Keyword Research Step 2: Analyzing Keywords—Attributes

Search intent also appears in the keyword analysis report generated by keyword research tools, like Semrush and KWFinder. Make sure that the search intent for the chosen keyword is relevant to our content type.

Besides choosing keywords to match our content type, there’s another clever approach too. We can choose a keyword and create a fresh piece of content relevant to the content type. For instance, if we want to rank for best dog products, we can do so by creating a buying guide on the focus keyword.

Even if we are a retailer, don’t focus on transactional or commercial keywords alone. Research concludes that around 80% of all users’ searches are informational [2]. This means that users are primarily seeking more information on topics. We can add a blogs section to our website where we can include informational blog posts to address more diversified search intent and increase traffic to our website. Even if they don’t make a purchase at that point, they may return to our website in the future when they are willing to make a purchase.

Search volume

Keyword search volume is the number of times a keyword was searched over a given time period. At first look, keywords with the highest search volume may seem like the best choice, but watch out! High-volume keywords are also the most competitive ones.

Understandably, low-volume keywords are not a good choice either. There’s no point in optimizing our content for keywords that no one searches for. At the same time, we don’t want to target keywords with the highest volumes. In short, a keyword should have a decent search volume to qualify for selection.

Over the last few years, Google has limited search volume data for free users. In Google Keyword Planner, for example, we can access the exact amount of times a keyword was searched in Google if we are regularly spending a minimum amount of money into our Google Ads campaign. By accessing the tool as a free user, we’ll only be able to see the range of search volume.

Since Google Keyword Planner is more suited to PPC campaigns, if we have to spend money, we might as well spend it on a paid keyword research tool. With a higher focus on SEO, keyword tools offer plenty of resourceful features for keyword analysis. KWFinder, Semrush’s Keyword Overview, and Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer are all good choices for analyzing keywords. When we enter the keyword and location into these keyword analysis tools, we’ll find the search volume, among all the other statistics around that keyword.

Keyword difficulty

Another important consideration is to choose keywords that we can realistically rank for in search engines. Keyword difficulty (KD) is a measure of how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. The higher the value of the keyword difficulty, the harder it is to rank for that keyword.

If our site is new, it’s not practical to use keywords with higher keyword difficulties since more popular sites already rank for these keywords. It won’t be easy to beat their position in SERPs. Instead, we have a much better chance ranking for keywords that high-authority websites are not targeting.

Long-tail keywords often have lower competition than others. While the head-term keyword dog supplies has a KD of 88%, a related long-tail keyword tractor supply dog beds, with a KD of 20%, is much easier to rank for.

Judging keyword difficulty manually

SEO professionals often gauge this metric manually. This is done by looking at the top-10 ranking pages for the target keyword. Next, different factors are taken into account to judge how hard it is to rank for a keyword. Number and quality of backlinks to the given websites, domain rating of the website, content length and its freshness are some important determinants.

However, there is no single formula for calculating the KD. Different people, including keyword research tool creators, use different techniques to capture the determining factors into a quantifiable KD on a scale of 0 to 100. Ahrefs, for instance, bases their keyword difficulty score on the number of unique backlinks to the top 10 ranking pages for a keyword.

The easiest way to estimate KD manually is to type the keyword into Google and check if low-quality pages appear in the top results. It can give us a quick glance into whether or not our website has a chance to rank for that keyword.

Keyword difficulty score by keyword research tools

Keyword research tools, such as the ones discussed under the heading “Search Volume,” typically include keyword difficulty in the analysis report for keywords. Instead of judging the keyword difficulty manually, we can make our life easier by simply looking at the KD score on the keyword analysis report.

Since different tools may use slightly different approaches to calculate KD score, the results may vary depending on the keyword tool we use. For this reason, use a single tool to compare the KD scores for different keywords.

Analyzing the keyword dog supplies, for instance, shows that it has a very high keyword difficulty (88%). Instead, it’s more feasible to rank for outdoor dog supply with a keyword difficulty of 53%.