Keyword Research and Tracking Tips?
-
Keyword research is elusive thing. Sort of like Bigfoot. Well… not really.
Rand actually does an excellent job explaining how to get started in his Moz Academy lesson on Keyword Research. Check that link out!
I want to get the same type of conversation started on Q&A. I'll let everyone know how I’ve learned to do KW research. Please let me know how you do it!!!!!
The first thing you’ll want to do is create a list of keywords you feel like your brand should target. I would start with what you offer, your brand, and how you want people to find you.
- Brand – Obviously you want to rank for your brand. First thing you want to do is see how people are searching for you brand. Use Ubersuggest for this. This tool will give a huge list of ways Google is suggesting results to people. Take that list and look at one’s that relate to your service, product, or content and save them in a spreadsheet. This will let you start tackling longer tail keywords before you focus in on your exact brand.
- What do you offer? – Think to yourself; how would I find my own service? Let’s say you sell air conditioners. You should check out Wordtracker to get a sense of how many people are searching for “air conditioners.” Then look at the other suggestions Wordtracker gives. These suggestions are usually terms that you want to invest some research into, because people are actually searching for them. A lot of people don’t focus their efforts… They end up using a wide net, which is fine, it’s just hard to measure success and build good quality content around too many terms.
Alright! Let’s say you have list ready to go. It’s time to do some competitive research. I’d start with the Keyword Difficulty tool section of Moz Analytics. If you’re new to keyword research you want to try a longer-tail keyword. Something like “air conditioners on sale” instead of just “air conditioners.”
When you put a term in the Keyword Difficulty tool you’ll see the top ten people ranking for this term. These are based on Domain Authority and Page Authority. This is great way to size up the competition based on how strong their link profile is!
Don’t stop there. If you see some lower authority scores in the top ten, then I’d consider it low hanging fruit. Run a full report now.
There’s going to be a lot of information here, but I’d like to focus your attention to the On-page stuff. Check that data out. Look to see how well pages in the top ten are optimized(do they have A, B, C, D, or F grades?). If they’re mostly floating around the B and C grade range; try to optimize an existing page you want to rank for the term or create some new content.
When you have a page built drop it in our standalone On-page optimization tool to get a guide on how should use your keyword. You can also use Moz Analytics’ On-page tool to track these grades in combination with your rankings data. Just keep tracking it here!
How do you go about KW research and tracking? Let me know if you have any feedback on this process and please detail your own if you have time. I’d love to here what ya’ got.
-
Most people have their general process down pat, so I thought I would just add a couple things I do with keyword research that I'm not sure if other people do, or if they consider them to be an integral part of their process:
• I take large groups of keywords, upload them to adwords, and get regional search volumes using the keyword planner (E.g., Seattle or Texas or whatever is the relevant area for a client.) I then export search traffic by region from Google Analytics and compare the volume a website is getting from search compared to what the Google Keyword Planner reports the volume is... and find opportunities from there. Pic below.
• If I know there are opportunities for a client and I'm looking for pages to optimize or create or whatever, I use Screaming Frog's custom filters to gather a list of all the pages on a site that already contain a particular term. Then export, and you have your list right there.
• I also look for universal results stuffed with image boxes, local packs, videos, news results, as much as I look at rankings. Those results often provide the best opportunity for capturing the greatest share of searches.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
0 search volume for every keyword?
Hi, I've just joined Moz and every keyword I am searching for is showing 0 monthly search volume. I've tried popular words like 'dogs' or 'pizza' and they're still showing as 0 searches? How do I fix this? TImJxya
Getting Started | | hthorne0 -
When setting up a new campaign for a client should I add keywords
I'm new to Moz and SEO. When setting up a new campaign there are some keywords pre-filled. Sometimes there are a lot. Sometimes they are very client-specific rather than for the sector or for a search. Sometimes there are very few poor quality keywords. Should I research keywords so that there are as many as possible relevant keywords when first setting up the campaign or leave it as it is and add keywords later?
Getting Started | | thepeterlunt0 -
Keyword rankings and tracked keywords - add manually?
Hi, I am a bit confused as to how Moz handles the tracked keywords list that it periodically updates and sends me e-mails about regarding where the position has changed etc. When I signed up for Moz it somehow automatically found a part of our keywords that we use and is now tracking them successfully. However, I have a lot more keywords to track ofcourse since we have nearly 1000 products and Moz hasn't really discovered most of them automatically. Does it mean that the rest of the pages are not optimized enough to even recognize a specific keyword or is it just the matter of adding them all manually? Thanks!
Getting Started | | speedbird12290 -
How are keywords assigned to the On Page Rankings
Hopefully this isn't a stupid question. I'm new to MOZ Pro so I created a campaign and uploaded about 300 keywords. Our site is an ecommerce site so there are many many products and of course, many pages. My first On Page Ranking Report has completed and naturally we have pages with scores ranging from A to F. What I don't understand is this: for any given keyword, how did that word get assigned to a given page for the purpose of the ranking report? We may have many pages that may include a given keyword so when I look at a page with a score of F, I'm sometimes surprised that a given keyword is assigned to a particular page for the purposes of ranking. Can someone help me understand this architecture?
Getting Started | | jbcul0 -
Campaign Keywords Vs. Rank Tracker
Hi Mozzers, Was just wondering what the difference between the two tools are, and why they have independent keyword limits? Thanks, Nick P.S Apologies if this has been asked before or if I've missed some documentation, I had a quick search but couldn't find a similar question!
Getting Started | | NickSamuel0 -
MOZ for initial keyword research?
Can I use MOZ for initial keyword research? Can't create an AdWords campaign (no website yet to register) to get use of Google's Keyword Planner & my subscription to Wordtracker is showing me too many unrelated keywords... Peter
Getting Started | | nodiffrei0 -
Was changing some keywords worth it?
Hi, I recently started with the SEO and all the "magic". Thanks to moz I analyze/change my keywords in On-Page optimization and follow recommendations in the Crawl Diagnostic. Since then I have a simple (maybe dummie) question.
Getting Started | | ExtranomicalTours
How can I determine that changing of some keywords was worth it? I was thinking that I could check these three things if they are growing/improving: check "url - keyword" rank and grade check number of visits from the organic search history check Page Authority, MozRank, MozTrust in Open Site Explorer Are these three good metrics? What else?I know it is probably not so easy to answer and it is probably matter of discussion. Thanks anyway for answers. D.0 -
Number of on-page keywords outnumbers total number of keywords
On my weekly report, my number of keywords on the first page outnumber the total number of keywords. Anyone know why?
Getting Started | | NicoleCriona0