A keyword is simply explained a word or phrase that you use when searching for something in a search engine like Google.
It can be anything from simple words like “food” to more specific phrases like “best restaurant in Gothenburg”.
By targeting the right keywords, which are relevant to your business, you can increase your chances of ranking higher in search results and drive more traffic to your website.
A keyword analysis is a process used in SEO to research and analyze what keywords or phrases users use when searching for information online.
By conducting a keyword analysis, you can gain important insights into which search terms are most relevant to your website and business.
Keyword analytics can help you find relevant keywords that attract the right audience for your business to your website.
Head keywords (if you draw a direct translation from English), are short and general terms consisting of one or two words, such as “restaurant” or “travel”.
Keyword analysis of master keywords focuses on identifying the most popular and competitive keywords in your field.
It is important to keep in mind that main keywords often have high competition and are more difficult to rank on in search results.
Long-tail keywords are longer phrases and more specific search terms, such as “How do I cook a pasta carbonara” or “the best places in Europe to backpack”.
Long-tail analysis means identifying less competitive search terms that are more relevant to your target audience.
By targeting long-tail keywords, you can reach a more specific audience and increase your chances of your desired audience visiting your site.
Local SEO analysis focuses on identifying relevant search terms that are specific to a geographic location.
Optimizing content for local search queries involves using location-specific keywords and information.
Here it is especially important to include your business address, phone number and opening hours.
If your business is local and targets a specific region or city, local SEO analysis can help you find the search terms used by people in that geographic region.
Locally oriented keywords can be, for example, “restaurant in Gothenburg” or “hairdresser near me”.
PS: When you're working with local SEO, it's a good idea to set up your Google My Business profile.
It can also be helpful to list your business in local directories such as Eniro.se and Hitta.se.
This is good because it helps your customers find you and you can encourage your customers to leave reviews.
There are several tools that can facilitate keyword analysis.
Some examples of popular tools include Google Ads Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Keyword Explorer.
With these tools, you get information about the search volume, competition, and related search terms for your selected keywords.
Google Keyword Planner or Keyword Planner is a tool that is available free of charge in Google Ads.
However, you need to have active campaigns in Google Ads to use the tool.
SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz are tools that SEO specialists often use in their daily work.
To some extent you can use these free of charge but if you want to exploit the full potential of these tools you will have to pay.
Successful keyword analysis involves taking practical steps to gain valuable information about which search terms and phrases are most relevant to your website and your audience.
Here are some practical steps that you can follow to conduct a successful keyword analysis:
Before you start a keyword analysis, you need to define your goals and your target audience.
Ask yourself?
This information will help you identify the keywords that are most relevant to your business.
Take a look at the product areas that are relevant to your business. What keywords are there that are related to these?
Are there any questions that customers might ask themselves when researching your company's product or service?
Brainstorm around these questions and write down a gross list of keywords for further investigation.
For example:
If you sell shoes through your website, then current keywords for you would be shoes, sneakers, boots, children's shoes, women's shoes, men's shoes et al.
When you have a list of keywords that you want to research, you can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz Keyword Explorer.
These tools can give you deeper insight and help you evaluate and select the most relevant keywords for your strategy.
If you do not have the opportunity to invest in an SEO tool yet, you can do a free keyword analysis by using Google.
When you start a search, Google gives you number of suggestions. These proposals are based on what is most sought at the moment. Hence, there will always be relevant keywords that you can start creating content around.
You can also use tools such as Reply to the Public. It works in a similar way to Google's suggestions, but it will give you more information and relevant data that can be very useful when creating a keyword analysis.
When you research your keywords, you'll also want to do a search on Google to evaluate and analyze the competition for the keywords you've selected.
See which sites rank high for these keywords and assess their relevance and competitiveness.
One tip is to download the SeoQuake tool as an add-on in your browser.
With SEOQuake, you can get insights into relevant metrics for SEO directly in your search results.
This will help you assess whether you can compete and rank for these keywords or if you need to adjust your strategy.
Choose keywords that are relevant to your site and content.
It is important to consider the target audience and their intent when searching for information.
Imagine yourself when searching for something online:
With SEMrush, for example, you can gain insight into the keyword's “search intent” (i.e. the intent behind the search) and these are categorized into informational, navigational, commercial and transactional.
You can of course judge the intent yourself and the point is to focus on keywords that really match the content you offer and that will attract the right visitors to your site.
Collect your keywords in an excel or spreadsheet to organize and prioritize them based on their relevance, search volume, and level of competition.
Choose which keywords to appear on your product or service pages and optimize your site to improve your ranking for those keywords.
In the best case scenario, for your product or service pages, you should have keywords with “transactional” or “commercial” intent.
You can also take the opportunity to create a new content plan that you can create for your website's blog based on the keywords you found with “informational” intent.
Implement your chosen keywords in strategic places on your website such as titles, headings, meta descriptions, page content, and internal links. More on this in the chapter on on-page SEO.
Then regularly monitor your website's ranking and traffic to see how well your keyword optimizations are working and if you need to make adjustments.
Q is to monitor which keywords drive traffic to your website from Google and Bing, you can use the Google Seach console and Bing Webmaster tools. These you can access free of charge.
1. Use customer feedback
If you already have customers, use their feedback to identify the words and phrases they use to describe your products or services.
This can help you identify new keywords and optimize your content for the language your customers use.
2. Use Reddit and Quora
Browse Reddit, Quora and facebook groups to identify the questions people ask related to your business or industry.
This can help you identify new keywords and create content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.
3. Use Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics
Google Search Console is a tool where you can gain insights into the keywords that drive traffic to your website and how it performs on Google. Bing's equivalent is Bing Webmaster Tools.
Use Google Search Console to identify the search queries that drive traffic to your website.
This can help you identify new keywords to target and optimize your content for the search queries that are already driving traffic.
These tools are free and a prerequisite for you to be successful in SEO.
While not a specific keyword analysis tool, Google Analytics can provide valuable insight into your website's performance and the keywords that drive traffic to your site.
It allows you to see which pages receive the most traffic, which keywords drive traffic, and how long visitors stay on your site.
Want to learn more about how you can leverage data to create an improved user experience and more desirable outcomes for your business?
Take our course in digital analytics here at GrowthStackr.io
4. Make sure you use natural language
Use natural language in your content. With the rise of voice search, more and more people are using spoken language and slang to search for information.
Many also use ChatGPT and Language Models to create AI generated content.
This can absolutely make your work easier, but it's important to know that these tools often create content that doesn't support natural language.
After you have done all the steps and taken note of all the tips that you have now read above, as well as compiled everything into a document where you can easily sort the data, for example with Excel or Google Sheets.
Should you have something like this:
Now you will learn how to write SEO texts and to effectively implement your chosen keywords in the right places in your content.
You should use the keywords in titles, links, blog posts and product descriptions, among others.
Make sure to use relevant keywords that describe the content and focus on one keyword per page.
Where to place your keywords:
Use the keyword in the meta description
The meta description is the first thing that appears under the page title in the search results.
Why you should include your keywords in that text is, among other things, because Google makes the keyword bold.
This makes it easier for the visitor to see it and also click on meta description.
What we want you to bring with you is the following:
Use keywords in URLs
You want to use keywords in your URLs because you improve the user experience but also because you make it easier for search engines to understand what your page is about.
Your URLs should contain the keyword and be as short as possible but also descriptive. It may sound complicated, but it can be simplified. We'll show you how.
Keeping it short makes it a lot easier. Remove information that is not necessary and include your keyword.
The example below shows a link that contains a lot of information that is not needed. It will be difficult to interpret this, even for the Google crawler that we talked about earlier.
Semantic keywords are words and phrases that are semantically related to your primary keyword.
If your primary keyword is “hiking boots”, examples of semantic keywords can be “hiking shoes” and “hiking gear”.
I'm sure you've done a search where Google shows that your keyword is missing from the page that appears in the results.
To assess whether Google can show your page in a search without the primary keyword that the user is searching for, they use semantic keywords.
Including these in your content will help you increase your ranking in search results, mostly because this is a technique that is overlooked by many.
Good SEO content is well written and of high quality, therefore focus on keeping your text informative and relevant.
You should beware of writing content that has a lot of unnecessary text, it is better with a concise content than content that has an abundance of words and unnecessary information.
You want to create engagement with your users, not confusion.
Good SEO texts encourage the user to engage with your content.
For example, engaging a user may mean that they like, comment and/or share your content on social media.
If you create content that is valuable and you design it in a way that makes it easy to share, you will be able to promote it organically through social media.
You should self-publish and share your content on social media and at the same time encourage your users to share the content on their channels.