We’ve all been there – trying to find the perfect list of keywords to use for our website content or blog. However, theory is usually far better than practice – and in many cases, people don’t actually have a clue where to begin when it comes to keyword research for SEO or when looking for keyword ideas when starting a new internet business.

On a side note, the Internet got much more complicated over the past few years, making keyword research a process that is not anymore the same (even though the need for keywords has been here for a while).

In order to help you pinpoint the right keywords and use them in your marketing strategy, we are listing our guide to keyword research for SEO – starting from finding to actually analyzing and using keywords in your industry or niche.

We will review the two most popular ways to research for keywords: the Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends, starting from the latter.

Google Trends: How To Do Keyword Research For SEO?

Google Trends is a tool that can help any SEO strategy, regardless of the industry, niche or whether the topics/keywords are popular or not. Basically, it is a program able to:

• Show you the trends for keywords
• Help you find content ideas
• Show you seasonal spikes and local differences for keywords

As you can see, Google Trends for SEO can be a great strategy to rank higher. The best way to start is to visit the Google Trends website and start from the search box.

Here, you can add multiple keywords or search terms in order to analyze the trends. If you are not sure what keywords or terms to include, just try including some relevant topics from your industry and separate them by commas.

As you can see from the image above, we searched for different types of chocolate which are always trending. However, whenever you search for terms like this, it is important to refine the query which you can do in the four filters. This will allow you to pinpoint trends locally, see the most recent or all time trends, search for trends in different categories and decide where to set the search.

Looking at related queries is the best way to ‘get served’ some potential keywords. This is the place that you need to investigate in order to prepare some data for the Google Keyword Planner. Not only there is a number of monthly searches, Google Trends also shows queries that have been searched recently – helping you rank on them while no one is doing the same.

Key Takeaway: Google Trends is a great way to analyze trends and search for queries that are trending in your industry. You can add keywords, terms or anything that has to do with your business (or what your customers are searching online). By analyzing the recent results, you can implement unique keywords and rank higher for local or trending queries.

How To Research Keywords For Your SEO Strategy? A Guide To Using The Keyword Planner

The first step before actually using the Keyword Planner – is to do is to make a list of all the important, relevant topics based on your industry or niche. Basically, these are all topics that will help your audience get to know your business or help them with a particular issue. For example, if you are an estate agent, you might have some general topic buckets such as ‘houses for rent’ or ‘renting a house’ or ‘selling a house’ or ‘buying a new home’.

Next, you need to see which keywords are the most popular and which aren’t that much searched in your industry. The best way to do that is to use Google’s Keyword Planner as the one-stop destination for all of your keyword needs.

Using Google’s Keyword Planner is simple – all you need is to have a Google Adwords account. If you don’t have one, you can set up one in a few minutes. The interface of the Google Keyword Planner is pretty much simple and features three main tools (as seen on the photo below).

The best way to start is to choose the first option (Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category). Here, you can add as many keyword or phrase suggestions as you like but make sure that each of them is positioned in a new row.

There will also be a box for your website, your product category and your targeting and customized search options. While you can leave the first two (and the last) blank, we recommend you to fill in the ‘Targeting’ box with criteria regarding your location and main language. This will help the tool to give you more accurate keywords.

Once you write your categories, keywords or phrases, you will be presented with a ‘Keyword Ideas’ tab which will essentially have the most popular keywords in your industry, as well as their average monthly searches, competition (High, Medium or Low) and a suggested bid for PPC advertising.

Key Takeaway: The best way to make use of the Google Keyword Planner is to repeatedly use it for new phrases, actively research new keyword ideas and go for the keywords that have a decent number monthly searches but are not too high when it comes to competition. Also known as ‘the low hanging fruits’, these keywords will help you rank higher for terms in your industry and scale up your SEO as you publish more content.

A Final Word

Congratulations!

At this point, you know where to start and how to use the two most popular online tools for keyword research and SEO out there! Now, start preparing that list of keywords and analyzing your queries in both of them.

Good luck!