When you’re trying to build an online presence for your brand, you may have heard of the importance of having the right keywords. The reason for this is simple – when people search for things online, they often type in keywords to help them find what they’re looking for.
When your website has matching keywords, they are more likely to click on it.
For example, someone might be looking to purchase new clothes for their baby. They might type in “baby clothes” or “newborn clothes” into the search engine. If you are a company that sells baby clothes, you’re hoping that your website ranks high enough that this potential client can see it. Your best bet for this to happen is to create content that has the right keywords – in this case, “baby clothes”.
The more you’re in tune with the right keywords for your industry, the higher the chances of your website ranking highly in search engine results.
Ask yourself, what is your niche? And the next question – what are your potential clients looking for in your niche? What are they typing into their search engine? What are the key topics that they’re interested to find out more about?
Keywords are all about matching your customers’ needs and questions to the services or products that you offer.
Steps To Identify Keywords For Your Niche
The art of ranking highly in search engine results is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
You may have heard this term thrown around in online marketing seminars. This is because the person that masters the art of SEO masters the Internet – and that’s a pretty big prize.
The first step to identifying the right keywords for your niche is to think like your customer. What does your customer want or need? List down as many words or phrases you can think of. You’ll most likely find a few keywords in your list.
Alternatively, there are keyword research tools that you can use to help you identify the right keywords for your niche.
Let’s have a look at some of them in the next section.
5 Best Keyword Research Tools to Improve Your SEO
1. SEMrush
SEMRush is one of the Internet’s most popular marketing tools. With SEMrush, you have a one-stop solution to all your online marketing needs: you can create web domains, backlinks, and web content that ranks highly in search results.
It is a great platform for you to identify the right keywords for your niche. More than 20 billion keywords have been identified through SEMrush keyword tool. SEMrush also boasts 6 million users. With such jaw-dropping figures, you can be assured that you’ll be able to find just the right keywords for your niche.
Plus points:
- The keyword research tool is one of its best features
- The platform is constantly being updated and improved
- It has a very comprehensive dashboard
The not-so-good:
- The dashboard can appear too crowded for some people’s liking
- There are so many tools on this platform, meaning that there is a learning curve to knowing how to use them all
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one powerful all-in-one SEO tool that is trusted by marketers from the world’s biggest brands, including Facebook, Adobe, Linkedin, Netflix, and Uber. With Ahrefs, you can check your site’s health score, identify keywords relevant to your niche, analyse competitor backlinks, compare between competitor content and more. Ahrefs is available for free to monitor your site performance only, but with the paid version, you get access to the complete package, from monitoring across multiple projects to studying your competitors to excel in your content and subsequently improve site rankings.
Plus points:
- Ease to setup and manage projects in one account
- Easy to use backlink analysis
- Easy to find and analyse content gap with competitor site
- Comprehensive keyword research makes for easier identification of keywords for specific niches, especially on organic keywords
The not-so-good:
- It could have a better integration with Google Analytics.
- It has a rather crowded dashboard.
- Quite pricey
3. Google Keyword Planner
Google has become so ubiquitous in modern life that we use “Google” as a verb. Instead of saying “let me type this into a search engine”, we simply say, “let me google this.” That’s the power of Google. Everyone uses it. This means that your customers are likely to as well.
So what better source to go for help with keywords than Google itself? The Google Keyword Planner allows you to discover the keywords that are most relevant to your products or services.
You can see how often certain keywords are searched. This helps you narrow down your list of keywords to the ones that rank the highest. With this information, you can then plan the best keywords that you want to include in your web content.
Plus points:
- Has excellent keyword analytic tools
- Has some of the best data available for SEO
- One of the most recognizable authorities on online searches
The no-so-good:
- Does not provide a list of negative keywords
- Does not suggest long-term keywords for some categories
4. Majestic
When it comes to keyword optimization, data is everything. In other words, the only way you can accurately tell whether a keyword ranks well or not is by looking at data.
Majestic is a tool that streamlines SEO data so that you can make informed decisions on your online marketing strategies. Majestic has two key tools that make it stand out: Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
Trust Flow represents the quality of links that point to URLs and websites. A website that has a high Trust Flow has high-quality links. Citation Flow is a score that reflects the quantity of links that point to a particular website. They both work together synergistically to provide you with a complete picture of how well your web content is doing.
Majestic also comes with a keyword generator tool to help you select the right keywords. Together with its other features, you should be well-equipped to win the SEO game.
Plus points:
- You can create customized reports for your company or your clients
- You can approach SEO from multiple angles to analyze your web performance
- Has a user-friendly interface
The not-so-good:
- Its backlink explorer does not cover all links
- The free version is quite limited
5. Moz
Moz is a popular keyword explorer tool that connects you to the right keywords for your industry. It has over 35,000 customers – so when you sign up, you’ll be in good company. Moz has the largest high-quality database, allowing you to perform better research in less time.
Moz also predicts how much search volume a particular keyword will generate – and it’s accurate over 90% of the time. It also helps you to analyze why certain pages rank highly by breaking down the link and social data of each ranking position.
Plus points:
- You can easily see how you rank relative to your competitors
- You can track your keyword performance over time
- It has excellent search volume metrics
The not-so-good:
- It has relatively tight keyword restrictions
- The interface can be rather crowded and thus difficult to navigate
5. BiQ
BiQ is an all-in-one SEO suite that allows users to perform rank tracking, monitor website performance, and conduct keyword research.
BiQ’s Keyword Intelligence has the main objective of identifying profitable keywords and enhancing user’s website rankings on different search engines.
Besides the basic functions provided for keyword research, something unique is that users can search for local keywords as well as their search intent. It also has three other features called Content Ideas, Popular Questions and Trending Searches that allows users to find the best matching search phrases for their seed keywords.
Plus points:
- You only pay for what you use
- Easy to understand and use the interface
- Cheaper compared to the bigger brand tools available
The not-so-good:
- The free version can be limited
How Do You Choose The Best Tool For You?
Free Vs Paid Subscriptions
With all these fantastic SEO tools available to help grow your traffic, how do you choose the best one for you? Well, the first thing you need to decide is whether you’re willing to fork out a bit of money. This is because some of the best tools are only available on a subscription basis; however, there are also plenty of tools that are available for free online.
Outsourcing To An Experienced Agency
The next question to ask yourself is whether you want to simply outsource this work to an agency? One Search Pro is an agency that will help you identify the right keywords and help you formulate the best strategies for your web content to rank highly in SEO.
The benefits of outsourcing to an agency is that you get to hire professionals who do this full-time.
This means that they have access to all the right software and tools, and know how to best use them. In other words, they have a higher level of expertise compared to the average person. They tend to employ the best practices when it comes to helping you rank better in SEO.
Aside from keyword optimization, One Search Pro also provides social media management and Facebook ads management services.
When you outsource to an agency, you can also focus on other parts of your business, such as product or service development. This saves you time, and ultimately money as well.
Conclusion
There are many parts to winning the SEO race, and keyword optimization is an important one. When you have the right keywords, you make it easier for potential customers to find you online.
If you can master this aspect of SEO, you have a better chance of ranking highly in search results, drive more traffic to your website, and eventually see your revenue grow.
