GOOD keyword research has never been more important

Paige says: "Don't lose focus on keyword research. It's going to be as important as it's ever been, and SEOs need to make sure they are not just automating it. I've got a four-step process to ensure that your keyword research is kick-ass."

What's the difference between 'kick-ass' keyword research and poor keyword research?

"At the moment there is too much dependence on tools to do a lot of the work for you. Not everyone is doing great keyword research, it is a skill that you need to train. There is a process you have to go through to make your research effective and relevant. At BrightonSEO, someone was telling me that their client wanted to rank for 'the Olympics'. The issue was that they were a rug company. They felt that, because everybody is searching for 'Olympics', they had to rank for that term. There are so many bad examples out there. I had a household plants brand with 'aloe vera gel' in their keyword list.

It's these sorts of things that tools don't always get right. It makes your performance look bad. If you're using anything like 'average rank', or even 'weighted average rank', it will have an impact. These illogical keywords will make you look bad. Everything we do as SEOs hangs on our keyword research, so it's important that we do it right."

What is your four-step process?

"First, extract your keywords from tools like Search Console. If you're doing paid, make sure that your seed list starts with the keywords that are currently of value to you. That's where you need to start pulling your data from. You can look at your navigation as well. Perhaps crawl the site, see what your anchor text is, or what your H1s are - they should be relevant to you.

Then gather your metrics. Get your search volume, click data, the rank for you and your competitors, and any kind of metric that you can apply to that keyword. Noting the source is particularly helpful. Whether you got the term from Search Console or Keyword Planner will be helpful when it comes to dealing with what's on that list.

Once you have those, start tagging - thematically grouping your keywords. A clever way of doing this is to look at which keywords share the same URLs on the SERP. You will probably end up with some quite uneven buckets of things, some sensible groups and some less so. Expand on the things that need expanding. Try to perfect it, even it all out, and make it make sense.

Lastly, all you need to do is optimise that list. Take out those 'vanity keywords' and set yourself up for success as an SEO. If you're not going to rank for it, it's only going to make your performance look worse in the long run."

When extracting keywords should you look at your own existing paid campaigns or third-party data?

"Use your own, because at that phase you just want to look at what's of value to you. Paid data can give you too much to work with. Cherry-pick the keywords that are good because they drive a lot of traffic. You want to look at conversion data, which you can't really get with Search Console. From PPC data, like Google Ads data, you can pull your 'exact match' keywords, knowing that they actually convert really well."

Is keyword difficulty still a useful metric?

"There are lots of tools that will give you keyword difficulty and call it something slightly different. It is essentially just the competitiveness of that keyword. As a metric, it can be helpful to filter and sort by, as it gives you a layer of context. However, search volume, and potentially CPC, will give you that competitiveness information anyway.

What you're trying to look for is whether you can rank for that keyword - if you are the kind of business that can compete there. Sometimes you can't, but there will be 1000 other, more niche, terms that are more likely to convert."

How do you know whether you have a chance to rank for a particular keyword phrase?

"It's something that machines can't really do for you. It's about SEO experience. Of course, keyword research is not set in stone. If you are a newcomer to the market you will know if you have Expertise, Authority and Trust in a particular niche - that's what you go for. You can always add the broader terms in later down the line.

That is the human element of the research. Understanding the search landscape, the competitors, the nuances of language, your own business and your USPs is something that tools just can't do."

How do you select your different tags?

"Don't just look at what keywords you have already. Use your well-ranking pages as helpful context but try not to get bogged down in what already exists. You can get too blinkered that way. You want to, ideally at a page level, identify 5-10 keywords what will all rank on a theoretical URL and be grouped to one page. Check that on Google. If most of the URLs on those keywords are the same type of page as yours, then you can probably rank with one piece of content.

Sometimes you will need to separate things out. I was looking at a particular FAQ yesterday, and seeing if we could put it onto a big page that we are going to create. When we looked at the SERP, it already has a Featured Snippet, and it's doing really well, so we want to preserve that. You need to see what will work for your keywords."

How do you persuade senior executives that are too focussed on vanity keywords?

"Tell them to Google the term. They need to see if they are producing the kind of content that exists on that page. I've got a B2B client that wanted to appear for 'augmented reality', and when you look at that broad term, there's not a single B2B business on the page. Looking at the SERP will show you if the intent behind that keyword isn't relevant to you. However, when you look at a longer-tail keyword phrase, you can see that you could exist on that SERP because it's where your competitors are. Show senior executives the places where the intent matches and where you're actually going to get traffic.

You can also ask your PPC friends to bid on one of those vanity keywords for a bit and prove to them that it's a complete waste of time."

How do you factor in intent when deciding where to use your keyword phrases?

"Keep things simple. Look at the informational versus transactional intent behind keywords. A lot of the time it is common sense - ask 'Who, What, and Why?' for an informational query versus a transactional query. Often you want to have both things, and don't want to just be going after one kind of intent. Usually, your pages will want a bit of informational content about what you're trying to sell, but also hard-hitting transactional content as well.

You also need to know if the intent is the same as what you assume it to be. Check that the SERP is representative of what you think the keyword means. A good example is 'baby doll' vs 'babydoll'. Keyword Planner used to group the search volume together for both of these terms, however one is a child's doll, and one is lingerie. The SERPs are very different. Check that the term is right for you."

How often should you do keyword research?

"It depends. Sometimes you will want to do keyword research every month, with deep dives into different divisions to find new opportunities. Then you can also do performance optimization for work that you've already done. Other times you can start your onboarding with really good keyword research, that forms your strategy because you find a lot of opportunities. Then, you might be working towards that goal throughout a year or six months, depending on how fast the business moves.

Things like seasonality will change the frequency of your research, and how quickly the offering of the business is changing. You will need to consider the rate at which the business is growing and how often they are launching new products."

Where should you put your keywords?

"It's not too complicated. We're still talking about incorporating them into H1s, sub-headings, text on the page, page titles, and internal links. Write naturally is number one. If you're secure on your keyword mapping and tagging, then you know exactly what you're trying to target for each individual page that you create. Make sure to avoid duplicate content - that can be a problem. H1s are great, and I love Question and Answer H2s. Use schema to wrap that up as well, especially if you've got things like FAQ elements on a page.

You need to try to be as relevant as possible to users as well as bots. IBM has a Natural Language Understanding tool which is very useful. You can put your copy, or your link, into it and it will tell you what it thinks your keywords are. Take it with a pinch of salt, as with every tool, but it is helpful. It's a good way of checking your homework if you are doing content writing and optimization."

What's one thing that SEOs should stop doing to focus on good quality keyword research?

"Relying on tools is to our detriment. They are so powerful, and they are helpful, but you've always got to be cherry picking. Keyword research that only consists of Semrush exports doesn't have that human element. If you've done concatenation to find a useful group of words - and you've included locations, or colours for things that you sell - a tool will produce variations on those. It will give you locations where you don't exist, and colours that you don't sell. The tool will think that those terms are relevant.

Search engines are focusing more on user experience as well. If you rank for content that's irrelevant to what you offer, you're offering a poor user experience and that signal will get back to the search engines. Focus on pulling it together manually, then the optimization phase should take a lot less time."

You can find Paige Hobart over at Unily.