In this guide, let's go over how to choose keywords for blog posts that have traffic and your website can rank. This information will be very different than all other content about SEO, because we are going to go over some very unique tactics that not many people are discussing enough.
How To Choose Keywords For Blog Posts
Before starting, it's important to find a keyword that you can be flexible with:
- Rank for
- A topic you can truly provide great content on
- Make money with
- If can't make money straight from it, then think about redirecting the visitor to something else that could
Identify The Intent Of The Keyword
A successful blog article must have a goal in mind. The intent of the keyword must match the intent of the person in the market searching at that moment.
Here are the top intentions people have while searching:
- Find something
- Navigational
- Buy
- Research
Based on the intent, we can format our blog post to present the best information the user wants right away without the filler content.
- If a person wants instruction, the content should immediately present a step by step instructional content right away
- If a person wants to buy something, the content should provide relevant info upfront and present a super visible "buy" button somewhere on the page
- If a person wants to research between two products, the content should immediately show their differences
- If a person wants a quick chicken recipe
Don't Underestimate Keywords That Show Only 0 - 20 Searches
Many people skip over keywords that may show 0 - 20 searches a month. This is a huge mistake!
A keyword that may show 0 - 20 searches a month can be used as the main keyword in a blog post. Because the blog post itself will also rank for other keywords that drive traffic to the page.
The total traffic a blog post will get is based on all the ranking keywords including related and LSI keywords get cumulatively.
If the blog post ends up ranking for something else better, then we can retarget the blog post with good performing keywords based on data and impressions.
Gather LSI Keywords To Beef Up Content Relevance
Latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords are words that are related to your main keyword. They help give more information to search engines and users.
An LSI keyword is a keyword that is closely related to your primary keyword. Think of it as words used to further define the context.
For example: LSI keywords for “car oil change” can be:
- best car shop
- synthetic oil change
- 05W20 performance
- car dealership near me
The order "oil change" can mean a lot of things, but when car related terms are added to the blog post, the search engines understand it's about car oil change, Not boat oil change, not bike oil change or aircraft oil change.
We can use Google Keyword Planner's Keyword Group feature to find LSI keywords as well
Check out other LSI keywords methods here
Assess Keyword Difficult
For a new website, please go for low competition keyword under KD 0 - 5
If the website's DR is over 10, please for go for KD 0 - 8
If the website's DR is over 30, please for go for KD 0 - 15
If the website's DR is over 50 or more, you can go for KD 0 - 30
This is an estimate and it works fairly well.
Create Content Outline Based On The Main Keyword
After the main keyword has been decided, the next step is to gather all relevant subheadings for the blog post.
We can do this manually by checking out Google's related searches or Ahrefs' People Also Ask section. Simply gather a few relevant keywords to be used as H2 or H3 to finish the content outline.
To speed up this process, we recommend using a tool like SurferSEO, JasperAI or Copymatic to automatically generate a content outline. This can be very helpful when massively producing outsourced content.
Learn how to create a content brief here
9 Ways To Find Keywords That Aren't Taught Anywhere Else
Use Exact Match Search Modifier To Narrow Down The Competition
Use quotation marks around the main keyword like this "XXXXX". This is called an exact match search, and its job is to refine searches that only contain the keyword.
When using this method, you can assess the competition based on the actual number of SERP results.
For example:
[how to fix sentence fragments] shows about 1,880,000 results without quotation marks. This can be misleading to the person doing the keyword research, and immediately jump to the conclusion that this particular keyword is very difficult.
But hold on! Check this out:
With quotation marks "how to fix sentence fragments" shows about only 6,710 results that only contain the keyword "how to fix sentence fragments"
So the actual competition is only 6,710 instead of 1,880,000 results
Use Google Timeout Method
The Google timeout method is to narrow down the actual number of SERPs on a keyword that is the most relevant.
By using the exact match search method we have mentioned above, flip through the last page of the SERP until it shows:
"In order to show the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the # already displayed"
For example: "how to fix sentence fragments", shows only 46 actual results that are hyper-relevant.
(Ahrefs) Find Niche Relevant Domains
Go to Ahrefs' site explorer, and research a site you have in mind:
For example:
Facebook, Quora, Amazon
- Go to referring domains, type in a niche keyword, and hit "Show Results".
- This will filter out all the referring domains linking to one of these big sites with the niche keyword included.
- Filter out a list of referring domain with some traffic and less than 20 DR
- Check their organic keywords rankings
The idea here is to reverse research low Domain Rating websites and steal organic keywords that are working for them and do it better if you can.
If a low DR sites are ranking, there is a high chance you can too!
Use Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner (GKP) provides PPC data directly from Google. It gives the content creator an idea of the potential earnings on Google Adsense and overall earning potential.
This tool is useful to find low cost per click keywords that can lead to something that pays a lot more money by skipping the competition
*This tool ONLY provides keyword data if advertisers have bid on that particular keyword. If no advertiser ever spent money on it, then no data will show.
For example:
Going after "web site hosting" is super competitive and almost impossible to rank. However, we can go around the competition and think about why someone needs website hosting but they don't know it yet and target that keyword instead.
In this case, a keyword like "how to create a website using html on notepad"
- It's super low competition
- It's a keyword someone search without any website-building experience
- The person searching may not be sure if he needs website hosting, but the content will do its job to present the offer to them
- The cost of the bid is as low as $1.58/click estimated
- Actually no ads on this keyword
We can actually start targeting this super low competition long tail keyword and lead the visitor to website hosting products and make money.
Try Keyword Chef To Find Keyword Variations Other Tools Don't Provide
Keyword Chef can automatically find keywords with real search intent that aren't so generic.
This means Keyword Chef can find long-tail keywords that you can use to rank fast.
For example:
Keyword Chef can find much in-depth search queries that aren't just generic.
Reverse Research URL For Ranking Keywords
Ahrefs is the best tool we recommend to reverse research a specific website or page for organic keywords.
- Go to Ahrefs, paste in the domain URL or specific URL
- Hit search
- This will show all organic keywords they are ranking for, and their ranking positions
- Locate a keyword you can rank, and go for it
Start With A Trigger Word To Go Around The Competition
Using the trigger word method can help a blog find all kinds of niche related keywords. In every niche, there are problem solving words like:
Fixing, increase, remove, install, checklist, filing, moving, adding...etc
Start your keyword research with action verbs like these will find all kinds of words that you will never in a million years even think of, or find just by relying on the main niche keyword.
We can take advantage of these keywords and find an intent-driven keyword that a blog post should have, which can lead to a solution, aka making money.
Reverse Research Online Forums
Online forums are great places to research keywords that can't be found anywhere else. Forum discussions are typically filled with hyper niche specific content.
We can use a tool like Ahrefs to reverse research www.candlepowerforums.com for all organic keywords related to flashlights, and then filter out relevant or low competition keywords you can use if you're in that niche.
Generally, go for keyword difficulty under 6 to get started.