The right way to do keyword research to rank a website (2023)

#Keyword #Keywords # Keyword search #Contents

Keyword research is an essential part of any SEO strategy where the goal is to target relevant keywords for a rank in the SERPs. The idea is to discover unused keywords (low competition) to quickly gain SERP visibility and drive traffic to the site. In this blog, we discuss how to do keyword research so effectively that you can rank on page 1 in a month.

Let's go step by step and discover the path an SEO takes from keyword research novice to keyword research master.

Table of contents

• Keyword research for beginners
• Medium keyword research
• Specialized keyword research
• Step 1 – How to choose keywords that can rank quickly
• Step 2 - Go deeper
• Step 3 - Reverse Engineering
• Step 4: Seize opportunities
• Step 5 - Additional/Optional
• final thoughts

Keyword research for beginners

As a SEO beginner, keyword research is pretty easy and in most cases the tool used for keyword research is the Google Keyword Planner. While it is NOT wrong to use Google Keyword Planner for keyword research, the data obtained from this tool is incomplete.

You don't get a rough estimate of the number of searches, but rather a wide range that doesn't give you an accurate idea of ​​the traffic potential for that keyword. For example, if the monthly search volume for a keyword is 1,000 to 10,000 (according to Google Keyword Planner), you really don't know if the keyword's true potential is closer to 1,000 or closer to 10,000 or maybe somewhere in between.

You could just calculate an average and assume that the keyword must have at least 5,000 monthly searches (average) and continue with your keyword research. However, this is flawed and usually leads to disappointment.

As your SEO journey progresses, you realize that you need to pay attention to another metric, namely keyword difficulty, which unfortunately isn't available in Google Keyword Planner, as this tool is NOT meant for SEO but for PPC campaigns.

Medium keyword research

At an intermediate level, SEO knows of various keyword research tools that can help develop better keyword planning strategies. Ahrefs, Semrush, Spyfu, SERanking, etc., there are several tools that can help with keyword difficulty metrics (each different).

At this point, SEO is mature enough to understand:

• Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for.
• The keyword difficulty metric is REAL
• Previously unknown concept of keyword groups

At this stage, we see an improvement in the quality of the keyword research performed. There is a clear plan of action and strategy to be successful.

However, there are 2 main metrics that have been overlooked and are holding back the progress you want: domain authority and backlinks!

Finding Low Competition: Medium/high volume keywords aren't hard, it's really easy and you can find tons of these keywords in 2-3 hours, enough to fuel your content creation for months. However, you may still not be ranked on the site.#1as you might have expected.

Here are the 2 reasons:

• Websites already ranking for these keywords have high domain authority OR
• The ranking of the URLs on the page#1has a certain amount of backlinks that you don't have!

Let's face some brutal facts: The high domain authority website wasn't really optimized for that keyword (in most cases), but it ranks on page 1 and can't beat the number of backlinks it has. this url in a short time.

Specialized keyword research

This is where the experience of someone who has been researching keywords for years comes into play. These are the folks who can literally quote customer numbers on expected traffic growth. We dismiss them as scams, but they are actually very smart people and know how to put their money where it belongs.

This is going to be a long section of this blog post as I will detail exactly what they are doing and how to not only achieve it but also fulfill their goals/commitments.

If you are now an advanced keyword researcher, by the time you read this post you will be an expert!

Before delving into it, you need to understand that this method is very effective; However, the time spent on keyword research increases at least tenfold. The game changes from quantity to quality! This is how it's done:

Step 1 – How to choose keywords that can rank quickly

As you already are, look for keywords with low competition and medium to high traffic volume. This time, look at how the domains rank on page 1 and page 2. This is important because you need to understand if someone with a domain authority close to yours made the top 20 (better just look at the top 10). ).

For example, if 9 out of 10 on page one have an average DA of 80+ and a loser has a DA of just 25 that made the top 10, then you have a potential keyword to work on and gain visibility quickly be able.

Then look at the backlink profile to see how easy it is to beat the underdog. Look at that:

The screenshot is fromSE-Ranking-Toolwhich I use for keyword research. Can you look at the data and see something unexpected?

The website you rank for#1for a short-tail keyword, “dog habits” challenges your understanding of SERP ranking, doesn’t it?

Domain Authority Breakdown on page 1

• A 80-90 – 7
• A 60-80 – 2
• A 30-40 – 1

The DA 36 side won 2 in the 60-80 range and 7 in the 80-90 range! Y…. They only have 6 backlinks from 4 referring domains.

Aren't you curious to know how they did it? Well me too so let's try to dig deeper to understand how they did it.

Step 2 - Go deeper

First, let's look at the backlinks and referring domains to understand if those links come from high or low DA sites with nofollow or dofollow. This is important as it will determine if you want to continue that keyword for the SERP.

2 dofollow backlinks for Dominio 13 and 1 dofollow backlink for Dominio 49

2 nofollow backlinks from domain 49 and 34 with 1 nofollow backlink from domain 3

The 4 referring domains have the authority of 49, 34, 13 and 3

So the key takeaway here is that not only can we try to rank for the short-tail keyword “dog habits,” which has a search volume of 1,000 (in the US), but we can easily rank on page 1 if I can. Generate a few more backlinks than the #1, or generate the same number of links BUT from higher DA sites.

So far it seems doable and quite possible. Let's see what we have to do to achieve our goal.

Step 3 - Reverse Engineering

Technically, this step doesn't fall under keyword research, but gaining insight into existing content can help copywriters come up with something even better. Let's break down the URL...

The tool I use for this is SEO Minion. It is free usepowerful chrome extensionwhich you can download now. The link also explains in detail how to use the tool, but in this scenario I will only use it for the purpose of reverse engineering the Rank 1 URL.

The screenshot does not capture all of the data displayed by the tool. So don't get confused talking about things you don't see in the picture above.

• title length– 52 characters and contains the keywords “dog” and “habit” separately.
• word count– 1106 words with 8017 characters
• description– 92 words, with the keyword “dog” and “habit” appearing separately.
• headers- Total 8 headers with 2 - H1, 2 - H2, 3 - H3 and 1 - H4
• Pictures– A total of 3 images used, none with ALT text

Now I'm going to run this url through theExtended Google results testto discover the schema markup.

An article schema is present in the URL. The goal is to ensure that we also incorporate the schema markup into our post and try to replicate the markup content with our own content.

The next and final step is to find out the keyword density and to my surprise the content doesn't even seem to be optimized for the keyword "dog habits" and still ranks on page 1. The tool I used to check keyword density iscontadordepalabras.net.

Step 4: Seize opportunities

It's time to capitalize on your observations and create content that can drive that sweet 1,000 traffic to your site.

• URL- Paste the keyword into the URL
• title- Enter an exact keyword match in the title and try to use the 70 character limit.
• description– Use exact keywords as well as variations, but most importantly, use a 155 character limit.
• headers– Structure with appropriate hierarchy tags and use only one H1 tag.
• Pictures– Use at least 3 images and also add an alt text with the main keyword and the filename of the image.
• word count- Create a quality article of at least 1,000 words.
• contour marking- Make sure we've included "Article Schema Markup" in our URL.
• Backlinks– Acquire at least 6-10 backlinks (50% nofollow and 50% dofollow) from High DA sites.

That should be enough to get the ball rolling.

Step 5 - Additional/Optional

I'm promoting SEO here, but a good strategy would be to link this article to some money sites. A money page is any page on your website that can lead to revenue generation. If optimizing for the “dog habits” keyword gets me on page 1, then I need to find a way to generate revenue as well.

I may link this article (internal link) to other pages on my site that are more difficult to rank for. This way you can generate some purchases (if you like affiliate marketing or dropshipping). So I'm going to create another article that may not even require keyword research and connect it to what is keyword focused.

Or I can do some keyword research and optimize for a high volume keyword. Although it is not classified as in the SERPs#1, I can still point people to that content and hope they share it on social media or maybe even get organic backlinks.

final thoughts

Finding these keywords is not very easy, but they are there. Searching for additional data (expert keyword research) can give you valuable information about a keyword's chance to rank quickly in the SERPs. Even if you spend 10x more time finding those keywords, it will be 10x faster to get traffic to your site.

If you are a person who wants to get quick results and have complete control over the content of your website, then you just learned how to do the method. Earning nofollow backlinks is very easy, and honestly, you can do it the same day you create and submit your content.

Acquiring the remaining dofollow links will take time, but you only need 4-6 of them, which is quite easy to acquire in a month. You don't have to list 100 keywords, you just have to discover 5-6 of those keywords in a month and you will have a minimum monthly traffic of 1-2k for the next month.

This traffic will continue to grow!

Actionable strategy to build current authority quickly