How to do keyword research?

[Snatch2014]

Hi!


How to do keyword research? Lets say I got keyword I want to rank for, how do I look how hard the competition are on does words?
Im a total newbie when it comes to SEO, so I have no idea. Is there any good threads here on BHW that explains how to see how hard it would be to outrank the sites that are currently on the top?


Best regards / Snatch

 

[Wilson Grant Fisk]

Long Tail Pro has just launched V3 and is available at a discount
http://v3.longtailpro.com/

There are a number of decent threads on keyword research
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site:blackhatworld.com+keyword+research

 

[Josh Miller]

Generally people tend use AdWords Keyword Planner, it even has competition analysis.

 

[Word Wizard]

Generally people tend use AdWords Keyword Planner, it even has competition analysis.

It shows Adwords competition, not SEO

 

[asap1]

Find a website that is ranking without links.

Put that url in semrush.

You now have hundreds or even thousands of keywords you know you can rank with minimal links.

 

[Snatch2014]

Find a website that is ranking without links.

Put that url in semrush.

You now have hundreds or even thousands of keywords you know you can rank with minimal links.

How do I know if a website has links or not? What is semrush?

 

[b6ainy]

AdWords Keyword Planner is free and do the work

 

[andreaklarin]

Hello,
There are some steps to Research keywords. The following are:-
1) Make a list on imp. topics based on your Business.
2) Fill those buckets of Topics of keywords.
3) Research related Search terms.
4) Check the Mixture of Long tail keywords and head terms in each and every bucket.
5) Do have a look at the competitors' Ranks to those keywords.
6) Google Adwords keyword planner should be used.

Good Luck.

 

[hanssolo]

I personally use market samurai. They have a tons of video tutorials available so you don't need to worry about not knowing what to do with it.

 

[scottyaks143]

You are wasting your time if the keyword you are trying to rank has too much competition. Make sure to find the best keywords using the keyword planner.

 

[CommandobotStudios]

How helpful are you guys )))) Did you even read the OP?
Snatch 2014: find your keywords, then google them each. Analyse the link profile, age, etc. of the top 10 ranking websites. To analyze the link profiles, use majesticseo or ahrefs. There's a firefox plugin called seoquake which is also big help determining other factors. Think about if you can recreate a similar link profile for your own site like the top ranking sites have.

 

[naskootbg]

Bit complex question. The research depends from the niche and the tip of the site.
e.g. The keyword research for micro niche site is much different than the research for e-commerce.
If the niche is e.g. insurance there have not easy for ranking keywords - the research is bit different.

 

[Snatch2014]

How helpful are you guys )))) Did you even read the OP?
Snatch 2014: find your keywords, then google them each. Analyse the link profile, age, etc. of the top 10 ranking websites. To analyze the link profiles, use majesticseo or ahrefs. There's a firefox plugin called seoquake which is also big help determining other factors. Think about if you can recreate a similar link profile for your own site like the top ranking sites have.

Thanks! You are acctully the first one who answer my question!


To all others:

I have already been using Google's keyword planner. I have found keywords I would like to use, but here I can only see how many monthly searches a keyword has hand what the competition are on AdWords. Now I have started to Google Search the keyword and see what sites are currently ranking.

My question was how do I see how hard it would be to outrank the sites that are currently on top?

For example (google search on keywords):

#9 non-niche related personal blog (the blog is big, and probably got tons of backlinks. but does only have 1 blogpost about the niche)
#4-5 and 8, niche related sites.
#1-3 and #6-7 are local newspaper sites, with tons of backlinks. But they are not related to the niche and only ranking on 1 article each.

Would it be hard or easy, to out rank sites with tons of backlinks, if they are not trying to rank on the keyword I am trying to rank for (like #1-3, #6-7 and #9)

 

[bcslbrands]

Use Google keyword planner. It is the only trusted result that gives you real data from the only source that actually matters in SEO.

 

[danno]

I use Long Tail Pro as I find the keyword competitiveness calculator pretty useful. And as someone else already mentioned it's on special offer at the moment.

Before that I used Traffic Travis (the free version) to check keyword competition. Along with the Google keyword planner it's pretty useful if you don't want to fork out for a keyword tool yet.

 

[Josh Escusa]

I like long tail pro. The DA and PA metrics are a decent way of checking if a site will be hard to beat. Any sites with DA/PA over 30 starts to get into medium competition. Anything over 40 is moving into high competition. You can still beat these sites, but they will just take more work.

 

[KHR]

Long Tail Pro is the best for Keyword Research. I personally using it. You can try it.

This is really good.

 

[Redsox218]

The google keyword planner tool is getting better. You can now find a lot of LSI keywords which you'll want to use as anchors to help diversify your backlink portfolio.

 

[Nick Flame]

Keyword planner is a good tool, but its purpose is to help you discover new keywords and their search volume, not to offer you information whether is easy to rank for it or not. Their competition columns refers to Adwords competition, not seo competition, which is totally different and no use to you. Hence why it's not enough.

There are tools that analyze the top 10 results for a particular keyword in terms of how good their seo is, how many links they have, page authority, domain authority, age, etc... From there, you can get an opinion of whether you can rank in top or not. The tool in my signature is one of them, but there are many other useful tools mentioned in this thread as well.

 

[ashaanti]

Use keywordrevealer or kwfinder to get an idea on how tough your keywords would be.