We are going to show you our quick and efficient method in four steps for a good keyword research. But first it is important to know what a keyword is and that behind each keyword there is an intention.

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At the end of this method you will have an Excel file with keywords categorized by themes. Then we will give you tips to prioritize your keywords, which keyword is worth choosing to position yourself on?

Keyword research - The SmartKeyword method

How to create a buyer persona?

To define a relevant target, the best way is to build a "buyer persona". This is the easiest way to identify a niche market, thanks to which you can easily find the keywords that your customers use every day.

The buyer persona is an imaginary character representing a target group or segment. It is a buyer profile that has specific characteristics with particular use cases.

We define a buyer persona by :

  • his/her age and professional situation
  • his/her interests
  • his/her purpose and personality
  • his/her consumers data
  • his/her brakes, motivations and insights (I want..., because..., but...)
  • his/her slogan

To illustrate these ideas, we are going to use an imaginary site "voyage-croatie.com" and create a buyer persona around which we have built a personality named Julien. We will use him to respond to the different needs, to understand and capture the queries that he might type in order to position ourselves.

Based on all this data, we can easily imagine all the queries that Julian could type and position himself on them.

Let's take as an example the insight "I would like to go to Croatia because I love the scenery of the Mediterranean, but I don't know if my budget will allow it" expressed on this document and let's imagine what Julien could type to satisfy his desires:

  • cheap trip Croatia
  • cheap trip Mediterranean, cheap trip Mediterranean country

Start with priority keyword research

Start by opening an Excel file and creating a tab that you will call "priority keywords", on which you will list the 5 to 60 keywords that you think are the most important to target for your referencing. This list will be very useful for the rest of the operations, we will come back to it.

Let's take the example of my site on travel in Croatia:

What are the first things I think of, when I think of "Travel to Croatia"?

  • Croatia
  • travel Croatia

But also:

  • when to go to Croatia
  • weather Croatia
  • Cultural Places Croatia

Refine your search with niche keywords ...

For your list of topics on which you should place yourself we advise you to position yourself on niche markets. Targeting a niche market allows you to face much less competition. It is better to position yourself on a very precise domain and to be N°1 on a targeted expression, than to choose to position yourself on common keywords on which you will not be able to gain traffic.

It is necessary to find all the expressions related to your activity or to associate certain keywords which separately are not searched by Google but which together are worth their weight in gold.

Complete your list with keyword suggestion tools ...

Most people start their keyword research with the Google Adwords planning tool "Google Keyword planner", but we don't recommend it because it is a tool that is used too frequently.

We recommend these tools:

  • Google suggests
  • Wikipedia: to find new keywords called "niche" on Wikipedia, the process remains relatively the same. Log on to the homepage and type in the activity of your site "travel" and get inspired by the different results found.
  • Google: by getting inspired on forums related to your business
  • Reddit
  • Google trends

Categorize and order your Excel …

In your Excel you have a list with your priority keywords, those of the niche market as well as those found on the tools. Delete the duplicate keywords. Then order your keywords by creating as many tabs as you have different categories based on the intent of the keyword.

Long tail search

Finding the right keywords is the most important step in your SEO strategy. Everything that follows, in terms of content, on-site optimization, netlinking, will depend on what you have decided to position yourself on.

For this we explain the importance of long tail keywords and we propose you some essential tools for this keyword research:

  • Wikipedia
  • Answer the public
  • Ubersuggest
  • Google trend
  • Google correlate

In the Excel spreadsheet, you will copy in all the suggestions found then you will delete the duplicates and categorize them. This will give you a first list of interesting keywords..

Keyword research with Google Search Console

  • Log in to the Google Search Console
  • Click on the URL of your site
  • In the menu, click on "Performance".
  • Click on "Prints" on the graph and then "Pages" in the table below.
  • Click on the URL of the page with the highest number of impressions
  • Finally, set "Dates" to 3 months, then click on "Queries" in the table below, and select "Click", "Impressions", "CTR", and "Position" at the top of the page
  • Don't forget to sort the "Impressions" column from largest to smallest

What you see now are all the keywords that were used to get to your page via Google search. The higher the keyword has a "impressions" number, the more popular it is.

To position or not on a keyword

After doing your keyword research, you end up with a list of over 1000 keywords. And now, what do I do with it? Which keyword is more worth it?

The first method is to rely on the Domain Authority of the pages positioned on a chosen keyword. With this method we estimate if a keyword is rather competitive or not.

We make the average of domains authority in 1st page, and we say that

  • si < 20, alors c’est un mot clé facile
  • si < 30, c’est un mot clé atteignable
  • si < 40, c’est un mot clé concurrentiel
  • si < 50, c’est un mot clé très concurrentiel
  • if > 50, it's an Everest

The other method is to compare our DA to the average DA of the SERP.

  • my DA > average DA of the SERP : Easy
  • DA < DA moyen de la serp + 5 : Atteignable
  • DA < DA moyen de la serp + 15 : Concurrentiel
  • DA < DA moyen de la serp + 25 : Très concurrentiel

With this other method we realize the difficulty of working or not this keyword.

Conclusion

Keyword research is one of the pillars of natural referencing. It is important to take time on this research of keywords so that these words are in adequacy with your business but also relevant for the research of your potential customers.  

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   Article written by Louis Chevant

Further reading

The complete guide to Internal Meshing

The step-by-step method to build your semantic cocoons, your mesh and the optimal tree structure of your website.