons of free and paid online resources for discovering the best keywords for your website. I’ll go through some of the best options below.

I recommend trying out all of these. First, because then you can exhaust the free keyword benefits from all of them. Second, because if you do decide to invest in a paid plan, you will know exactly which software you like the most.

Ahrefs Keyword Generator. Ahrefs (pronounced H-Refs) is one of the big names in the SEO industry. I’m putting them first on this list because this is my preferred SEO software. Ahrefs offers a number of their tools for free (with limitations). You can also upgrade to a paid plan. Ahrefs allows you to find specific keyword data for Google, Bing, YouTube, or Amazon. The keyword generator provides up to 150 keyword ideas for free.

If you want to upgrade from the free tools Ahrefs provides, they have a number of paid plans. Our digital marketing agency uses the Standard plan, which works great for our clients and needs.

Moz Keyword Explorer. Moz has been a leader in the SEO world since 2004. They offer free versions (with limits) on most of their SEO tools. Once you create a free account, you can analyze 3 search queries per day. Each query will also generate 1,000 keyword suggestions.

If you want to upgrade to a paid Moz plan, there are a couple of different options. If you’re a small to medium sized business, the Standard plan should suffice. However if you’re an agency or have multiple websites you want to do SEO on, consider going for a more expensive plan with less limitations. Nothing is more annoying than being in the middle of keyword research and then hitting a daily limit on the tools.

Google Keyword Planner. This tool is great because it’s by Google (meaning it explicitly uses Google’s data) and is completely free.

While it’s best used for PPC (paid advertising), it is still valuable for SEO. You can sign in using your Google account or create an account if you don’t already have one. You can enter up to 10 search terms at a time.

If you have a physical storefront or service area, you can delete the default United States location and add your location. This will give you more precise data on search terms in your area.

You can also enter a website URL to find keywords (for example, your top competitors). The “refine keywords” column on the far right can help you filter out irrelevant results.

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool. Semrush is another SEO leader. They offer free versions (with limitations) of their tools, but you must make an account first.

Keep in mind, Semrush provides a vast array of data which can be quite overwhelming if you’re new to SEO. With their keyword tool, you can enter a search term and get related keywords with important metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty (more on this soon).

You can upgrade to a paid plan, or get a free trial account for 7 days. This will give you access to everything the paid plans have, making it great for anyone who only needs access for a small window of time. You’ll have to enter card information, but you can cancel before the end of the 7 days to avoid any fees.

I recommend compiling a master keyword list, then filtering through this list to pick the best keywords for your website. Depending on the software you use and if you opt for a free vs. paid version, there are a few ways you can find keyword ideas.

First, see what keywords your website already ranks for! If you’ve never done SEO on your website, there probably aren’t going to be a ton of terms. But, it’s good to know where you’re starting. And, if you happen to be ranking well for a high-volume, relevant keyword, you want to know that. The last thing you want to do is accidentally lose a great position on a valuable keyword.

In some cases, you can audit your competitor’s keywords to get inspiration. By searching their website URL, you can get a list of keywords they already rank for. Look through this list to see which terms apply to you.

You can also use generic terms as a ‘seed’ keyword to find related terms. For example, “realtor near me” might give you other terms like “realty office near me”, “real estate agent near me”, “realtor in Wilmington NC”, and more.

Picking the Best Keywords

I’m sure by now you’re thinking: “Great, I know where to find keywords. But how the heck do I know which keywords to choose for my business?”. Don’t worry, I’m about to go through a few things that will help you select the best keywords for your business.

By the way, when I say “keyword”, I (and anyone else in digital marketing) mean the entire string of words users enter into a search bar. This could literally be one word, or a string of words such as “real estate agent near me”.

For more digital marketing terms explained, check out our glossary!

First, let’s quickly talk about keyword quantity per webpage. For each page of your site, you should focus on 1 keyword (you can have 1-2 related secondary keywords as long as they’re relevant).

In 2024, SEO best practices call for a keyword density of 1-2%. So, for every 100 words, you should use a keyword 1 time. For an average page of a website (not a blog/article), you should have around 300 words. This means you should use your keyword 2-3 times throughout your content. Blog posts should be much longer, around 1,500-2,000 words. So, you can use your keyword 15-20 times.

If you try to target too many keywords on one page, you’re going to send mixed signals to Google about the purpose of your page and not rank well for any of them.

If you don’t use your keyword enough, you won’t be sending a strong enough signal to Google about the purpose of your page and what you’re trying to rank for.

And if you try to use one or multiple keywords too much, you’re engaging in keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is pretty much what it sounds like- stuffing your content with an unnatural number of keywords that you’re trying to rank for. This was once considered a great way to achieve SEO success. Nowadays, this is a big no-no and can result in search engines penalizing your site by lowering your rankings.

All right, now that we’ve covered quantity, let’s get back to determining what makes a “good” keyword for your business!

Search Volume. This is how many times a keyword is searched per month on Google, Bing, etc. This number is typically averaged out over 12 months. It’s really important to identify keywords with a high search volume in your industry. If nobody is searching for a specific keyword, there’s no point in building content around it.

However, it’s important not to discredit keywords with a low search volume. Especially if you’re a local business as search terms with location modifiers (near me, Wilmington, Wilmington NC, etc) will often have much less search volume than those without location modifiers.

For many local businesses we run SEO on in Wilmington, NC, the highest volume relevant keywords that we’ll find for a local business is 50-150. For example “personal injury attorney” gets 33,000 searches per month while “personal injury attorney wilmington nc” gets 60.

Another consideration is long-tail keywords. These are more specific, longer search queries. They typically have a lower search volume but can still be important to your business. Especially if these keywords are more conversion-oriented (meaning more likely to lead to a purchase, phone call, contact form submission, etc.). For example, someone searching for “Women’s Nike Running Shoes Size 8” is probably more likely to make a purchase than someone searching for a generic term like “Running Shoes.”

Keyword Difficulty. This is an estimate from 0-100 of how hard it will be to rank in the top 10 search results for a keyword. This metric is very helpful to indicate keywords with less competition.

If you’re just starting with SEO and your website isn’t very authoritative, it will be very difficult to rank for a keyword with high competition. While the highest volume keywords also tend to be the most competitive, you should look for keywords with enough search volume to be worth the effort and a low enough keyword difficulty that you should feasibly be able to rank for the term.

Let’s take another look at another example with some “hvac” keywords.

As you can see, “hvac” gets thousands more searches than “hvac wilmington nc”, but the keyword difficulty is much much higher. So if you run a plumbing company, you shouldn’t try to rank for those generic, high volume search terms unless your website is very authoritative.

Speaking of the authority of your website, I want to introduce another metric that you can look at along with keyword difficulty to determine rankability – domain authority.

Depending on the keyword tool you use, this could have another name like domain rank. This is an estimate on a logarithmic scale from 1-100 of the authority of your website in the eyes of search engines. Website authority is determined based on the quantity and quality of backlinks, which I will cover later in this article.

Domain authority is important to consider along with keyword difficulty because it will also help you determine if you can rank for a certain keyword. If the top 5 or 10 websites for a search term have a domain authority that is much higher than your website’s domain authority, this indicates that it will be difficult to rank for that term. On the other hand, if the top results have a lower or similar domain authority to your website, you should be able to rank for that keyword.

Domain authority and keyword difficulty typically work together. The higher the keyword difficulty, the higher the domain authority will likely be of the top ranking websites.

Depending on the software and type of plan you have, you can see the domain authority for the top ranking websites for a given search term. To do this, click on the “SERP” (search engine results page) drop down for that keyword. I am using a paid version of Ahrefs, so this is what I see for the search “hvac” which gets 197,000 searches per month and has a keyword difficulty of 95:

In the red rectangle above, we can see that most of the top ranking websites have a very high domain rank (DR). So while “hvac” might have the highest search volume, it would not be worth it to invest time and effort into optimizing your website to rank for this keyword.

Let’s take a look at “hvac wilmington nc” on the other hand:

On the above list, you might notice #8 (Yelp) has a really high domain rank. Looking at that website, we can tell it’s an online directory (think an online phone book), which is why it has such a high domain rank.

However if we look past that, we can see local businesses with a very low domain authority. So while it may be hard to beat out some directories (more on these in the Off-Page section) for a top spot, your website stands a good chance of ranking alongside those other local plumbing companies.

Search Intent. This is pretty much what it sounds like- the intention behind searching for a specific keyword. Understanding what the searcher is looking for helps you structure your content to fit their goal. It also helps indicate what keywords to pursue, and gives you ideas for new content.

There are 4 general categories of search intent. They are:

- Navigation– The user is trying to find a specific page (example- someone searching “Marriott Bonvoy login” is clearly seeking out the login page for Marriott’s loyalty program).
- Transaction– The user is trying to make a purchase, booking, or another type of conversion (example- someone searching “Marriott cancun resort” is looking to book a stay).
- Commercial– The user is trying to do research before making a transaction (example- someone searching “marriott cancun reviews” is looking for feedback from others before booking the stay).
- Information– The user is trying to find information about something (example- someone searching for “best resort towns in Mexico” is trying to gain knowledge about what town to stay in)

The best way to determine a searcher’s intent is by looking at the SERPs and seeing what types of pages are ranking high. If the page on your website that you’re wanting to rank has a similar function to those that are already in the top spots, you’re on the right track. If the search results are vastly different from your webpage, your page is probably not in alignment with the search intent.

Any keywords that include who, what, when, where, why, or how will also indicate search intent. If you’re selling a product and see a keyword that starts with “how to” and all of the search results are guides or explanations of the query, it’s not a good match.

Another consideration is multiple meanings for a keyword. Acronyms are a big contender for this, so make sure you analyze the SERP before proceeding.

Here’s an example I recently came across. My client is an online cigar store that carries the popular cigar brand “CLE.” Upon initial keyword research, I see that “cle” gets 40,000 searches per month on Google. The traffic potential from that keyword sounded really great, until I actually googled “cle” to find that not only is it a cigar brand, it stands for “Continuing Legal Education” and it is a Mercedes-Benz model. Because it means so many things, it’s better to find more specific keywords, such as “CLE cigars.”

Here’s another example. Let’s say you own an auto body shop and you’re doing SEO. “Body shop” might sound like a great keyword idea. However, “The Body Shop” is the name of a (now closed) international skincare brand, so search results for this type of term are very mixed.

Ability to use the keyword naturally in your content. Sometimes a keyword seems like a great fit until you try to fit it into your website and it just doesn’t look right. Now, you could just add it in even though it sounds weird and keep going right? Wrong. In 2024, search engines are pretty dang smart. Search engine crawlers read your content. Typos, unnatural looking sentences/content, and keyword stuffing will negatively impact your SEO.

So, it’s important to consider your ability to work the keyword into your content in a way that doesn’t seem sketchy or conspicuous. For example, if you were an auto shop, a long-tail keyword like “where can I find an oil change near me” would be quite difficult to work into the content without it sounding strange and raising flags. However, there are probably some other “oil change” related keywords that will naturally flow into your content much easier.

To recap, as you’re conducting keyword research and trying to narrow down to the top contenders, ask yourself these questions:

- Are enough people searching for this term?
- Will my website be able to rank for this term?
- Does my webpage match the searcher’s intent for this keyword?
- Can I naturally implement this keyword throughout my webpage content?

Assigning Keywords to Pages

Once you’ve got your master list of keywords, it’s time to figure out where to use them. This is called keyword mapping. The goal here is to match keywords to a relevant page that will satisfy the search intent. Ahrefs has a free keyword mapping template you can download and use. Semrush also has a free template, they are pretty similar so it doesn’t matter which one you use.

Or, you can create your own keyword map in Excel, Google Sheets, another table tool, or with a pen and paper. It’s important to make notes for yourself as you’re assigning keywords in case you want to revisit this map later in your SEO journey (which you should do).

My keyword map is typically a table that looks like this:

Depending on the size of your website and the amount of keywords on your list, assigning keywords could be simple and intuitive, or require additional thinking.

If your website is smaller and more straightforward, you can simply go down the list and identify the most relevant keyword for a page that has a good search volume, low enough keyword difficulty, matching search intent, and will sound natural in your content.

If your website is much larger (for example, an e-commerce site), you might want to do some preliminary filtering and grouping. You can group the keywords by subject and search intent, then pick the best option from each group for your webpage.

I want to briefly talk about keyword cannibalization. This term refers to the issue of targeting the same (or very similar) keywords on multiple pages on a website. Those pages will be competing against each other for a good keyword position.

This is an issue because not only are you becoming your own competition, but search engines will struggle to determine the most relevant page to deliver for a search, which could lower your rank across all of those pages. If you have pages on your website that are very similar, consider consolidating them. For more information on keyword cannibalization, check out this article from Ahrefs.

Once you have identified and mapped out your keywords, you’ll be in a great position to start optimizing your content. However, you should first take care of technical optimizations for your website!

That concludes the Competitor and Industry Keyword Research section of this guide. For part 3 on Technical SEO, click here.

Up next: Technical SEO

Categorised in: Search Engine Optimization

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