With a strong SEO strategy and the right keywords, you’ll climb to the top 10 in Google rankings and increase your revenue. In this guide, we’ll take you through all the essential steps to conduct keyword research. 

34,000 searches are conducted on Google every minute. And it’s not just the big brands that dominate the search results for coveted keyword phrases, it is very much a level playing field when it comes to generic or long-tail keywords, meaning small businesses have the same opportunity to rank on the first page of the Google SERP. All you need is high-quality content combined with thoughtful, thorough keyword research which matches the needs of your audience.

We’ll break down exactly what keywords are, and the importance of the right keyword research process for your website. Then we’ll take you through seven easy steps so you can do it yourself. Finally, we wrap it up with a handy checklist and a list of the best SEO tools out there.

So, how do you conduct keyword research in order to land on the first page of Google search results, and get discovered by potential customers? 

What are keywords?

Keywords are the words, phrases and sentences (“search queries” or “search terms”) that people type into a search engine when they want to find information.

When a user types a search query into a search engine like Google or Bing, the search engine uses an algorithm to scour the web to identify the most relevant websites to pull up in the search engine results page. 

While there are a ton of different factors that search engines take into account when finding results, one of the key ways they figure out the relevance of a website is by matching up a searcher’s keywords with the content on a website. 

There are a few different types of keywords:

Short-tail keyword.

These are broad keywords. It could be a single word or phrase that is very generalise, such as “car for sale”. Short-tail keywords are typically 3 words or less with a higher search volume.

Long-tail keyword.

Long-tail keywords are a combination of several terms with lower search volume. When someone types more detail into a search engine, this is a long-term keyword. An example of this would be “cheap cars for sale in Sydney” or “what are the best second-hand cars for sale?” More than 70% of all searches are for long-tail keywords.

Primary keyword.

The primary keyword is the main keyword phrase that you’re targeting in your content strategy. It’s the one that you’re aiming to rank for and should feature in the headline, domain, blog post, meta description, and meta title for that piece of content.

Secondary keyword.

These are extra SEO keyword phrases you’re hoping to rank for with your content. These can be either short-tail or long-tail keywords that builds up the semantics of the overall topic.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying the different search queries that people are looking for.