Keyword research is not a new term for bloggers/webmasters. However, you’re familiar with it; you still make mistakes while following a set of rules under a predefined keyword research process.

It’s not your fault. It’s because your keyword research plan is not good. You’re following old–school practices like –

Go and type in a random keyword in your favourite keyword research tool and hit enter.

And then collecting many keywords by KEYWORD difficulty and search volume.

Finally, sprinkle those terms in your article (with keyword prominence) and hoping for the best.

Do you think it works?

I don’t know what you think, but I think it’s like a lucky draw game. It may be, or it may not be. You could only hope for the best.

You put countless hours and energy to create an excellent article, but by publishing, it goes beyond your control. You don’t know whether or not it would rank better.

And finally, you end up sharing and promoting your content could bring you some inconsistent traffic from social media and lastly, your post die. 

It means if you want consistent traffic then organic presence (Keyword ranking) is essential. So what would you do rather…

Don’t worry, here is a deal… CHANGE your Keyword research process.

Yes, all you need to do is make a new plan. Don’t stick with one. You need to work with different things to discover the best keyword plan that fits you.

And it is the detailed guide where you’re going to learn what should be the entire keyword research process that works flawlessly?

It’s a good Keyword research plan that I am using to improve organic traffic from Google. If you follow these steps, you would get better results.              

Let’s get started…

Best Keyword Research Process To Boost Your Ranking and Traffic

#1. Analyze existing content on your blog

Most of you don’t analyse your content before setting up your keyword goals. I recommend you go and try this one.

If you don’t do it, unknowingly you’ll find keywords that might be beyond your blog potential which means a waste of time and you never going to rank on Google for those terms.

In fact, Neil Patel said that “Most of you have a new website with low domain authority and you want to rank for competitive terms then this is not going to happen within 2 to 3 months.”

 

That’s why you need first to major your site potential because it gives you the very initial information about how powerful content is already available on your blog. And what is the highest difficulty (Keyword difficulty) level you’ve crossed?

Still confused, let’s take an example…

Suppose you have ranked for some keywords related to “chocolate recipe”.  All keywords have good search volume (approx.  1,000) and have a keyword difficulty of 40.

This simple information is powerful enough to unleash the following things: –

Now you know the content type that could work better for your blog

You know the boundary line of your blog. I mean you know the potential of your blog.

These two things can reduce your efforts significantly. It is because you only need to look for the single category at a time and you’ll become more confident.

But you can ask how to analyse blog content. Don’t worry here is a few steps that you could follow: –

First of all, Go and open both Google search console and Google Analytics accounts.

Now look for articles that are doing well. (Check impressions, CTR, search terms and number of clicks). And also check for organic traffic to all posts available on your blog.

Collect all popular terms and make a list.

Analyze the keywords on which your blog articles are already ranked. (Also check for keyword difficulty and search volume)

It could give you a rough idea and help you understand the current potential of your site.

Now you know what content is healthier for your blog and what to feed to your blog.

Finally, you get to know the boundary line of your site and able to select those keywords that fall under this boundary layer.

Now it’s time to move to the next level where you’ll learn to gather keyword ideas.

Check it out: 6 ways to increase domain authority fast

 #2. Gathering raw keyword ideas

You’ve analysed your blog content, and now it’s time to collect some thoughts based on the initial information that you have obtained previously.

For example, suppose you find a category in your blog that is doing well. It’s a clue for you to select the raw keyword ideas that belong to that category.

You need to analyse that category and collect some raw ideas deeply.

#3. Complied with similar ideas using Keyword research tool

Convert raw ideas into popular keyword ideas using one of your favourite keyword research tools

• KeySearch 
• KWfinder
• Ubersuggest
• Google keyword planner
• Longtail pro
• SEMrush
• Ahrefs

Just head to your preferred keyword tool and extract some more keyword ideas.

These keyword tools help you identify the keyword difficulty, search volume and completion.

This data helps you narrow down your ideas. And you have more suitable and a shortlist of Keywords that you can work upon.

Next, it’s time to check how informal your keyword is. More your keyword is informal; it’s easier to rank on Google. 

This is because if you have a new domain, it’s impossible to rank for absolute keywords (For example SEO strategies). You need to pick long-tail keywords that appeal to user intent significantly.

#4. Keyword intent

Now you have a compiled list of ideas that you could think of work upon. But before you start the actual process, you need to check for keyword intent.

The intent is a term that a user types in the search bar informally.  These keywords are a more specific one and serve the purpose to the visitor.

Now it’s time to look for keyword intent because keyword without intent doesn’t serve any purpose to your visitor. You need to give users a strong reason so that they can read your blog post.

The best way to find the keywords with strong intent is to go and read some forums, Facebook groups and blog comments.

I’ve listed some popular forums that cover the SEO and blogging kind of stuff. You can pick some of those and start digging from here.

• Black Hat World
• Quora
• Warrior forum
• Digital point
• SEO chat
• MOZ Q&A forum
• V7N

Blog comments are also the best resource to unleash long-tail phrases with high searcher intent.

ALL you have to do is go through some of these forums and put keywords that you have filtered in the previous step and find what people are already searching for.

The keyword ideas that you would get from here appeal visitors the most. Once you know keyword intent, you’ll get to know the real problem that people are encountering.

It’s great because now you have a definite purpose of publishing the content.

#4. Keyword trend

If you want to create evergreen content, then it’s essential to make your content based on keyword trend.

Put your keyword in Google trend and check what TREND your keyword is following. And select those keywords that are supporting the increasing or constant trend.

Also, check the similar words that you can use for a keyword. For example, SEO can also be pronounced as ‘Search engine optimisation’.

And here you might get confused which one you should pick. But fortunately, you can compare both the terms using Google trends and see which one is more popular.

Lastly, you end up with some well qualified and suitable keywords that you can use in your content.

#5. Keyword prominence (Sprinkle your keyword)

After going through the above steps, finally, it’s time to sprinkle your keyword in your article.

Don’t stuff keywords instead include your keyword in URL, title, first paragraph, meta description and somewhere in your article.

Don’t over optimise your article rather keep it simple and natural.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude the entire keyword research process in brief: – [10 seconds recap]

I always follow the same KEYWORD research process that helps me increase Google ranking and traffic.

I hope you would like to follow these steps. If you do, I’m sure you would increase your traffic and Google rankings.

Love this guide? Then do share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit. I appreciate your efforts.

Have some queries? Speak your mind.