Keyword Research for SEO 2023

A 1,000% increase in organic traffic is the dream. It is something you certainly can achieve and this guide will help you nail that by going for the best keywords you can center your SEO campaign on. As one of the cornerstones of an effective SEO strategy, it is essential to implement the right approach in choosing your keywords. Here is every question you need to ask yourself when doing effective keyword research for SEO of 2023.

What Does My Website Offer?

In order for you to start composing your list for your keyword research, you have to first identify WHAT you want to be seen from your website. Which of your service, product, or information would you like to be visible within search results?

For example, let’s assume that you’re building an SEO strategy for a cosmetic dental clinic in Sydney, Australia. It would ultimately make sense to use keywords based on the term cosmetic dental clinic itself and particular cosmetic dental services- such as dental veneers, dental implants, and other similar services and terms.

Who’s My Target Market?

Now that you’ve taken the first step in identifying your keywords, you move forward in adjusting your approach to your research. Provide revisions on your initial keyword findings based on WHO you want to attract to your website. “Who” usually pertains to 2 types of people who use search engines- these are people who search to get information and people who are looking to avail of a particular product/service.

It should be easier to identify which type you are inclined to target once you’ve acknowledged what pages on your website you want to be seen on the search results pages.

In addition, knowing your target market is also associated with WHERE you want to be seen. Adapting your keyword based on your location is one of the things that you should consider when doing keyword research. These keywords are specifically called geo-tagged keywords. They allow your website to rank for people looking for particular information or service within a specific area.

Continuing on our earlier example, building an SEO strategy for a dental clinic in Sydney, Australia would prompt you to include the term “Sydney” or “Australia” in addition to your keywords- cosmetic dental clinic sydney, dental veneers australia, etc.

Click here if you want to learn more about the importance of geo-tagging keywords!

How Are Your Keywords Performing In Google?

We’ve now further refined your keyword ideas. But before finalizing or implementing your keywords, you should first check out how it’s doing within the actual search engine. It wouldn’t be wise to start driving your car, without checking if your check engine light is on.

Start by observing and analyzing the search results for each one of your keywords. Let’s try searching for a keyword and then go through the search results. For the keyword ‘electric scooter philippines’, the result is the following:

Based on the image above, you’ll notice that the search results are dominated by the actual distributors or shopping websites offering electric scooters in the Philippines. If you’re a website that’s offering electric scooters within the Philippines, this is a clear indication that you can rank for this keyword.

Not only that, the geo-targeted keyword “philippines” ensures that the website will appear way better to people searching from the Philippines and not in other countries if you don’t serve those markets anyway.

What about search results that tell you if you can’t rank for a particular keyword? Take a look at the results for ‘best electric scooters’:

The results indicate web pages that offer guides and listicles that feature a variety of electric scooter brands. The websites that hold these pages offer only news articles and tech reviews.
As a website that offers electric scooters straight to consumers, it wouldn’t be applicable for you to rank for this keyword. Your website’s intention to sell is mismatched with the websites that provide news and articles as their service. The keywords that you apply to your website must always match what your website offers.

How’s My Competition?

Ah yes, competitor analysis. Who doesn’t love checking on the competition?

For all websites, especially if you’re just starting out your SEO, there will always be a more authoritative website that offers a similar product, service, or information as you do. This is why it’s essential for keyword research that you are able to analyze and study what your competitors are doing to their websites.

Understanding what keywords are they utilizing and how they’re building their website’s content will not only give you an idea of how to rank your own site but also figure out how authoritative they are. It’s not just about trying to expand your keyword list but also being smart on which keywords to target.

Let’s assume we’re trying to broaden our list of keywords for our e-commerce website in the Philippines for electric scooters. And the best way to do this is by using one of my favorite tools, the SE Ranking Competitive Research feature. We’re now able to single out what keywords one of our competitors is ranking for.

As you can see, the keyword that it presents is associated with the Difficulty metric. This allows users to have a more general idea of how competitive a particular keyword is. By using this information, you’d have a deeper understanding of which keywords to target.

If you just newly developed your website, go for lower difficulty. But if you’re building your SEO strategy on an already authoritative website, then you can compete for keywords with higher difficulty.

Only after further competitor analysis can you then identify which keyword should be utilized in order to gain more traction. Hey, they did the hard work, why not learn from them and put your own effort into it, eh?

What Are My Related And Relevant Keywords?

Lastly, with the keywords you’ve managed to list down, add keywords that are closely related to all of them. An easy way to do this is to look up sub-topics and synonyms for your chosen keywords.

Why?

SEO is holistic. Targeting 1 keyword implies you target many. With the Google Algorithm updates in 2022, the search engine has been particularly inclined to websites that have good topical authority.

Google gauges a website’s credibility by also checking based on the number of relevant topics that a website is able to cover. If you want to be able to rank and write for the keyword ‘cosmetic dentist, then you’d have to also rank and publish articles for its subtopics such as ‘dental veneers’, ‘dental implants’, and other similar services.

Additionally, synonyms should also be included in your list of keywords to target. In the eyes of Google, there are some keywords that express the same meaning when searched.

Notice the bolded texts when searching for the term ‘cosmetic dentist’. This implies that Google understands that the user is also searching for the term ‘cosmetic dentistry’. This is also the same reason why SEO content writers sprinkle closely related keywords when trying to build content.

Key takeaway

With Google’s ever-growing updates in its search engine, there is increasing importance in ensuring your foundations for the keyword strategy you are using for SEO.

Keywords are what dictate and direct your entire SEO campaign. This makes keyword research an extremely important task at the get-go.

I hope that this guide has added value to you today and if it has, please also check out our full guide to keyword research for a new website here!