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Boost SEO results with powerful keyword research

Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide

Today I’m going to show you exactly how to do keyword research in 2024.

In this comprehensive guide I’ll cover:

• How to find keywords
• How to choose the right keywords
• How to use popular keyword research tools
• Advanced keyword research tips

So if you want higher Google rankings and more traffic, you’ll love this guide.

Let’s get started.

1. Keyword Research Basics

2. How to Find Keyword Ideas + Template

3. Keyword Research Tools

4. Keyword Difficulty

5. How to Choose a Keyword

6. Advanced Tips and Strategies

Chapter 1: keyword research basics.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the fundamentals of keyword research.

First, you’ll practically learn what keyword research is (and why it’s important for SEO ).

I’ll also show you how keyword research helped grow my site’s search engine traffic to 360k+ unique visitors per month.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the specific words and phrases that people use to search for information online. This valuable insight helps you create content, ads, and videos that directly address your target audience’s search queries, enhancing your website’s visibility and attracting more visitors.

Try the FREE Backlinko Keyword Research Tool . Discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content, SEO campaigns, and more.

Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?

Keyword research impacts every other SEO task that you perform, including finding content topics, on-page SEO , email outreach , and content promotion.

That’s why keyword research is usually the first step of any SEO campaign .

Put another way:

Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.

As a bonus, researching keywords help you better understand your target audience. That’s because keyword research gives you insight into what customers are searching for… and the exact words and phrases that they use.

In other words: keyword research is market research for the 21st century.

How Keyword Research Helped My Site’s Traffic Grow

Today, my site generates 449,058 visitors every month:

And 362,732 of those visitors (80.78%) come from Google:

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that went into my site’s success with SEO, including content, on-site optimization, link building and technical SEO .

But the #1 factor that contributed to my site’s traffic growth was keyword research.

For example:

A while back I used the process in this guide to uncover a low-competition keyword: mobile SEO.

And I created a piece of SEO-optimized content around that term: The Definitive Guide to Mobile SEO .

Because that keyword wasn’t super competitive, my site quickly ranked in the top 3:

And thanks to that top 3 ranking, that single page brings in hundreds of visitors from Google every month:

With that, it’s time for chapter 2.

Chapter 2: How to Find Keyword Ideas

Now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of keyword research.

Specifically, it’s time to generate a list of keywords.

In this chapter I’m going to show you proven strategies that you can use to come up with LOTS of keyword ideas.

Let’s dive right in.

Keyword Research Template

Whether you’re starting a new SEO project, want to improve your site’s search traffic, or are looking for target keywords for a new piece of content, this template will help you do keyword research quickly and effectively.

Why Use a Keyword Research Template?

This template brings together all the different tool options and approaches into one place. So instead of bouncing around between a thousand tabs, losing track of where you are in the process…

You can just go through this template. Simple. Step-by-step.

When you’re done, you’ll have a BIG list of keywords. Plus all the metrics to help you pick which to target.

Download Now: Keyword Research Template

Brainstorm a List of Topics

Here’s where you come up with topics that your target customer is interested in.

For example, let’s say that you run a digital marketing agency.

Well, you’d want to ask yourself: ”What topics do people search for that are related to my business?”

Some topics that come to mind would be things like:

• Social media
• Email marketing
• Website traffic
• Content Marketing

Note: These topics aren’t keywords (yet).

Which is exactly what you’re going to learn how to do right now…

Wikipedia Table of Contents

Wikipedia is an overlooked keyword research goldmine.

Where else can you find articles curated by thousands of industry experts… all organized into neat little categories?

Here’s how to use Wikipedia to find keyword ideas.

First, head over to Wikipedia and type in a broad keyword:

That will take you to the Wikipedia entry for that broad topic.

Then, look for the “contents” section of the page. This section lists out the subtopics covered on that page.

And some of the subtopics listed here are awesome keywords that would be tough to find any other way:

You can also click on some of the internal links on the page to check out the Table of Contents of other, closely related entries.

For example, on the coffee entry we have a link to “Coffee Preparation”:

When you click on that link, you’ll notice that the table of contents for the Coffee Preparation page has even more keywords that you can add to your list:

Pretty cool.

Searches Related To

Another cool way to find keywords is to check out the “Searches Related to” section at the bottom of Google’s search results.

For example, let’s say one of your topics was “content marketing”.

Well, you’d want to search for that keyword in Google.

And scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a list of 8 keywords that are closely related to your search term.

Just like with Google Suggest, these are keyword ideas that come straight from Google . So you don’t need to guess whether or not they’re popular. Google is literally telling you: “Tons of people search for these keywords.”

Pro Tip: Click on one of the “Searches Related To” keywords.

Then, scroll to the bottom of THOSE results. This will give you a new list of related keywords. Rinse and repeat.

Find Keywords on Reddit

Chances are your target audience hangs out on Reddit.

Which means you can usually find lots of keyword ideas on this platform.

Here’s how:

Let’s say that you run a site that sells organic dog food.

You’d head over to Reddit. Then search for a broad topic that your target audience is interested in… and something that’s related to what you sell.

Then, choose a subreddit where your audience probably hangs out:

Finally, keep an eye out for threads that have lots of comments, like this:

In this case you’d add “dog food allergies” to your keyword ideas list.

Use Google and YouTube Suggest

Now that you have a list of topics, type each one of them into Google.

And see what terms that Google Suggests to you.

These are great keywords to add to your list.

Because if Google suggests a keyword, you KNOW that lots of people are searching for it.

But you don’t need to stop with Google Suggest.

You can also find keyword suggestions with YouTube Suggest:

Find Popular Topics Using Forums

Forums are like having live focus groups at your fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The easiest way to find forums where your target audience hangs out is to use these search strings in Google:

“keyword forum” “keyword” + “forum” “keyword” + “forums” “keyword” + “board”

Once you find a forum, note how the forum is divided up into sections: Each of these sections are potential keywords that you can add to your list.

To dig deeper, check out some of the threads on the forum to find other specific topics that your target audience struggles with:

Pretty cool, right?

Chapter 3: Keyword Research Tools

This chapter is all about tools.

Can you find keywords without a tool?

But a tool makes the entire process A LOT easier.

With that, here are the keyword research tools that I personally use and recommend.

If you want to invest in a paid keyword tool, I HIGHLY recommend Semrush .

That’s because SEMrush is a HUGE time saver.

Here’s why…

Instead of popping random keywords into a tool, Semrush shows you the exact keywords that a site already ranks for.

So if you have a site that you’re competing against in Google, just pop it into SEMrush.

And steal all of their keywords.

The Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner is THE most reliable source of keyword information online.

That’s because, unlike most other tools, the data you get from the Keyword Planner come straight from Google.

(So you know they’re accurate)

The big downside of the GKP is that it’s designed to help people with their Google ad campaigns… not with SEO.

That said, you can still use the GKP to get lists of keyword ideas…

…and find search queries that get lots of searches.

ExplodingTopics.com

This new tool is like Google Trends… but better.

Exploding Topics scrapes the web for terms that are surging in popularity. And it bubbles those terms up for you.

You can even sort the list of topics by category.

Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer might be my favorite keyword research tool.

Because it shows you keyword ideas from inside Google’s search results.

All you need to do is install the Chrome extension. And the next time you search for something in Google, you’ll see a list of keyword ideas… and data on each keyword.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest was the first Google suggest scraper that I used. And the tool recently got a massive upgrade and overhaul.

Ubersuggest still generates keyword ideas from Google’s search suggestions. But it also gives you data on each keyword (like search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty and more).

Most people consider Ahrefs a link building tool .

But not as many people know that Ahrefs also has a REALLY good keyword tool.

What’s nice about Ahrefs “Keyword Explorer” is that you get a ton of helpful data on each keyword.

Which can help you decide whether or not it’s a keyword that’s worth going after.

My one gripe with Keyword Explorer is that it’s not great at coming up with new keyword ideas. It usually generates keywords that are just simple variations of the keyword I typed in.

When it comes to drilling down to a single term, you can’t do much better than the features found in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.

Chapter 4: Keyword Difficulty

How do you know if a keyword is too competitive to rank for?

It’s a good question to ask.

Because if you choose a keyword that’s super competitive, you might have trouble getting past Google’s third page.

But if you can find a keyword without a ton of competition, you have a good chance of cracking the top 3.

With that, here’s how to figure out a keyword’s SEO difficulty.

Long Tails Are (Usually) Less Competitive

If your site is brand new.

Or if you want to focus 100% on keywords that aren’t competitive.

Then you DEFINITELY want to target long tail keywords .

I’ll explain…

Most people in SEO (myself included) divide keywords into three main categories: head, body and the long tail.

Here’s a breakdown of each keyword type:

These are usually single-word keywords with lots of search volume…and competition. Examples of head terms are keywords like “insurance” or “vitamins”. Because searcher intent is all over the place (someone searching for “insurance” might be looking for a car insurance quote, a list of life insurance companies or a definition of the word), Head Terms usually don’t convert very well.

Body Keywords

Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get decent search volume (at least 2,000 searches per month), but are more specific than Head Keywords. Keywords like “life insurance” or “order vitamins online” are examples of Body Keywords. These almost always have less competition than Head Terms.

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are long, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. Phrases like “affordable life insurance for senior citizens” and “order vitamin D capsules online” are examples of long tail keywords. These terms don’t get a lot of search volume individually (usually around 10-200 searches per month). But when you add them together, long tails make up the majority of searches online. And because they don’t get searches for that much, long tail terms usually aren’t very competitive.

There’s no “best” keyword category to focus on. All 3 have their pros and cons.

But when it comes to competition, long tails are usually the least competitive of the bunch.

Authority of Sites on Google’s First Page

Here’s a quick way to evaluate a keyword’s competition level.

First, search for your keyword in Google.

Then, look at the sites ranking on the first page.

(Not individual pages)

If the first page is made up of uber authority sites (like Wikipedia), then you might want to cross that keyword off from your list:

But if you see a handful of smaller blogs on page 1, that’s a sign that you have a shot to hit the first page too.

Keyword Difficulty Inside of Keyword Tools

The vast majority of keyword research tools have some sort of keyword competition feature, including Semrush :

And Moz Pro :

We recently tested a bunch of them . And we found that they all size up keyword difficulty based on a combination of page authority and domain authority. YET they all tend to come up with completely different keyword difficulty scores.

Bottom Line? If your favorite keyword tool includes a keyword difficulty feature, go with that. It may not be perfect. But they do tend to give you a general idea of how competitive a keyword is to rank for.

Believe it or not, but there’s an entire tool dedicated to keyword difficulty: CanIRank .

What I like about this tool is that it doesn’t just spit out a keyword difficulty number. Instead, it evaluates a keyword’s competition level relative to your website.

For example, I popped the keyword “SEO” into CanIRank.

And the tool looked at Google’s first page competition compared to my site’s authority . And it gave me a “Ranking Probability” of 90%:

Super helpful.

Chapter 5: How to Choose a Keyword

Now that you have a list of keywords, how do you know which one to pick?

Unfortunately, there’s no tool out there that will tell you: “ This is the best keyword on your list”.

Instead, you need to size up each keyword based on a handful of different factors. Then, pick the keyword that’s the best fit for your business.

Additionally, conducting keyword analysis to ensure reaching the target audience takes time and effort. Lucky for you, Backlinko simplified the process to ease your work.

As you might expect, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do in this chapter.

Search Volume

This is pretty straightforward.

The more people search for a keyword, the more traffic you can get from it.

The question is:

What’s a “good” search volume?

Short answer: it depends.

The long answer:

Search volumes vary A LOT between different industries.

For example, a long tail keyword in the fitness niche (like: “best ab exercises”) gets 10K-100K searches per month:

But a long tail keyword in a B2B space like digital marketing (like: “best seo software”) only gets 100-1K monthly searches.

That’s why you want to figure out what a “high” and “low” search volume number is in your niche.

Then, choose keywords based on what’s “normal” for your industry.

Organic Click-Through-Rate

It’s no secret that the number of Google searchers that click on an organic search result is way down .

And it’s no wonder why.

Featured Snippets make it so you don’t need to click on anything to get an answer:

Plus, Google now packs the search results with more ads than ever before:

The bottom line?

Search volume only gives you part of the story. To get a full estimate of how many clicks you’ll get from a first page Google ranking, you also need to estimate organic CTR.

Here are two simple ways to do it…

First, you can look at the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for your keyword.

If you see a lot of stuff on the first page (like a Featured Snippet and multiple Google Ads), then you know that you’re not going to get a ton of clicks… even if you rank #1.

Second , you can use a tool.

Ahrefs and Moz pro both estimate organic CTR.

With all that said:

I wouldn’t avoid a keyword just because it has a low CTR. If lots of people search for that term, it might still be worth going after.

If your site is new (or doesn’t have a ton of links yet), target low-competition terms at first.

Then, as your site grows in authority, you can start to target more competitive stuff.

When I first launched Backlinko, I targeted almost 100% long tail keywords (like: “how to get backlinks”).

And because I didn’t have a ton of sites to compete with, I was able to get some organic traffic rolling in within a few weeks. Which helped me achieve some early SEO success.

Today, my site has backlinks from over 37k different domains:

So I can target more competitive keywords (like: “YouTube SEO”).

CPC (cost per click) is a single metric that answers one important question:

Do people searching for this keyword actually spend money?

So yeah, search volume is nice and all.

But if that keyword has zero commercial intent, then there’s no point in targeting that term.

Plus, you can sometimes get a great ROI from a keyword that doesn’t get that many searches… if the CPC is high enough.

For example, one of my target keywords is “link building services”.

According to Ahrefs, this keyword gets 1.3K searches per month.

So if I ONLY looked at search volume, I’d say: “This is a horrible keyword”.

That’s why it’s super important to ALSO look at CPC.

The CPC on that keyword is $25.00.

This means that people are spending $25 every time someone searching for that keyword clicks on an ad.

So even though the search volume for that term isn’t that high, the CPC more than makes up for it.

Based on CPC (and the fact that the keyword wasn’t super competitive) I decided to create content optimized around that term.

And that blog post now ranks in the top 3 for my target keyword.

Business Fit

Here’s where you look at how likely it is that someone searching for a keyword will become a customer.

Yup, CPC helps you figure this out. But it doesn’t tell the entire story.

For example, a few weeks ago I came across the keyword: “backlink checker”.

On the surface, this is a great keyword.

It gets a decent amount of searches:

And has a $4.01 CPC:

It’s also not that competitive.

So this keyword is a winner, right?

Well… not really.

You see, Backlinko is an SEO training company. Which means I don’t sell a backlink analysis tool. So even if I DID rank #1 for “backlink checker”, it wouldn’t do me much good.

Contrast that with a keyword like “YouTube SEO”.

This keyword’s CPC is only $2.22.

But considering that I sell a YouTube training course, this term is a 10/10 in terms of business fit.

This is why I wrote a piece of content around that keyword:

Keyword Trends

Finally, you want to see if your keyword is growing fast… or dying slow.

And the best way to do that? Google Trends .

For example, last year I was considering the keyword: “voice search SEO”.

But I decided to pop that keyword into Google Trends before pulling the trigger.

As you can see, interest in that keyword is growing quickly.

Which is why I optimized this page around that term.

Even though that piece of content only brings in about 1k monthly search engine visitors per month today…

…the trend tells me that traffic to this post should increase over time.

Another key trend to consider is the use of AI for keyword research. Think of integrating ChatGPT for diverse SEO tasks including keyword research. Learn all about how this innovative trend can impact your SEO journey in our guide.

Chapter 6: Advanced Tips and Strategies

Now that you’ve mastered the basics of keyword research, it’s time to cover some cool advanced stuff.

Specifically, I’m going to reveal a bunch of tactical keyword research tips that you can implement right away.

So without further ado, let’s dive right into the tips.

Barnacle SEO

Let’s say that you found the PERFECT keyword.

And you rank in the top 3 for that term.

You’re pretty much done, right?

Actually… not really.

As it turns out, you can get even MORE traction from that keyword with Barnacle SEO.

Barnacle SEO is the practice of using other sites’ authority to rank on the first page.

For example, one of my best keywords (in terms of conversions) is: YouTube SEO.

Like I mentioned earlier, I wrote a post about YouTube SEO . And that post ranks in the top 3 for that keyword.

Sure, a top 3 ranking is great. But it’s still only one spot in the SERPs.

That’s why I created a YouTube video optimized for that keyword…

…a video that also ranks on Google’s first page.

Bottom line? If you find an amazing keyword, you want to take up as much first page real estate as you can. First, create content on that topic on your own site. Then, publish keyword-optimized content on authority sites, like YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium and more.

GSC Keyword Research

The Google Search Console is a goldmine of keyword ideas.

Here’s how it works:

First, login to your GSC account and head over to the “Performance Report”.

This report shows you the terms that bring in the most clicks from Google search.

Then, sort the list by “Impressions”.

This shows you keywords that get lots of impressions… but not necessarily clicks.

Finally, create a piece of content optimized around that same keyword.

Why is this a powerful strategy?

These are keywords that you KNOW people are searching for. You also know that Google sees your site as a good fit in the search results.

You just need to publish content that’s super focused on that specific keyword (or optimize a piece of existing content around that keyword) and you’re set.

Optimize Content around Synonyms and Related Keywords

Yes, you want to optimize your page around your main keyword.

But don’t stop there.

You can get even more search engine traffic to your page by optimizing it around synonyms and closely related terms.

I’ll show you how this works with a real life example.

Some time ago I published this post on my blog.

As you can probably guess, my target keyword for that page is: “search engine visibility”.

But I also made sure to sprinkle in variations of that keyword, like: “SEO visibility”.

In the end, I was able to rank #1 for my main keyword…

…and lots of keyword variations.

Ahrefs Content Gap

Content Gap has quickly become one of my favorite features in Ahrefs.

Just like with Semrush, you can use Ahrefs to see the exact keywords another site ranks for.

And with Ahrefs Content Gap, you can take this type of competitor keyword analysis to the next level.

Head over to Ahrefs content gap. And put in 2-3 competing sites.

This will show you keywords that at least 2 of your competitors rank for… but you don’t.

And because multiple competitors rank for these terms, you know that you also have a good chance of cracking the top 10.

Analyze Keywords Based on Searcher Intent

In other words, ask yourself:

What does someone searching for this keyword want to see?

Are they looking to buy? For information? Or are they looking for a specific page (like a login page)?

A while back I created a post that ranks #2 for the keyword “BuzzStream”.

Even though that keyword gets around 2k searches/month, that post only brings in 194 monthly visitors.

What gives?

Well, as it turns out, “BuzzStream” is a navigational keyword.

Which means that most people that search for that keyword are looking for the website… not information about BuzzStream.

So yeah, that keyword looked great at first glance. But because it’s a navigational keyword, VERY few people click on anything but the first result. Which is why that post gets so little traffic.

That’s why I recommend looking at the Search Intent of a keyword.

If Search Intent is “Navigational”, then you may want to avoid that term… even if it has great CPC and monthly search volume numbers.

(As you just saw, this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way)

But if Searcher Intent is “Informational”, then a piece of content optimized around that term could do GREAT.

Find “Shoulder Keywords”

Most people ONLY optimize their site around keywords that are very closely related to what they sell.

And it’s a BIG mistake for two main reasons:

1. Product keywords are usually super competitive. 2. There are thousands of keywords that your potential customer searches for when they’re not searching for what you sell.

And if you can get in front of your customer with an awesome piece of content, they’re SUPER likely to buy from you down the road.

For example, like I mentioned earlier, I run an SEO training company.

But I don’t optimize every page on my site around commercial terms.

(Like “SEO training” and “SEO courses”).

Instead, I rank for keywords that my customers search for when they’re not looking for SEO training.

(Keywords like: “link building”, “on-page SEO” and “SEO Tools”).

I call these keywords “Shoulder Keywords”.

These keywords aren’t directly related to what you sell. But they’re keywords that your customers search for. Which makes them worth going after.

How about another example?

Let’s say you run an eCommerce site that sells basketball hoops.

Obviously, you’d want to optimize some of your pages around terms like “buy basketball hoops online”.

After all, someone interested in buying a basketball hoop may also search for:

• How to shoot a better free throw
• Slam dunk highlights
• How to get recruited by college scouts
• Nutrition for basketball players
• How to improve a vertical jump

So you’d want to create content around these “Shoulder Keywords” too.

Now It's Your Turn

I really hope you enjoyed my new keyword research guide.

And now I’d like to hear from you.

Which tip from today’s guide are you going to try first?

Are you going to try Shoulder Keywords?

Or maybe you want to optimize around trending keywords.

Either way, let me know by leaving a quick comment below.

WOWZA! Someone was reading my mind. I was just trying to search your site for keyword research and all of a sudden get an email with exactly what I needed.

As usual, thanks Brian!

You’re not alone, Ashley: keyword research is something a lot of my readers ask me about. I hope you enjoy the guide.

Hi Brian, I love these guides. Besides the graphics which I assume are custom built, is there something special you use to create the general layout of these? The change in colors, etc. just make these really clear to read – would love to replicate that kind of flow.

Thanks as always!

Thanks Jake. That’s right: this guide is custom designed and coded. So we built the layout from scratch so that our guides would be super easy to read and skim through.

Thanks a million Brian. I love your guides, they are informative and hilarious too. Great work.

Brian this is great advice and content. Usually I un-subscribe from some of those ‘other’ email lists – but after visiting your site I can’t wait for the next update! Thanks for your help and advice.

Thanks Mike. Happy to have you as a subscriber.

Great and informative content. Brian, thanks for your excellent keyword research guide.

You’re welcome, Idris.

Absolutely love this guide, it will be something that I can use as a constant reference in the future if I ever need to double check on something, and that convenience is much appreciated 🙂

No worries, Daniel. Happy to help.

And the reason you gave this away for free is…jk. Kick ass guide Brian. Much more valuable than some of the paid guides. Would be sweet if you could package this up into a printable PDF.

Thank you, Matt. I’ll look into getting the new guide put into a PDF.

Looking good – love the design and everything! You’ve done it again, Brian Dean!

Brian, thanks for that. I agree: I’m really happy with how the design turned out.

The word is often overused – but not in this case – this is ‘awesome’ Brian!

Ha! I’m actually laughing out loud right now at just how good this content is.

Folks – this is why Brian is the best in the business when it comes to SEO.

Great stuff man!

Thanks Loz!

Brian, I say this without any bias – every bit of content you provide is Gold. Have been hooked on Backlinko ever since I stumbled here not so long ago 🙂

Great Work!

Hey Zak, thank you. I appreciate that 👍👍👍

Argh the sharing toolbar is destroying the article on my iPad. Can’t read anything on the left.

Thanks for the heads up, Steve. Fixed.

Would you consider offering your guides as single pages or pdfs? I prefer reading longer form content like this when offline/on the road. If on a single page, I can easily Pocket them to read offline. Thanks for considering!

Hey Daniel, we usually add PDF versions to each guide eventually. But it can take some time.

If you are reading on your laptop then simply press the ctrl+s button you have to see the save option to save this. And if you using your phone then open the Chrome browser and you have to see three-dot at the top-right corner, click on that and you see the download button and click on that and download the amazing article.

Awesome write up Brian. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this and share it with us.

You’re welcome, Mark. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Brian, you killed it (again) with this article. I have to admit, I opt out of almost all newsletters but from the ones I keep, yours is the only one with a CTR of 100% for me. Keep up the awesome work and thank you so much!

Thanks Volker 👍 👍 👍

Great guide. Sharing with my colleagues in the department now.

Thanks James.

Hi Brian, I think is going be very difficult to make a better content than you period… You are Rock 🙂 Thanks Claude

Thanks Claude. I appreciate that.

This is the best email in my inbox this morning! Great surprise. Wow you’ve been busy crafting another SEO goodie. Shoulder keywords make for easy blog post ideas. I like this guide. Great job Brian.

Hi Jennifer, happy to hear that. For sure: Shoulder keywords are kind of an underrated approach. Of course we all want to rank for keywords that are about our products (“Buy X”). But the fact is, most of the traffic out there is for informational keywords (like “how to X”). And if your content impresses the pants off of people, you can turn that traffic into leads and sales.

I am pretty certain I will be feasting on this article for days if not weeks to come! I can’t thank you and your team enough for the incredible knowledge and insight.

Hey Eric, you’re welcome. This is basically everything I’ve learned about keyword research over the last few years.

Another awesome content. Thank you, Mr. Brian, to share with us. Cheers!

Definitely something I was looking into. Thanks for another great, lengthy, informative and useful post Brian!

You’re welcome, Darshana.

Awesome stuff as usual Brian!

Thanks Davis. Like all of our guides, a ton of work went into this one.

Somehow you always seem to hit me with the right content at the right time 🙂 Thanks for being an inspiration over the years. /Rued

You’re welcome, Rued. I’ve got more cool stuff on the way.

In-depth guide about keywords research. Specially about the keywords to be chosen for new and old websites

Expanding on your keywords using Google Search Console has led us to driving double the amount of clicks so great info there.

Plus effective frequency in ranking in youtube, linkedin articles and other platforms is key because they drive referral traffic back to your page also and this massively helps ranking.

Great guide Brian!!

Thanks James. Nice. Yeah, that Google Search Console strategy is awesome because it’s Google telling you: “we think your site would be a good fit for that keyword”. No 3rd party tool can do that.

I would like to add a tool for finding keyword difficulty – Kwfinder. I have been using this tool since the start of my career and I can say that it provides the most trustable data.

Best Regards, Himanshu Tyagi Founder, CodeItBro

Thanks Himanshu. I actually have the Mangools suite on my tools that I need to check out. I used KWFinder back in the day but haven’t used it in a year or so.

Get your email in the middle of night on GMT+7

Thanks for your sharing Its helpfull

And my i ask I get nothing in email while im trying to join waiting list SEO Course via seothatworks.com

Im also already cek spam/junk And still get nothing

Thanks again for your sharing.

Sorry for bad english and grammar Im indonesian

You’re welcome, Helmi. Re: the waiting list email. If you email support@backlinko someone will look into that for you.

Your email just hit my inbox Brian, I took a look at the size of your post and thought “how do you do it?” haha. I’ve just skim read it because a full read will mean settling in later this evening when there’s more time. One thing that stood out though was how well you have laid this all out, I’m not a huge fan of ultimate guides because they’re bulky but I can already tell that the way you have broken this down into easy to read chunks coupled with nice graphics and illustrated examples means so much (and I’ve not even got to how well you do your research yet LOL). Cheers Graham

Hey Grahman, thanks man! That’s actually how I write these guides. I don’t set out to make them this long post full of random information. I outline each one into discrete chunks. That way, everything it easy to read and skim. Plus, I don’t go off into tangents about this and that. The outline means that I have to stick to the script 🙂

Absolutely great for beginner and expert. I really like your way of keyword research. Thanks for sharing.

You’re welcome, Jose.

Hello sir, excellent article and it did showed me some new tips because I was struggling to find Keyword for a particular topic.

Nice. Glad to hear that.

Amazing, have you actually ever published something that did not look so wonderful. Really you always make all my stuff look drab and boring. Although I have to do it myself, being small but hope to have good looking content like some day, when I am rich and famous like you. Thanks for all the help you give us

Hey Timothy, Thank you. If I had to do this myself I can’t imagine how bad this would look! Guides like this are a true team effort. Thankfully I’m not in charge of the design, LOL. But seriously, it takes a designer and talented developer to make our guides look as great as they do. I just write up a Google Doc and the team takes care of the rest.

cool, now we know the rest of the story

Wonderful guide put up so nicely!

Thanks for new updated keyword research guide for 2020, and especially thanks for Wikipedia strategy

You’re welcome, Rahul.

Great content as always 😉 Content gap tool in Ahrefs is lately one of my favourite place to find new keywords. I usually find there keyword that I would never think of.

Looking forward to your next guide.

Hey Karol, you’re welcome. Have you tried their “link intersect” feature. It’s similar to that but for backlinks.

if you write like this articles one day Google will kidnap you.

Amazing article Brian thanks for taking keyword research to the next level.

you will be #1 for “keyword research” in Google

I hope so. Moz is currently #1 so it won’t be easy to hit the #1 spot.

Great stuff, Brian, as usual! Very smart nuggets that are both actionable & consumable!

Hi Melissa, thank you! I tried to make this guide super actionable (outside of some of the background info in Chapter 1). Glad to hear that I hit the mark.

I start to read your guide and keep reading word by words, this is an awesome piece of content and very helpful for me. Thank You- “Brain”

You’re welcome, Arif.

Thanks, Brian for such a brief but clear keyword research guide. I have a question regarding keyword research. For some keywords, I find a lot of business directories, review sites ranking, but the intent is clear commercial. Can I rank using those keywords?

You’re welcome, Manoj. If there are some results that aren’t directories and review sites, you might. But if it’s literally 9/10 or 10/10, then I’d go with the flow and try to create a page that’s aligned with what’s already ranking.

Ever since I stumbled on your site while searching for “On-site SEO” I’m glued at the level of content you share for free.

Maybe I should ask, what’s your research strategy? Because I do wonder how on earth you dig up these valuable details.

Great one Brian!

Thanks Montfort. My research strategy is more or less “Document. Don’t create”. I talk more about that here .

Excellent. I’m already digesting it.

Awesome again!

This information is exactly what I am looking for to make my SEO more effective. There is so much information for me to digest. Thanks again.

You’re welcome, Henry. With guides like these, chunking is super important. So I try to make it so it’s not a giant wall of info. But more like an SNES strategy guide.

This is a really solid guide. I already knew a few of these tricks… but sometimes you forget about all the SEO tricks you’ve previously learned, and it’s great to get a refresher or reminder 🙂 For example, the GSC opportunities tactic of looking at impressions and then finding opportunities. I think I’ll use that one shortly! Thanks for the reminder on this one!

You’re welcome, Doug. Nice! Yeah, the GSC has a lot of untapped features. If you haven’t seen it already, I’d check out my giant guide to the Google Search Console here https://backlinko.com/google-search-console .

Great content as usual. While reading this post I came across some new tool like Canirank that I will surely start to use for my next keyword research. Really love this guide Mr. Brian.

Thanks for this article.

Hi Rupam, no problem.

Hi Brian, Thanks again. I’m going to visit Wikipedia right now 😉 I personally find it hard to start with the lower keywords competition. But in the longterm it is the way to go for a new website. (Mental note to myself)

Hi Guido, you’re welcome. For sure. I even think there’s a place for low-competition keywords for older + established websites. I’m finding with Backlinko that it still takes a while to rank for anything competitive (although I do usually rank eventually!). But low competition terms can rank within weeks.

Brian this is massive, very detailed and useful to both newbies and experts. Kudos

You’re welcome, Arnold. I tried to tackle some of the beginner-level stuff in Chapter 1. That way, I could focus on more advanced strategies later on in the guide.

Hi Brian. Great content always.

Brian could you please help me on one issue.

What is the reason of website down in google search now a days?

I mean my website was on 1st page in 6-7 months before, but today it is going back and appears on around page 8-9. I am making quality backlinks and doing proper one-page seo. But still nothing happened.

Could you please tell me what should I do ?

Thanks Hermant. That’s a tough thing to diagnose. It could be an update, penalty, a technical SEO issue. It’s hard to say without really digging into your Google Analytics and GSC. That said, one thing I’d look at is if your entire site dropped or just a few pages. Sometimes focusing on pages that did and didn’t get hit can help you figure things out.

My First main competitive keyword was on first page 6-7 months before. which was related to my website home page.

My second Low competitive keyword is coming on 1st rank on first page, which is also related to my Home page.

But I am surprise that my second keyword is on 1st rank but still my website didn’t get even a single click in one month. I checked impression in GSC of that keyword, which is more than 200. And my website not get even single click.

This is horrible thing is happened with me. My all other competitor websites title and description is 90% same.

I am really worried about this type of critical issue in my website ranking. I am sharing my website on social site, building quality backlink, proper on-page SEO, writing content on website, etc. But still not getting any good response.

I also checked Manual Action or penalty by google in GSC. Fortunately my website not penalize.

Could you please give me some steps which I should check according to your experience ?

And could you please make any blog or video related to Google Analytics – Complete Guide 🙂

A super helpful guide, Brian. I’m using CanIRank for a few weeks and found it amazing in keyword research (suggestions and ideas).

Nice! Yeah, it’s a cool little tool. I like that it has a standard keyword difficulty score. But also takes your own site’s authority into account.

Thanks so much for this!

Search results question:

If I see a competitive search term that does NOT have any videos ranking on the first page…is that an opportunity to make a video and get it to rank there? As in, there just AREN’T any videos for the term to rank

Seeing no video results means that Google is just not going to show videos for that particular search term?

You’re welcome, Amanda. It’s definitely “Seeing no video results means that Google is just not going to show videos for that particular search term?”. In my experience, if there’s no video, Google doesn’t see video as a good fit for that keyword. Of course, that can change over time. But I try to focus on keywords that already have videos in the search results.

Great help – thanks!

Brain, I am blown away with the expert detail you put into your articles and the amount of quality content you give away for free. I have learned so much from your work, please keep it up!

Hey Rick, thanks man! I appreciate that. I’ll definitely keep it up. We have some cool stuff on the way.

Thank you for such a lovely post brian dean. I must follow your tips

You’re welcome, Ankush.

Do you have an SEO agency? If not, can you recommend a couple?

Hi Michael, I don’t have an agency. Backlinko is an online training company that sells online courses.

Definitely useful information which I will use developing my new website.

Hi Sergy, great. Let me know if you have any questions.

Great read Brian, surely helps when you’re working for an SEO agency doing keyword research for pitches day in and day out.

HA! AS someone that used to run an agency, I can 100% relate to that.

I am almost following you since you were explained a Skyscraper Technique & learned from you that no one is perfect to initiate, experience makes us perfect.

I keep my close view on your strategy from video, text content to graphics & keep on following them for my clients as & when needed.

Thank you for supporting & sharing your experiences to improve my experience. Just by following you I am motivated & left the JOB to started my own business & initiated everything last month.

Although, this is just a beginning a day will come with the help of mentors like you & Neil.

Keep it up & help us to share your knowledge

You’re welcome, Ahmed. Congrats on the new business!

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How to Do Keyword Research for SEO: A Beginner's Guide

Updated: August 24, 2022

Published: January 07, 2022

While Google keeps us on our toes with all the algorithm updates they keep rollin' out, one thing has stayed pretty consistent for inbound marketers looking to optimize their websites for search: keyword research.

In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is , why it’s important , how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy, and choose the right keywords for your website.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research helps you find which keywords are best to target and provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google.

The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help inform content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.

People use keywords to find solutions when conducting research online. So if your content is successful in getting in front of our audience as they conduct searches, you stand to gain more traffic. Therefore, you should be targeting those searches.

In addition, in the inbound methodology , we don't create content around what we want to tell people; we should be creating content around what people want to discover. In other words, our audience is coming to us.

This all starts with keyword research.

Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular reasons being:

Marketing Trend Insight

Conducting effective keyword research can provide you with insights into current marketing trends, and help you center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is in search of.

Traffic Growth

When you identify the best fitting keywords for the content you publish, the higher you'll rank in search engine results — the more traffic you’ll attract to your website.

Customer Acquisition

If your business has content that other business professionals are looking for, you can meet their needs and provide them with a call to action that will lead them into the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.

By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that most people in your audience want answers to.

Keywords vs. Topics

More and more, we hear how much SEO has evolved over just the last 10 years, and how unimportant keywords themselves have become to our ability to rank well for the searches people make every day.

And to some extent, this is true, but in the eyes of an SEO professional it’s a different approach. Rather, it's the intent behind that keyword, and whether or not a piece of content solves for that intent (we'll talk more about intent in just a minute).

But that doesn't mean keyword research is an outdated process. Let me explain:

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience. The operative term here is topics — by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

Keyword Research Template

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• Search Volume
• Keyword Difficulty

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Elements of Keyword Research

There are three main elements to pay attention to when conducting keyword research.

1. Relevance

Google ranks content for relevance. This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers' needs. In addition, your content must be the best resource out there for the query. After all, why would Google rank your content higher if it provides less value than other content that exists on the web?

2. Authority

Google will provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative. That means you must do all you can to become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, information content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks. If you're not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword's SERPs are loaded with heavy sources you can't compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional.

You may end up ranking on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, it will not result in traffic to your site. Kind of like setting up shop in a ghost town.

Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.

How to Research Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

I'm going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with a list of terms you should be targeting. That way, you'll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you actually care about.

Step 1: Make a list of important, relevant topics based on what you know about your business.

To kick off this process, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets. You'll come up with about 5-10 topic buckets you think are important to your business, and then you'll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.

If you're a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they're the topics that come up the most in sales conversations. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas — what types of topics would your target audience search that you'd want your business to get found for? If you were a company like HubSpot, for example — selling marketing software (which happens to have some awesome SEO tools ... but I digress), you might have general topic buckets like:

• "inbound marketing" (21K)
• "blogging" (19K)
• "email marketing" (30K)
• "lead generation" (17K)
• "SEO" (214K)
• "social media marketing" (71K)
• "marketing analytics" (6.2K)
• "marketing automation" (8.5K)

See those numbers in parentheses to the right of each keyword? That's their monthly search volume . This data allows you to gauge how important these topics are to your audience, and how many different sub-topics you might need to create content on to be successful with that keyword. To learn more about these sub-topics, we move on to step 2 ...

Step 2: Fill in those topic buckets with keywords.

Now that you have a few topic buckets you want to focus on, it's time to identify some keywords that fall into those buckets. These are keyword phrases you think are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target customer is probably conducting searches for those specific terms.

For instance, if I took that last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software company — "marketing automation" — I'd brainstorm some keyword phrases that I think people would type in related to that topic. Those might include:

• marketing automation tools
• how to use marketing automation software
• what is marketing automation?
• how to tell if I need marketing automation software
• lead nurturing
• email marketing automation
• top automation tools

And so on and so on. The point of this step isn't to come up with your final list of keyword phrases. You just want to end up with a brain dump of phrases you think potential customers might use to search for content related to that particular topic bucket. We'll narrow the lists down later in the process so you don't have something too unwieldy.

Although more and more keywords are getting encrypted by Google every day, another smart way to come up with keyword ideas is to figure out which keywords your website is already getting found for. To do this, you'll need website analytics software like Google Analytics or HubSpot's Sources report, available in the Traffic Analytics tool . Drill down into your website's traffic sources, and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people are using to arrive at your site.

Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have. And remember, if you're having trouble coming up with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues — those who are in Sales or Service and ask them what types of terms their prospects and customers use, or common questions they have. Those are often great starting points for keyword research.

Here at HubSpot , we use the Search Insights Report in this part of the process. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.

Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template

Download the Template

Step 3: Understand How Intent Affects Keyword Research and Analyze Accordingly.

Like I said in the previous section, user intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google. Today, it's more important that your web page addresses the problem a searcher intended to solve than simply carries the keyword the searcher used. So, how does this affect the keyword research you do?

It's easy to take keywords for face value, and unfortunately, keywords can have many different meanings beneath the surface. Because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra-careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.

Let's say, for example, you're researching the keyword "how to start a blog" for an article you want to create. "Blog" can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and what a searcher's intent is behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article. Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post? Or do they want to know how to actually launch a website domain for the purposes of blogging? If your content strategy is only targeting people interested in the latter, you'll need to make sure of the keyword's intent before committing to it.

To verify what a user's intent is in a keyword, it's a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself, and see what types of results come up. Make sure the type of content Google is closely related to what you'd intend to create for the keyword.

Step 4: Research related search terms.

This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it's a great way to fill out those lists.

If you're struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug in a keyword into Google. When you type in your phrase and scroll to the bottom of Google's results, you'll notice some suggestions for searches related to your original input. These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration.

Want a bonus? Type in some of those related search terms and look at their related search terms.

Step 5: Use keyword research tools to your advantage.

Keyword research and SEO tools can help you come up with more keyword ideas based on exact match keywords and phrase match keywords based on the ideas you've generated up to this point. Some of the most popular ones include:

• Ubersuggest
• Free Keyword Research Tool
• Google Keyword Planner
• Keywords Everywhere
• KeywordTool.io

Complete SEO Starter Pack

Featured resource, how to find and choose keywords for your website.

Once you have an idea of the keywords that you want to rank for, now it's time to refine your list based on the best ones for your strategy. Here's how:

Step 1. Use Google Keyword Planner to cut down your keyword list.

In Google’s Keyword Planner , you can get search volume and traffic estimates for keywords you're considering. Then, take the information you learn from Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.

Use the Keyword Planner to flag any terms on your list that have way too little (or way too much) search volume, and don't help you maintain a healthy mix like we talked about above. But before you delete anything, check out their trend history and projections in Google Trends. You can see whether, say, some low-volume terms might actually be something you should invest in now — and reap the benefits for later.

Or perhaps you're just looking at a list of terms that is way too unwieldy, and you have to narrow it down somehow ... Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upward, and are therefore worth more of your focus.

Step 2: Prioritize low-hanging fruit.

What we mean by prioritizing low-hanging fruit is to prioritize keywords that you have a chance of ranking for based on your website’s authority.

Large companies typically go after high search volume keywords, and since these brands are well established already, Google typically rewards them with authority over many topics.

You can also consider keywords that have little competition. Keywords that don’t already have multiple articles battling for the highest rank can afford you the spot by default — if there’s no one else trying to claim it.

Step 3: Check the monthly search volume (MSV) for keywords you’ve chosen.

You want to write content around what people want to discover, and checking MSV can help you do just that.

Monthly search volume is the number of times a search query or keyword is entered into search engines each monthly. Tools like searchvolume.io or Google Trends can help you find out the most searched keywords over related keyword clusters for free.

Step 4: Factor in SERP features as you choose keywords.

There’s several SERP feature snippets that Google will highlight if used correctly. An easy way to find out about them is to look up the keywords of your choosing and see what the first result looks like. But for a quick overview of the types of SERP featured snippets, we’ll summarize what they are here.

Image Packs

Image packs are search results displayed as a horizontal row of images that appear in an organic position. If there’s an image pack, you should write an image-heavy post to win placement in it.

Paragraph Snippets

Featured snippets, or paragraph snippets, are short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google search results for quick answers to common search queries. Understanding the searcher’s intent and providing succinct, concise answers can help in winning the placement.

List Snippets

List snippets, or listicles, are snippets made for posts outlining steps to do something from start to finish — often for “How To” searches. Making posts with direct, clear instructions and formatting can assist in winning this placement.

Video Snippets

Video snippets are short videos that Google will display at the top of a search query page in place of text featured snippets. Posting a video on both YouTube and your website can help you win this placement if tagged in the targeted keywords people are searching for.

Step 5: Check for a mix of head terms and long-tail keywords in each bucket.

Head terms are keyword phrases that are generally shorter and more generic — they're typically just one to three words in length, depending on who you talk to. Long-tail keywords , on the other hand, are longer keyword phrases usually containing three or more words.

It's important to check that you have a mix of head terms and long-tail terms because it'll give you a keyword strategy that's well balanced with long-term goals and short-term wins. That's because head terms are generally searched more frequently, making them often (not always, but often) much more competitive and harder to rank for than long-tail terms. Think about it: Without even looking up search volume or difficulty, which of the following terms do you think would be harder to rank for?

• how to write a great blog post

If you answered #2, you're absolutely right. But don't get discouraged. While head terms generally boast the most search volume (meaning greater potential to send you traffic), frankly, the traffic you'll get from the term "how to write a great blog post" is usually more desirable.

Because someone who is looking for something that specific is probably a much more qualified searcher for your product or service (presuming you're in the blogging space) than someone looking for something really generic. And because long-tail keywords tend to be more specific, it's usually easier to tell what people who search for those keywords are really looking for. Someone searching for the head term "blogging," on the other hand, could be searching it for a whole host of reasons unrelated to your business.

So check your keyword lists to make sure you have a healthy mix of head terms and long-tail keywords. You definitely want some quick wins that long-tail keywords will afford you, but you should also try to chip away at more difficult head terms over the long haul.

Step 6: See how competitors are ranking for these keywords.

Just because your competitor is doing something doesn’t mean you need to. The same goes for keywords. Just because a keyword is important to your competitor, doesn’t mean it's important to you. However, understanding what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you give your list of keywords another evaluation.

If your competitor is ranking for certain keywords that are on your list, too, it definitely makes sense to work on improving your ranking for those. However, don’t ignore the ones your competitors don’t seem to care about. This could be a great opportunity for you to own market share on important terms, too.

Understanding the balance of terms that might be a little more difficult due to competition, versus those terms that are a little more realistic, will help you maintain a similar balance that the mix of long-tail and head terms allows. Remember, the goal is to end up with a list of keywords that provide some quick wins but also helps you make progress toward bigger, more challenging SEO goals.

How do you figure out what keywords your competitors are ranking for, you ask? Aside from manually searching for keywords in an incognito browser and seeing what positions your competitors are in, Arel="noopener" target="_blank" hrefs allows you to run a number of free reports that show you the top keywords for the domain you enter. This is a quick way to get a sense of the types of terms your competitors are ranking for.

Best Keywords for SEO

Understand that there's no "best" keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it's up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic.

The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into account relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:

• The level of competition you're up against.
• Your ability to produce content that exceeds in quality what's currently ranking.

And You’ve Got the Right Keywords for Your Website SEO

You now have a list of keywords that'll help you focus on the right topics for your business, and get you some short-term and long-term gains.

Be sure to re-evaluate these keywords every few months — once a quarter is a good benchmark, but some businesses like to do it even more often than that. As you gain even more authority in the SERPs, you'll find that you can add more and more keywords to your lists to tackle as you work on maintaining your current presence, and then growing in new areas on top of that.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Keyword Research (Bonus: Best Keyword Research Tools Compared)

Imagine getting over a quarter million visitors to your site every month. We did it thanks to keyword research:

That screenshot is from one of my sites called The Wandering RV . My wife and I grew this site from a brand new site to a quarter million monthly visits in just three years with less than 30 articles.

Yes, you also have to create great content and build links to that content, but those actions come AFTER you know the best keywords to target. Every successful SEO campaign begins with keyword research ; skip this step at your peril.

Ready to get started?

How to Do Keyword Research (Quick Steps):

Good keywords make or brake a successful SEO marketing campaign. Here’s the key steps to get started with keyword research :

Step 1 : Find keyword ideas based on key terms, related search, long-tail keywords, and LSI. Step 2 : Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume. Step 3 : Determine user intent.

In today’s guide, I share a step-by-step guide to keyword research that covers not just how to find hundreds of great keywords, but also how to tell which ones can move the needle for your business and which aren’t worth your time. Let’s dive in!

Keyword Research Fundamentals

Before I talk about the exact steps to find keywords for your SEO campaign, let’s briefly cover what keyword research is and why you should care.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the act of finding and vetting keywords to target in an SEO campaign.

This is done using a number of free and/or paid tools that show you what people are searching for on Google and other search engines .

Suggested in-depth guides: Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools .

The Role of Keyword Research in Digital Marketing

As you’ll learn in the next section, the quality of your keywords is the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a waste of time. The keywords you pick will determine your SEO marketing strategy from beginning to end.

Let’s see how.

How Important is Keyword Research? (Don’t Skip This!)

SEO can be complex, but it boils down to three fundamentals:

• Keyword Research
• Link building

Of those three, keyword research is the most important.

Why? Because you can create the best content and build incredible links that score you #1 Google rankings and still get zero benefits in terms of business growth or revenue if you target the wrong keywords.

For example, let’s say you want to write some content on your site’s blog so you can show up on Google’s first page. You have an idea of a blog post and think you have a good keyword to target. You make amazing content, build links to it through guest posting and email outreach (here’s how to find anyone’s email address ), and end up on the first page of Google . You’re getting hundreds of visits every month…

But your income from that article remains a big fat $0.

That’s because you didn’t properly research your keyword ahead of time. You may have found a keyword, but finding a keyword and doing keyword research are very different things.

Properly researching a keyword means understanding it’s income potential, how competitive it is, and even the exact kind of content you need to create to be able to rank for it. You’ll see what I mean by the end of this guide.

In a nutshell: Proper keyword research can be the difference between a wildly successful SEO campaign that makes your business tons of money and an utter waste of time and money.

Search Volume and Long Tail Keywords

The first concept to understand about keywords is search volume .

This is what most people look at when they first start researching keywords, and also one of the worst metrics to look at.

A high search volume is very deceiving for two reasons:

• The raw number of people searching for something has very little to do with how much you can actually earn from that traffic. For example, if you rank for a keyword that gets 10,000 searches per month, but if people are just looking for information and aren’t ready to buy (hint: you’d need to define the search intent. More below.), that does nothing for your bottom line.
• Just because 10,000 people search for a keyword doesn’t mean all 10,000 people actually click on a result. Take a look at the keyword “How old is Biden”, for example—it gets 51,000 searches per month, but only 17% of those people actually click on anything. That’s because people get the answer right on Google and don’t need to click through to find it.

On the other hand, a low search volume doesn’t mean a keyword is bad or that the number you see is the number of visitors you’ll get. Virtually all pages that rank on Google for one keyword also rank for dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of other keywords.

These other keywords are usually synonyms and long-tail variants. There are also Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords, which I get to in a section below.

For example, take a look at this post that my wife, Kayla, wrote for The Wandering RV. She was targeting the keyword “best camping gear”, which gets around 2,700 searches per month according to Ahrefs. But as you can see in the screenshot below, it also ranks for 1,912 other keywords and even ranks on page one for “camping gear” at 32,000 searches per month!

The point of the story? While search volume is an important metric, you shouldn’t base your target keywords solely on how many people are searching for it every month (unless you’re only focused on brand awareness and/or advertising revenue on a per-impression basis).

Search Intent

Search intent is exactly what it sounds like—the intent of the person searching for a given keyword. It’s similar to the marketing concept “buyer intent”.

In other words: What is the user looking for?

Are they searching for an item they are ready to buy right now? Are they doing research before they make a purchase decision? Or are they just looking for information that has nothing to do with buying anything, but rather with a problem they may need a solution to?

Let’s look at an example of each.

High Buying Intent : A high buying intent keyword may be a product name, such as “RV rental las vegas”. If you type that into Google and look at the results, you see a bunch of ads for RV rentals and a map showing Las Vegas RV rental companies. Someone searching this is likely ready to buy, or very close.

Research Intent : These are keywords where people are still doing research on solutions, but will likely buy soon. “Best” and “Review” keywords often fall into this category, such as “best RV rental companies”.

Informational Intent : These keywords are for people strictly looking for information and aren’t ready or even thinking about buying anything. The “how old is Biden” example falls under this category. Another example that fits with RV rentals might be something like “how to travel the country with a pet”.

However, don’t think that you should only go after buying intent keywords. Informational keywords can help you build your email list and get people into your marketing funnel to eventually buy from you.

Search intent is also important to know because it affects what content ranks on Google. If you try to create a landing page to rank for an informational keyword when Google is ranking long-form blog content, you probably won’t rank even with perfect on-page SEO and plenty of backlinks because it’s simply not what the user is searching for.

For example, let’s say you want to rank for “small campers”. So you create a guide to owning small campers. However, when we look at Google, we can see that people aren’t looking for a guide, but rather, they’re looking for a list of small campers to buy.

That’s why even after you find good keyword ideas , you should always manually type them into Google and see what’s currently ranking to get an idea of what you need to create. Don’t write a massive guide when people just want a quick answer and don’t try to rank a blog post when people are looking to buy a product.

The Role of LSI and Synonyms

Earlier, I mentioned LSI keywords. This stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, and it’s a fancy way for Google to say “synonyms and related keywords”. They’re words that are commonly found together within a single topic and are semantically related to each other.

They’re important to tell the search engines what your content is about since there can be multiple meanings to the same keywords.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about cars. There are five different potential “cars” you could be talking about:

• Cars, the vehicles
• Cars, the animated Disney movie
• CARS, the Canadian Association for Rally Sports
• CARs, the Canadian Aviation Regulations
• (The) Cars, the American 1970s music band

How does Google know which version of “cars” you’re talking about? By LSI keywords! Take a look:

• Using the words “vehicle”, “used”, “new”, “buy”, “sell”, etc.
• Using the words “film”, “movie”, “Disney”, etc.
• Using the words “association”, “rally”, “sports”, etc.
• Using the words “aviation”, “regulation”, “administration”, etc.

While LSI keywords don’t necessarily matter during your keyword research, they are important when developing your actual content. You should include various LSI keywords naturally in your content without stuffing them, including in headings and image alt text.

You can find LSI keywords (and learn more about them) with a tool like LSI Graph .

How Do You Do Keyword Research? (Step-by-Step Guide)

Alright, now that you have a firm understanding of the important metrics behind keyword research, it’s time to actually find your very own keywords! There are three steps I follow when I’m doing keyword research for a new site, with an optional, more advanced fourth step:

• Find keyword ideas
• Check the TRUE keyword difficulty and search volume
• Determine their search intent
• (Optional) Find & utilize keyword silos

Let’s dive in!

Step 1: Find Keyword Ideas

Finding keyword ideas is the easy part. There are loads of tools that will spit out hundreds of ideas at the click of a button. It’s vetting them that takes effort, but we’ll get to that.

For now, go take a look at the “Best Keyword Research Tool” section below and pick your poison. I’ll be using Ahrefs in the examples because it’s my favorite tool and has all the bells and whistles, but the other tools can work as well.

My favorite way to find great keyword opportunities is spying on my competition. You can do this by plugging their site into any keyword tool and look at their keywords. Ahrefs has a nifty tool called the Content Gap Analysis.

Here’s how it works:

1. Plug your site into Ahrefs, then click the Content Gap link in the left-hand menu.

2. Plug in 1-10 competitors who are ranking on Google for keywords you want to rank for. You can find them by Googling those keywords and grabbing the URLs off of Google or by using Ahrefs’ Competing domains tool right above the Content gap link. Run the tool.

3. From here, you can export the list to an excel spreadsheet if you want. I like to comb through the list right in Ahrefs. If I see a keyword I might want to target, I open it in a new tab and add it to a keyword list using the + Add to button in the top right.

If you don’t have access to Ahrefs or another keyword tool that allows you to see competitor’s keywords, you can also use a tool like Keyword Shitter to give you a ton of ideas, then vet them using other free tools such as Uber Suggest.

Step 2: Check The TRUE Keyword Difficulty and Search Volume

Once you have a list of keyword ideas you’re comfortable working with (I aim for 50-100 at a time but you can do far more), it’s time to see which are even worth pursuing based on keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume.

There’s just one caveat… the search volume and KD you see in most keyword research tools are usually way off. KD in Ahrefs is solely based off the number of linking domains to the top results, which isn’t a 100% accurate depiction of the true difficulty to rank for a keyword.

This is because SEO is a complex beast, and things like domain rating (which I’ll cover shortly) and internal linking can have a massive impact on rankings. Backlinks are only part of the picture.

And the search volume? That’s not including LSI and long-tail keywords!

Remember that camping gear example I showed you at the beginning of this article that ranks for over 1,900 keywords? The main keyword only had 2,700 searches per month, yet the article gets over 5,000 visits per month. That’s because it’s ranking for other keywords besides the main keyword.

So if you see a keyword with 200 searches per month, chances are it’s really more like 500 or 1,000 if you include the related keywords that you’ll rank for.

To determine true search volume, grab the #1 result on Google for the keyword and plug it into Ahrefs or Uber Suggest to see how much traffic that page actually gets. That should give you a more accurate picture of the search volume for a given keyword.

Here’s the traffic for the #1 ranking page for “tiny campers”, a keyword that gets ~3,400 searches per month:

See how the page gets over 10k traffic, despite the main keyword getting a third of that? That’s true search volume potential.

The other metric, keyword difficulty, is also not 100% accurate. But figuring out true difficulty is usually as easy as looking at the top pages domain authority (DA), or domain rating (DR) if you’re using Ahrefs. Let me explain.

If a keyword has a difficulty score of 8, but the top ranking pages are all DR 80+, ranking your site for those keywords may be difficult if you have a low DR, despite the low difficulty score.

My advice is to aim for keywords with a 30 KD or lower if you’re under a 40 DR, then branch up as you build more links and gain a higher authority. As your DR climbs, your internal links are worth more “link juice” (or pass more “page authority” depending on what source you listen to).

But this isn’t an article on technical SEO, so I’ll leave it at that for now!

Step 3: Determine Search Intent

At this point, you should have a pretty decent list of keywords with a difficulty you’re comfortable tackling and a search volume potential you’d be happy to capture. Now it’s time to figure out what people actually want when they search for these terms and whether or not it fits in with your marketing and revenue goals.

This part is as simple as Googling each keyword on your list and looking at the top 3-5 results. Review their meta title and description, click on them to view the page, and check out the angle they took on the page.

• Are they mainly listicle posts? How-tos? Ultimate guides ? A landing page? Something else?
• How do they seem to be monetizing the page ? Are they using display ads ? Selling products as a solution to the problem? Affiliate marketing ? Just capturing emails and not actually selling anything?
• Take a look at the comments. Are people asking questions that weren’t answered in the article? Do they seem happy, angry, or neutral?

All of these questions will help you dial in on the type of post/page you need to create, how you can monetize it (or use it to capture emails/push notification subscribers/social followers), and what you can do to improve it.

As you’re going through each keyword, keep your answers to these questions in a spreadsheet or word document to keep track of which ones you’re interested in pursuing. Your final list is the list you can start pursuing!

To give you a better idea of how to determine search intent, here are a few examples courtesy of this Moz post :

Informational Intent:

• [product name]
• what is [product name]
• how does [product name] work
• how do I use [product name]

Commercial Intent (AKA Research Intent):

• best [product name]
• [product name] reviews
• compare [product name]
• what is the top [product name]
• [colour/style/size] [product name]

Transactional Intent (AKA Buying Intent):

• how much does [product name] cost
• [product name] in [location]
• order [product name] online
• [product name] near me
• affordable [brand name] [product name]

This graph from Ahrefs may also help:

Now take your list and go crank out some content! Or, you can follow one last step.

Step 4: (Advanced) Find & Utilize Keyword Silos

If you really want to do well, you can optionally take it one step further and look for keyword silos to create corresponding content silos on your site.

A keyword silo is a list of highly related keywords that you can create content around to interlink between on your site (also called the “hub and spoke” method). Here’s a visual I created to help you understand:

Essentially, you create a hub page targeting the primary head term you want to rank for, then create “spoke” pages based on related and long-tail keywords.

For example, while doing keyword research for my wife Kayla’s vegan food blog, I found a series of related keywords asking “Is ___ vegan”. People wanted to know if common foods, such as bagels, donuts, or Oreos are vegan.

To rank for these keywords, we created this hub page which links to all of her “Is ___ vegan” articles. These articles all link to one another, as well as back to the main hub page.

This inter-linking is called content siloing, and it works so well for two reasons:

• Because all the pages interlink to one another, if you build links to any of the pages, it improves page authority across all of the other pages.
• Google uses relevancy in its algorithm, and since these topics are all highly relevant to one another, it can improve your rankings further.

So how do you find keyword silos? There is no silver bullet solution — you have to be good at picking up on patterns and noticing relevancy. However, there is one trick you can use to try and find them: books.

Look for books on your topic on Amazon and browse the table of contents. Oftentimes, books are full of keyword silos: that’s what makes them a book! Think of the binding as the hub page and the chapters as the spoke pages.

Of course, as you can see in the example above, these keywords aren’t exactly what people are searching for on Google. People aren’t typing “vegan out in the world”, but rather “how to eat vegan at restaurants” or “how to eat vegan at family gatherings”. So you may have to do some sleuthing to figure out the keyword that corresponds with the chapter title in the books you find.

Once you find a potential silo, be sure to run the keywords through steps 2 and 3 before you commit to it! Just because you found a silo, doesn’t mean you should pursue it. Think logically about how all that content will fit into your business and how you can expand on it in the future.

What Is The Best Keyword Research Tool?

There are dozens, if not hundreds of keyword research tools on the market today. Some are extremely unique, but most are just slightly different takes on the same idea. So what’s the best one? Let’s break it down by free and paid tools.

Free Keyword Research Tools

There are two free keyword research tools I’ve used and recommend:

Ubersuggest

Keyword shitter.

Let’s put on hold all the conversions about Neil Patel for a second. This tool does its job and, if you’re on a budget, it can work to get you started with SEO.

Ubersuggest is basically a free, scaled-down version of Ahrefs or Moz. It lets you spy on competitor’s backlinks, see what keywords they’re ranking for, and do some decent keyword research. If you’re doing SEO on a budget, it can get the job done.

Keyword Shitter is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You type in a keyword and get hundreds of keyword suggestions. It’s great if you just need tons of ideas, but it mostly only spits out related keywords to the one you typed in, not unique, separate ideas.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Now we’re getting into the big-boy (or girl) tools! If you’re serious about SEO and you have the budget, these are the tools you want to use.

Keyword Insights

Keywords everywhere.

Ahrefs is hands-down my favorite SEO tool; not just for keyword research, but also for link-building, rank tracking, coming up with content ideas, and more. It has all the bells and whistles and is easily the best all-around SEO tool on the market. However, it comes at a steep price, with just the basic tool being $99 per month.

SEMrush is another great keyword research tool. It’s more affordable than Ahrefs, but it doesn’t have quite as many features. It’s more geared towards search engine marketing and PPC (thus the SEM in SEMrush). However, if you want a great paid tool but don’t want to pay the premium on Ahrefs, it’s a valid option. It even lets you try out the product for free!

Keyword Insights claims to be “the smartest way to group keywords and classify search intent at scale”… and with good reason. The tool utilizes geo-specific, live search engine result page data to cluster keywords into similar groups whilst also working out the search intent behind them.

A user simply uploads a list of keywords (as many as you’d like) and the tool will spit out a preformatted Google sheets document with the clustered keywords and the intent pulled through. Its most recent update also sorts the grouped keywords into “top-level themes” so you can see what their content hubs should be and what their spoke content might look like. The insights will also tell you which keywords you can target a single page with, or which need to be broken into multiple pages.

Keywords Everywhere is an awesome tool that used to be free and now is credit-based. The tool shows you search volume, competition, and average CPC right on Google whenever you type something in. It also shows you stats on related keywords and the “people also search” keywords. Regardless of which other tools you use, I highly recommend grabbing this one.

Want more SEO tools? Check out Kinsta’s list of must-have SEO plugins for WordPress .

Suggested Stack

So what keyword research tools should you get? My suggested stack is Ahrefs and Keywords Everywhere. Ahrefs is a complete SEO software that will help you rank your site, not just find keywords. And Keywords Everywhere lets you see search volume and keyword ideas any time you’re searching something on Google. Plus it’s free, so what’s not to like?

Here’s a quick recap of everything we’ve covered:

• Keyword research is extremely important to any SEO campaign and should not be skipped or taken lightly.
• Search volume and keyword difficulty can be deceiving. Do some deeper research by typing the keyword into Google and reviewing the results before you make a decision.
• Don’t be fooled by low search volume. Check the true search volume by reviewing the top pages search traffic using Ubersuggest or Ahrefs.
• Search intent is king. Make sure the content you’re creating matches the content people want to see (and what Google is already showing).
• Look for keyword silos. They’re can be a shortcut to ranking your pages faster.

And that’s all there is to it! If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below or shoot me an email. For more help with SEO, click here to read my step-by-step guide and this awesome in-depth guide on how to drive more traffic to your website.

Bill is a content marketing and SEO expert with over 6 years' experience. When he's not nerding out over Google, he loves traveling, playing video games, and spending time with his wife.

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Keyword Research is predominantly a statistical analysis of trending interests that are expressed by internet searches.

Although I realize the importance of said statistics, I am “right brained” and have struggled with being interested in numbers, all of my life. When I look at a keyword research result, the numbers tell me nothing in terms that I can understand. In fact, I’m totally bored by the concept.

I have read many posts, papers, and websites about the subject, and although not many agree with the same approach, they basically are saying the same things. b-o-r-i-n-g!

What is stopping a keyword research tool (once the stats have been gathered) from asking what it is that you sell, and then saying… well, to sell that, try concentrating on this…, and spare me the statistical analysis.

Really helpful article. Especially for the newcomers who want to be an SEO expert.

Thanks, Eva! Glad you enjoyed it. :)

What if I’m a business owner with a brand new site with no blog posts yet? How would I start this if I’m new to KW research? Are there services (real people services) that help with this or do it with me?

Hey, Johnny!

No problem! The steps with the content gap analysis are the same – you just have to manually find your competitors rather than using a tool. To do that, Google some keywords you think you want to rank for and grab the URLs of the top-ranking sites that monetize their sites similarly to you (whether that’s through ads, affiliate marketing, or selling similar products).

Paste those URLs into the content gap tool and follow along from there! Hope this helps! :)

Awesome! i am using this article to share with my students while i m teaching keyword research.

Lots of great information here ! Just wanting to introduce to a free alternative to Keywords everywhere, a chrome extension – WhatsmySERP.com/everywhere it gives you unlimited searches for volume and CPC.

Our team has launched this tool and it already has 5 star reviews and 20k+ users. I’d love for you to try it and see what your thoughts are.

I’d love to know your thoughts :)

This article is really really helpful for the newcomers. specially the one who recently started a blog or a website and Also, wants to Learn SEO.

The thing with the search intent is really important!

This was really what i was searching. perfect timing, thanks Bill such an valuable post.

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100+ Research Vocabulary Words & Phrases

The academic community can be conservative when it comes to enforcing academic writing style , but your writing shouldn’t be so boring that people lose interest midway through the first paragraph! Given that competition is at an all-time high for academics looking to publish their papers, we know you must be anxious about what you can do to improve your publishing odds.

To be sure, your research must be sound, your paper must be structured logically, and the different manuscript sections must contain the appropriate information. But your research must also be clearly explained. Clarity obviously depends on the correct use of English, and there are many common mistakes that you should watch out for, for example when it comes to articles , prepositions , word choice , and even punctuation . But even if you are on top of your grammar and sentence structure, you can still make your writing more compelling (or more boring) by using powerful verbs and phrases (vs the same weaker ones over and over). So, how do you go about achieving the latter?

Below are a few ways to breathe life into your writing.

1. Analyze Vocabulary Using Word Clouds

Have you heard of “Wordles”? A Wordle is a visual representation of words, with the size of each word being proportional to the number of times it appears in the text it is based on. The original company website seems to have gone out of business, but there are a number of free word cloud generation sites that allow you to copy and paste your draft manuscript into a text box to quickly discover how repetitive your writing is and which verbs you might want to replace to improve your manuscript.

Seeing a visual word cloud of your work might also help you assess the key themes and points readers will glean from your paper. If the Wordle result displays words you hadn’t intended to emphasize, then that’s a sign you should revise your paper to make sure readers will focus on the right information.

As an example, below is a Wordle of our article entitled, “ How to Choose the Best title for Your Journal Manuscript .” You can see how frequently certain terms appear in that post, based on the font size of the text. The keywords, “titles,” “journal,” “research,” and “papers,” were all the intended focus of our blog post.

2. Study Language Patterns of Similarly Published Works

Study the language pattern found in the most downloaded and cited articles published by your target journal. Understanding the journal’s editorial preferences will help you write in a style that appeals to the publication’s readership.

Another way to analyze the language of a target journal’s papers is to use Wordle (see above). If you copy and paste the text of an article related to your research topic into the applet, you can discover the common phrases and terms the paper’s authors used.

For example, if you were writing a paper on  links between smoking and cancer , you might look for a recent review on the topic, preferably published by your target journal. Copy and paste the text into Wordle and examine the key phrases to see if you’ve included similar wording in your own draft. The Wordle result might look like the following, based on the example linked above.

If you are not sure yet where to publish and just want some generally good examples of descriptive verbs, analytical verbs, and reporting verbs that are commonly used in academic writing, then have a look at this list of useful phrases for research papers .

3. Use More Active and Precise Verbs

Have you heard of synonyms? Of course you have. But have you looked beyond single-word replacements and rephrased entire clauses with stronger, more vivid ones? You’ll find this task is easier to do if you use the active voice more often than the passive voice . Even if you keep your original sentence structure, you can eliminate weak verbs like “be” from your draft and choose more vivid and precise action verbs. As always, however, be careful about using only a thesaurus to identify synonyms. Make sure the substitutes fit the context in which you need a more interesting or “perfect” word. Online dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster and the Cambridge Dictionary are good sources to check entire phrases in context in case you are unsure whether a synonym is a good match for a word you want to replace. 

To help you build a strong arsenal of commonly used phrases in academic papers, we’ve compiled a list of synonyms you might want to consider when drafting or editing your research paper . While we do not suggest that the phrases in the “Original Word/Phrase” column should be completely avoided, we do recommend interspersing these with the more dynamic terms found under “Recommended Substitutes.”

A. Describing the scope of a current project or prior research

B. outlining a topic’s background, c. describing the analytical elements of a paper, d. discussing results, e. discussing methods, f. explaining the impact of new research, wordvice writing resources.

For additional information on how to tighten your sentences (e.g., eliminate wordiness and use active voice to greater effect), you can try Wordvice’s FREE APA Citation Generator and learn more about how to proofread and edit your paper to ensure your work is free of errors.

Before submitting your manuscript to academic journals, be sure to use our free AI proofreader to catch errors in grammar, spelling, and mechanics. And use our English editing services from Wordvice, including academic editing services , cover letter editing , manuscript editing , and research paper editing services to make sure your work is up to a high academic level.

We also have a collection of other useful articles for you, for example on how to strengthen your writing style , how to avoid fillers to write more powerful sentences , and how to eliminate prepositions and avoid nominalizations . Additionally, get advice on all the other important aspects of writing a research paper on our academic resources pages .

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Key research terms.

bias: any influence that may distort the results of a research study and lead to error; the loss of balance and accuracy in the use of research methods.

case study: presentation of data about selected settings, persons, groups or events. Data can have been gathered using variety of different research methods (e.g., questionnaire, observation, historical or literary analysis). Is chiefly descriptive and analytical, usually based on qualitative data, though statistics such as survey findings may be included.

causal relationship: relationship between variables where movements in one or more variable(s) are held to cause changes in the other (s).

coded data: data are put into groups or categories, such as age groups, and each category is given a code number. Data are usually coded for convenience, speed, and handling to enable statistical analysis. construct: a mental state that can’t be directly observed or manipulated, such as love, intelligence, hunger, feeling warm, and aggression; a concept developed (constructed) for describing relations among or between phenomena or for other research purposes.

construct validity: the degree to which the study actually measures and manipulates the elements that the researcher claims to be measuring and manipulating. If the operational definitions of the constructs are poor, the study will not have good construct validity. For example, a test claiming to measure “aggressiveness” would not have construct validity if it really measured assertiveness.

internal validity: the degree to which the study demonstrates that a particular factor caused a change in behavior. If a study lacks internal validity, the researcher may falsely believe that a factor causes an effect when it really doesn’t. Most studies involving humans do not have internal validity because they can’t rule out the possibility that some other factor may have been responsible for the effect.

controls: processes used to make uniform or constant the conditions for carrying out an investigation.

control group: in experimental research, the group or item which does not receive the treatment or intervention under investigation and is used to compare outcomes with the one that does. correlation: the extent to which two or more factors vary in relationship to one another; the extent of association between two or more variables. Correlation does not equal causation. For example, might suggest relationship between academic success and self-esteem, but cannot prove that a change in first variable causes a change in second variable. correlation coefficient: a measure of the degree of relationship between two variables. It usually lies between +1 (showing a perfect positive relationship), 0 (showing no relationship), to -1.0 (showing a perfect negative relationship). dependent variable: variable thought to be determined or influenced by others.

experiment: a special type of study (not all studies are experiments!) that allows researchers to determine the cause of an effect; usually involves randomly assigning participants to groups.

external validity: the degree to which the results of the study can be generalized to other places, people, or times.

hypothesis: a proposition which research sets out to prove or disprove: “experimental” where the hypothesis is a positive statement, or “null” where statement contains a negative.

independent variable: a variable that researcher believes precedes, influences or predicts the dependent variable.

informed consent: giving potential participants information about the study, especially in terms of factors that might lead them to refuse to be in the study, before they decide whether to participate. Institutional Review Board (IRB): a committee of at least five members--one of whom must be a nonscientist--that review proposed research and monitor approved research in an effort to protect human research participants.

literature review: often the first step in the research process, it is a review of the literature on and around the subject of inquiry. Its main purposes are to avoid duplication, to identify gaps in research and to place the researcher’s approach within the work and approaches of others.

primary/secondary sources: primary sources are original firsthand records or materials relating to an event or happening. They may include, for example, official minutes of meetings, diaries, verbatim transcripts of interviews, completed questionnaires or records of the results of experiments. Secondary sources are accounts bases upon these, which usually offer an interpretation, commentary, analysis, or restatement of the primary sources. They can include, for example, books, journal articles, and conference papers.

qualitative data: information gathered in narrative, non-numerical form (e.g., transcript of an interview). Qualitative research used for exploratory (hypothesis-generating) purposes or explaining puzzling quantitative results, while quantitative methods are used to test hypotheses.

quantitative data: information gathered in numerical form. reliability: extent to which the same result will be repeated/achieved by using the same measure.

statistical significance: tests used to estimate the likelihood that the finding in a sample is true of the population from which the sample is derived and not due to chance.

simple experiment: used to establish cause and effect, so this type often used to determine effect of treatment. Participants randomly assigned to either control group with no treatment, while the experimental group receives treatment.

validity: extent to which research findings can be said to be accurate and reliable; degree to which conclusions are justified. Internal validity is extent to which researchers can show that they have evidence for the statements they make; external validity refers to a study’s generalizability.

50 Useful Academic Words & Phrases for Research

Like all good writing, writing an academic paper takes a certain level of skill to express your ideas and arguments in a way that is natural and that meets a level of academic sophistication. The terms, expressions, and phrases you use in your research paper must be of an appropriate level to be submitted to academic journals.

Therefore, authors need to know which verbs , nouns , and phrases to apply to create a paper that is not only easy to understand, but which conveys an understanding of academic conventions. Using the correct terminology and usage shows journal editors and fellow researchers that you are a competent writer and thinker, while using non-academic language might make them question your writing ability, as well as your critical reasoning skills.

What are academic words and phrases?

One way to understand what constitutes good academic writing is to read a lot of published research to find patterns of usage in different contexts. However, it may take an author countless hours of reading and might not be the most helpful advice when faced with an upcoming deadline on a manuscript draft.

Briefly, “academic” language includes terms, phrases, expressions, transitions, and sometimes symbols and abbreviations that help the pieces of an academic text fit together. When writing an academic text–whether it is a book report, annotated bibliography, research paper, research poster, lab report, research proposal, thesis, or manuscript for publication–authors must follow academic writing conventions. You can often find handy academic writing tips and guidelines by consulting the style manual of the text you are writing (i.e., APA Style , MLA Style , or Chicago Style ).

However, sometimes it can be helpful to have a list of academic words and expressions like the ones in this article to use as a “cheat sheet” for substituting the better term in a given context.

How to Choose the Best Academic Terms

You can think of writing “academically” as writing in a way that conveys one’s meaning effectively but concisely. For instance, while the term “take a look at” is a perfectly fine way to express an action in everyday English, a term like “analyze” would certainly be more suitable in most academic contexts. It takes up fewer words on the page and is used much more often in published academic papers.

You can use one handy guideline when choosing the most academic term: When faced with a choice between two different terms, use the Latinate version of the term. Here is a brief list of common verbs versus their academic counterparts:

Although this can be a useful tip to help academic authors, it can be difficult to memorize dozens of Latinate verbs. Using an AI paraphrasing tool or proofreading tool can help you instantly find more appropriate academic terms, so consider using such revision tools while you draft to improve your writing.

Top 50 Words and Phrases for Different Sections in a Research Paper

The “Latinate verb rule” is just one tool in your arsenal of academic writing, and there are many more out there. But to make the process of finding academic language a bit easier for you, we have compiled a list of 50 vital academic words and phrases, divided into specific categories and use cases, each with an explanation and contextual example.

Best Words and Phrases to use in an Introduction section

1. historically.

An adverb used to indicate a time perspective, especially when describing the background of a given topic.

2. In recent years

A temporal marker emphasizing recent developments, often used at the very beginning of your Introduction section.

3. It is widely acknowledged that

A “form phrase” indicating a broad consensus among researchers and/or the general public. Often used in the literature review section to build upon a foundation of established scientific knowledge.

4. There has been growing interest in

Highlights increasing attention to a topic and tells the reader why your study might be important to this field of research.

5. Preliminary observations indicate

Shares early insights or findings while hedging on making any definitive conclusions. Modal verbs like may , might , and could are often used with this expression.

6. This study aims to

Describes the goal of the research and is a form phrase very often used in the research objective or even the hypothesis of a research paper .

7. Despite its significance

Highlights the importance of a matter that might be overlooked. It is also frequently used in the rationale of the study section to show how your study’s aim and scope build on previous studies.

8. While numerous studies have focused on

Indicates the existing body of work on a topic while pointing to the shortcomings of certain aspects of that research. Helps focus the reader on the question, “What is missing from our knowledge of this topic?” This is often used alongside the statement of the problem in research papers.

9. The purpose of this research is

A form phrase that directly states the aim of the study.

10. The question arises (about/whether)

Poses a query or research problem statement for the reader to acknowledge.

Best Words and Phrases for Clarifying Information

11. in other words.

Introduces a synopsis or the rephrasing of a statement for clarity. This is often used in the Discussion section statement to explain the implications of the study .

12. That is to say

Provides clarification, similar to “in other words.”

13. To put it simply

Simplifies a complex idea, often for a more general readership.

14. To clarify

Specifically indicates to the reader a direct elaboration of a previous point.

15. More specifically

Narrows down a general statement from a broader one. Often used in the Discussion section to clarify the meaning of a specific result.

16. To elaborate

Expands on a point made previously.

17. In detail

Indicates a deeper dive into information.

Points out specifics. Similar meaning to “specifically” or “especially.”

19. This means that

Explains implications and/or interprets the meaning of the Results section .

20. Moreover

Expands a prior point to a broader one that shows the greater context or wider argument.

Best Words and Phrases for Giving Examples

21. for instance.

Provides a specific case that fits into the point being made.

22. As an illustration

Demonstrates a point in full or in part.

23. To illustrate

Shows a clear picture of the point being made.

24. For example

Presents a particular instance. Same meaning as “for instance.”

25. Such as

Lists specifics that comprise a broader category or assertion being made.

26. Including

Offers examples as part of a larger list.

27. Notably

Adverb highlighting an important example. Similar meaning to “especially.”

28. Especially

Adverb that emphasizes a significant instance.

29. In particular

Draws attention to a specific point.

30. To name a few

Indicates examples than previously mentioned are about to be named.

Best Words and Phrases for Comparing and Contrasting

31. however.

Introduces a contrasting idea.

32. On the other hand

Highlights an alternative view or fact.

33. Conversely

Indicates an opposing or reversed idea to the one just mentioned.

34. Similarly

Shows likeness or parallels between two ideas, objects, or situations.

35. Likewise

Indicates agreement with a previous point.

36. In contrast

Draws a distinction between two points.

37. Nevertheless

Introduces a contrasting point, despite what has been said.

38. Whereas

Compares two distinct entities or ideas.

Indicates a contrast between two points.

Signals an unexpected contrast.

Best Words and Phrases to use in a Conclusion section

41. in conclusion.

Signifies the beginning of the closing argument.

42. To sum up

Offers a brief summary.

43. In summary

Signals a concise recap.

44. Ultimately

Reflects the final or main point.

45. Overall

Gives a general concluding statement.

Indicates a resulting conclusion.

Demonstrates a logical conclusion.

48. Therefore

Connects a cause and its effect.

49. It can be concluded that

Clearly states a conclusion derived from the data.

50. Taking everything into consideration

Reflects on all the discussed points before concluding.

Edit Your Research Terms and Phrases Before Submission

Using these phrases in the proper places in your research papers can enhance the clarity, flow, and persuasiveness of your writing, especially in the Introduction section and Discussion section, which together make up the majority of your paper’s text in most academic domains.

However, it's vital to ensure each phrase is contextually appropriate to avoid redundancy or misinterpretation. As mentioned at the top of this article, the best way to do this is to 1) use an AI text editor , free AI paraphrasing tool or AI proofreading tool while you draft to enhance your writing, and 2) consult a professional proofreading service like Wordvice, which has human editors well versed in the terminology and conventions of the specific subject area of your academic documents.

For more detailed information on using AI tools to write a research paper and the best AI tools for research , check out the Wordvice AI Blog .

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6 Strategic Concepts That Set High-Performing Companies Apart

• Kaihan Krippendorff

Lessons from Microsoft, NVIDIA, Netflix, Tesla, and others.

Strategic concepts come in and out of fashion as the needs and dynamics of the marketplace change. Research and analysis of today’s landscape identifies six key strategic concepts that set outperforming companies apart: Borrow someone’s road, partner with a third party, reveal your strategy, be good, let the competition go, and adopt small scale attacks.

At the close of 2023, the California-based chip company Nvidia announced yet another quarter of record sales — an achievement that came hot on the heels of its entry to the elite club of U.S. enterprises with a $1 trillion market valuation earlier in the year. The company, whose success has been fueled by the AI boom, now holds approximately 80% of the global market share for GPU semiconductor chips .

• Kaihan Krippendorff is the co-author, with Robert C. Wolcott, of Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life  and founder of Outthinker Networks .

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More From Forbes

30 powerful resume keywords to beat ats in 2024.

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Using the right resume keywords ensures you are able to shine a light on your skills and experience

More than 90% of employers use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to initially filter out or rank middle-skilled and highly-skilled candidates for job postings, according to a 2021 global study conducted by the Harvard Business Review.

This means that there is at least a 90% chance that your resume will not make it past the screening software.

Applicant tracking systems rely on keywords to assess candidate suitability—and these keywords are the ones that are located within your resume. The problem is, many candidates do not know how to make a resume effective because they fail to include the most appropriate keywords for their industry and role they are applying to. Consequently, they never (or hardly ever) make it past the screening stage to secure an interview.

While there are several factors that determine whether your resume makes it past the ATS or not (although a few are beyond your control), knowing what skills to put on your resume and which resume keywords to include, are a few of the most critical steps you can take to ensure your resume beats ATS.

Why Use Resume Keywords?

"A recruiter will never see that candidate’s application, even though it might fill all of the employer’s requirements," continued the HBR study. Therefore, being the perfect fit for a role is not good enough. You might tick every box and fulfil all the requirements listed on the job description, yet fall short of being shortlisted for the role, all because your resume did not effectively evidence the criteria and skills the employer is looking for.

Here is a simplified example of how an ATS works from a recruiter's point of view:

• You send your resume through a job portal.
• When the recruiter is sifting out 1,000 applications, they'll enter a skill such as "project management," "Power BI," or an education requirement such as "MBA," from the job description.
• This filters available resumes to 300 candidates.
• If your resume is optimized to include the keyword they are looking for, it will show up; if not, it will never be seen and you've just lost the potential to land a career-boosting opportunity to an AI-powered gatekeeper—ATS.

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Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024.

Matching keywords is an essential step to take before sending an application, or you could risk ... [+] being sifted out at the screening stage

Where To Find Keywords To Put On Your Resume

There are number of sources you can use to find keywords for your resume. The first and most obvious of them is the job advert itself. Taking a careful look at the job description, and the key requirements/person specification/ideal candidate section, carefully identify what are the core requirements that the employer is asking for.

You might find it useful to undertake a keyword highlighting exercise by copying and pasting the entire job description and person specification into a Word document, and highlighting the technical and soft skills that stand out to you the most, which are relevant to what you already have to offer.

For example, take a look at this sample job description from Workable for a cost analyst role:

"We are looking for a cost analyst to help us audit our expenses and find ways to make our operations more cost-efficient. You’ll be the go-to person for cost analysis and you’ll get to prepare reports to help management make better decisions. To do this job well, we’d like you to be well-versed in data and financial analysis, and have strong attention to detail. Ultimately, your job will be an integral part of our efforts to ensure profitability and business success."

It then proceeds to list the following responsibilities for the cost analyst role:

• Gather and analyze financial data
• Determine standard costs and investigate variances with actual costs
• Prepare detailed reports, both periodically and ad-hoc
• Help management make important decisions based on costs and benefits (e.g. investments, market growth, pricing changes)
• Create and manage budgets, and monitor spending
• Conduct audits on financial processes and transactions
• Monitor changes in processes or methods to calculate effects on overall costs
• Estimate product costs for existing and new products
• Forecast and analyze costs of processes, labor and inventory
• Suggest cost-reducing or profitable solutions
• Conduct market research to support future business planning

And then the advert proceeds to list requirements and skills for the role (pay close attention to this):

• Proven experience as a cost analyst, cost specialist or similar role
• Experience in data, operational and financial analysis
• Knowledge of accounting processes and software
• Strong analytical skills
• A business acumen
• Great attention to detail
• Good communication aptitude
• Degree in Finance, Accounting or similar field
• Certified Public Accountant (CPA) preferred

With the above job advert, how many keywords can you easily identify?

Considering the above data, some of the likely resume keywords and skills used for the job posting above, which you would want to incorporate into your resume for a cost analyst role, include:

• Certified Public Accountant (CPA)
• Good communication
• Attention to detail
• Cost analyst
• Accounting processes and software (and name a few)
• Financial analysis/Analyzing financial data

You can incorporate these keywords into your professional summary, skills highlights, and work experience and education sections.

ChatGPT can help you analyze a job description quickly and can even provide guidance on how to ... [+] tailor your resume for that specific role

How To Use ChatGPT To Find Resume Keywords

One time saving method you could employ to find keywords from the job advert and interspersed them throughout your resume, is to solicit the help of ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI, that has millions of users around the world—with one of the fastest, unprecedented technology adoption rates in history.

It uses LLM (large language models) to engage with you as any other human being would, providing you with timely information and shortening the length of time it takes to accomplish administrative and content writing tasks. While it is not wise to use ChatGPT to draft an entire resume for you on its own, it certainly can be helpful at key junctures in the resume writing process, for example, when analyzing and inputting keywords.

To use ChatGPT to find the best keywords to include in your resume, follow the below steps:

• Provide ChatGPT with a copy or excerpt of a job description for the role you want to apply for, and then prompt: "I am tailoring my resume to apply for this role. Please select and suggest keywords and phrases from this job advert that I can put into my resume. Include any technical skills, software tools, certifications, industry terminology, and soft skills listed in the advert."
• Now that ChatGPT has provided you with a list you can then begin incorporating these words and phrases throughout your resume, ensuring you proofread with each edit so it reads naturally and doesn't give the appearance of meaningless keyword stuffing.

Powerful Keywords To Include In Your Resume

Now that you have this background understanding, here is a sample list of some of the most common and essential keywords you should consider adding to your resume, for three specific industries—information technology, healthcare, and sales. These are categorized for ease of navigation and will provide you with an idea of what to look out for, as relates to your industry:

Resume Keywords For The Information Technology (IT) Industry

• Programming languages (e.g., Java, Python, C++)
• Cloud computing
• Network administration
• Agile methodologies
• ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
• Artificial intelligence (AI)
• Machine learning
• Data analytics
• IT project management

Resume Keywords For The Healthcare Industry

• Electronic Health Records (EHR)
• Clinical research
• Medical billing and coding
• Telemedicine
• Healthcare compliance
• Health informatics
• Medical imaging
• Healthcare quality improvement
• Health insurance
• Healthcare technology

Resume Keywords For The Sales Industry

• Business development
• Account management
• Client relationship management (CRM)
• Lead generation
• Prospecting
• Sales cycle
• Pipeline management
• Value proposition
• Sales forecasting
• Competitive analysis

Keywords include a range of technical skills, soft skills, and education requirements—and even your ... [+] years of experience

Using the right keywords can help you effectively sell yourself and shine as a star candidate to employers, ensuring your skills and experience do not go to waste or escape their notice. Through highlighting your expertise in this way (without keyword stuffing) you increase your chances of securing an interview.

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Dogs can match some words to objects, study says

(CNN) – A new study suggests dogs can understand that certain words refer to specific objects, so they may understand words in a similar way to humans.

Researchers said it offers the first evidence of brain activity for this comprehension in a non-human animal.

In the study, 18 dog owners said words for objects their dogs already knew.

Then, the owners held up either the matching object or a different one while an EEG measured the dogs’ brain activity.

Scientists observed a difference in the brain activity in a majority of the dogs when they were shown an object that matched with the word, compared to one that mismatched.

The authors said the resulting brain activity was the same as those produced by humans in similar experiments.

The study’s conclusion has faced scrutiny from other experts in the field.

One said dogs lack the two areas of the brain crucial for human understanding of language, so the EEG pattern highlighted by the researchers is not shared by humans.

The findings were published in the journal Current Biology in March.

Copyright 2024 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.

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