My keyword research process doesn't rely too much on any SEO tool.
My process starts first understanding the nature of your business and who your target audience is.
I am a firm believer without knowing these two factors, there´s no way anybody can conduct an effective keyword research process.
It just not possible!
How can someone recommend keywords to target if they don´t know what is your audience´s interests? Problems? issues? fear? concerns are?
Relevance, it´s one of the most important ranking factors and is where Google is heading. And in order to build relevant content, we need to evaluate your market and your audience. By doing this, you will have a much better understanding of what they are looking for and, therefore, build content that DOES resonate with them.
There´s no way around it!
From here, I dive into Google and start brainstorming highly relevant keywords related to your business. I do this by visiting niche related forums, niche related Facebook Groups, Q&A platforms and pretty much any other online community where your audience hangs out!
Next, once I have a list of highly related keywords, I plug them in my preferred SEO tool which is AHREFS! Why? Because it´s the most powerful and all-around SEO tool in the market...PERIOD!
From this point on, I just start diving deep into Ahrefs and checking several variables in order to come up with a definitive list of keywords. Some of these variables are...
* Monthly search volume
* Traffic potential
* Keyword difficulty (I run a manual and quick analysis of this, not just what the tool says it is)
* Total number of keywords targeted (long-tail keyword potential)
The next step is to analyze your website content and see what keywords are being targeted.
For this, I just plug your website URL into Ahers and let it do its magic.
From this process, I also export your top competitors. Why? For later run a "Content Gap Analysis" on Ahrefs.
This will tell me what keywords your competitors are ranking for that you´re not.
Pretty cool, ah? YES IT IS!
Lastly, all of this will give me all the information I need in order to determine what keywords your business should be targeting and building content around. That´s a summary of my keyword process.
There are some amazing gems on this forum about keyword research and keyword difficulty analysis you MUST CHECK THEM OUT!
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
OTHER RESOURCES
[Keyword Research] Looking Beyond Search Volume
[Guide] How to do Keyword Research with only free tools?
[SUPER GUIDE] Amazon Keyword Research & Site Building: Step by Step Blueprint ( 9 Parts )
[Method] Using Ahrefs to find Weak Competitors & their Keywords
[Ultimate Guide] How to Analyse SERP and Keyword Competition
