Keyword Research Step 1: Discovering Keywords

With this strategy, Google is itself letting us in on the popular searches on our topics. If we click on one of these related searches and scroll down to the bottom of the search results, we’ll find a new list of keywords related to the one we clicked.

Repeat the process, and we’ll find several strong keywords linked to our topic.

Autosuggest

Other than “Related Searches”, Google also offers us keyword ideas through its autocomplete feature. Type our topic into Google and see what search suggestions appear. Some of these are excellent keywords to add to our list. The terms that Google is suggesting are automatically the ones with high search volume.

Google’s autocomplete tool isn’t the only place to hunt. We can also get keyword suggestions from the autocomplete feature on other platforms, including YouTube, Bing, and Facebook.

Find audience on online communities

No matter what we’re offering on our website, our target audience exists out there on the web. It’s easy to find them and learn what they’re talking about if we scour through the online communities. Fortunately, online platforms like Quora, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter have threads or groups that we can follow to keep tabs on popular topics and trending searches.

By typing the topic into Facebook, Reddit, or other communities, we can find subreddits, groups, or threads we can join or follow. Keep a close watch on discussions, especially the popular ones, that have lots of likes or comments. Find out what our potential customers are asking for and give them just that. If many people, for instance, are interested in vegan dog food, add vegan dog food to our keyword list.

We can make this method easier by using a free SEO tool called Keyworddit. It scans subreddits for phrases that users type and sorts them with their monthly search volume. We can pick relevant keywords from the list to add to our own.

Searching for dogs on Keyworddit, we get:

Search for relevant forums

Other than the popular online communities mentioned above, there are plenty of discussion forums where our audience may be active. The easiest way to find these forums is to type “keyword forum” into Google. Go to any of the top forums that appear and scroll through the sections. The section names are also powerful potential keywords.

Clicking these sections, we’ll find more keywords in thread topics, questions, and replies. The trending discussions give us first-hand insight into the burning questions our customers are asking. Use these keywords and address their queries through valuable content to raise the traffic to our website.

Steal from competitors

If we don’t have time or resources for generating our own master list of keywords, we can let our competitors handle it for us! We may assume that our competitor has already conducted solid research and optimized their page for the best keywords. Keep in mind, the assumption may not always be correct—they might be using the same strategy we are!

Our goal is to extract the keywords our competitors have optimized their pages for. This is a popular technique and there are tools created that can help us do so. Keyword Density Checker is a free tool that returns a list of keywords optimized into the page that we typed into the search box.

If we have the budget to invest in a paid keyword tool, Semrush is a valuable tool for competitor-based keyword research. If we don’t already know our competitors, it allows us to find them through Organic Research. Enter our domain, and click the competitors tab to discover a list of top competitors.

These are our seed domains. If we click any of these domains, the tool will reassemble a report for that domain, including a list of organic keywords that the domain ranks for.

Professional tools to discover keywords

It is possible to find keywords without using tools, as described in most of the points above. Even so, there are several tools available that make the job much faster. Though the use of keyword research tools is more fitting during the analyzing phase of keywords, they’re also helpful during the discovery phase. By typing words or phrases into these tools, we can discover related keywords that are most popular among searchers.

Google Keyword Planner

The Google Keyword Planner is unanimously considered the most reliable source for keyword information available on the internet, which is understandable considering it comes straight from Google itself! Since with keyword research, we want the search terms typed by users into Google, when the data comes from Google, we know it’s accurate. Though it's free, we’ll need to spare a few seconds to create a Google Ads account if we don’t have one already. After logging into our account, go to "Tools" and click "Keyword Planner." Next, click “Discover new keywords” and enter a topic or seed keyword to get a list of new keywords, sorted by relevance to the one we typed.

Though it’s a robust tool, there are some downsides. Since Google Keyword Planner is designed for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns rather than for SEO, the competition column highlights the competition of the keyword in PPC campaigns rather than its organic difficulty. Also, unless we’re spending some minimum amount on Google Ads regularly, we’ll only see the range of average monthly searches (100K to 1M) instead of a single number. These reasons push many SEO experts to use other tools alongside this one to diversify their research.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest feeds off Google’s search suggestions to create a list of keyword ideas for a seed keyword we enter. It also gives us valuable data (including volume, keyword difficulty, and more) against keyword suggestions. The tool allows us 3 daily searches if we’re using a free account.

Semrush

Other than competitor-based keyword research, already discussed, Semrush also allows other approaches to find keywords. The catch is that we’re only allowed 10 requests a day on the website if we are using a free account. We can use its Keyword Overview tool for a quick analysis of a seed keyword and discover its variations and related keywords.

Alternatively, the Keyword Magic Tool divides related topics into groups and subgroups to help us explore long-tail keywords related to a seed keyword. However, to avail the best features, we’ll need a paid account.

There are plenty of other tools too that we may use to discover keywords. In any case, the ones discussed above should be enough to generate a master list of keywords.

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