How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

Key steps 35 steps

1. 1 Sign up for KWFinder or ask for access if your company already has an account.
2. 2 Make sure you have Excel, access to Google Sheets, Libre Office Sheets, or any other similar tool.
3. 3 Arm yourself with patience. This is not a difficult process, but it can be quite time-consuming. Yet, the more time you invest in it, the better your results it will yield.
4. 4 Go to KWFinder.
5. 5 Think of what your future clients would search for to find your business. For the purpose of the examples in this SOP, we will imagine we are looking for a wedding venue in New Hampshire and start from there.
6. 6 Set your business’ location using the box in the middle of the page (this is set by default to “Anywhere”, but you can change it by clicking on it and entering your own desired location) .
7. 7 Enter your search term in the box saying “Enter keyword”. Click on “Find Keywords” button or hit the “Enter” button on your keyboard.
8. 8 Choose the sorting criteria for the list of keywords displayed by KWFinder:
9. 9 You should see the keyword difficulty score in the “KD” column. If there isn’t a number. Click the magnifying glass icon and KWfinder will generate one based on current data. Remember, this should be done with all keywords that are important and relevant for your business (which you will later on add to a list).
10. 10 Tick each of the keywords you find suitable for your website. Pay attention to the search intent (what you think the users wanted to know when they searched that particular term), the search demand (the average monthly searches), and the difficulty of the keyword.
11. 11 Add the ticked keywords to your list. You can do this by clicking on the green “Add to list” button at the bottom of the page. If this is a new project, you will have to create a new list (e.g. “New Hampshire Wedding Keyword Research”). If you have been working on this project before, you will simply have to select the list you want for these keywords.
12. 12 Once you are done with selecting keywords from the first list KWFinder pulled, make sure to always go in-depth with your research. Do this by taking each of the keywords in the list and searching its related keywords. To do this, click on the arrow right next to the keyword itself.
13. 13 Once you are done with the “Suggestions” tab (the default tab), repeat the same keyword research process on the “Autocomplete” tab. This will display a list of results similar to what Google would with their Autocomplete feature (e.g. when you search for a piece of information and Google ends the search phrase for you). The “Autocomplete” KWFinder feature will help you find even more keywords to use for your website.
14. 14 Repeat the same keyword research process with the “Questions” tab. This will pull a list of question-based search terms. With this feature, you might have to work with a broader keyword (“wedding venue” instead of “wedding venue in New Hampshire”, for example).The keyword phrases you will select will most likely be excellent ideas for blog topics, so you should add the suitable ones to your list as well.
15. 15 Remember, patience is key in this process. Ideally, you should be searching for keywords and creating a comprehensive list. You want as many of them as you can find! If your competition is not doing this, you will have a tangible competitive advantage if you create a great keyword strategy.
16. 16 Once you have (finally!) created a comprehensive list of keywords, export them to your computer. You can do this by clicking on the “Export” button at the end of the KWFinder list (right next to “Add to list”). You can copy the list to clipboard or you can export it as a .csv file.
17. 17 Pull the .csv file into Google Sheets (or any other spreadsheet tool you are using). You can do this by opening your spreadsheet software and importing the keyword list into it (go to File -> Open and then select the .csv file ).
18. 18 Duplicate your sheet, so that you have a backup at all times. Re-name them “Canonical List” (for the original version) and “Keyword Mapping Blueprint” (for the sheet you will actually work with). From hereon, you will only work in the “Keyword Mapping Blueprint” sheet.
19. 19 Center all the text, then enlarge your cells so that you can see all the important data in it.
20. 20 Add a filter to your columns and sort the entries by “Search Volume”.
21. 21 Remove columns that are not of interest to you right now (e.g. the CPC and the PPC Competition columns).
22. 22 Group keywords according to search intent, by moving them in separate, smaller lists - we will call them “buckets”:
23. 23 Re-name each of these buckets according to the site page you will think they would work on.
24. 24 You might find that some keywords don’t fit into any category. Pull these in an “Outlier” bucket. You can use it for blog topic ideas, or you can continue your keyword research by re-entering each of them into the KWFinder and starting the same process all over again. Yes, again. :)
25. 25 To make it easier, use different background colors for each of the buckets you create in your spreadsheet.
26. 26 Once you are done organizing all keywords in different buckets, remove all empty columns and pull the buckets together in the same columns. Make sure they are delimited (you can simply leave a few empty rows between the buckets).
27. 27 These buckets will constitute the foundation of your website. You may not be able to include all of them, but they will give you a very good idea of what your site needs to look like and what keywords to use when optimizing each of its pages.
28. 28 First, create a row for “Total Monthly Volume”. Select the cell where you want your total monthly searches to be displayed, go to the “Functions” feature of Google Sheets, select “SUM”, then select the cells you want to add up. The spreadsheet tool will automatically display the sum.
29. 29 Secondly, create a row for “Expected CTR of #1 Result” (where “CTR” means “Click-Through-Ratio”). This is usually between 35% and 40%, but for the purpose of this example, we will use 40% (“0.4” in the spreadsheet).
30. 30 Third, create a row for “TAM” (Total Addressable Market). This is the “Total Monthly Volume” of the bucket or category, multiplied by “Expected CTR of #1 Result". To calculate, type “=”, followed by the cell representing the “Total Monthly Volume” (B18, in our case), then “*”, then the cell representing the “TAM” (B19, in our case). In our example, the equation will look similar to this: “=B18*B19”.
31. 31 Enter another row, for “Expected Conversion Rate”. If you already know the conversion rate of your pages, use it for this row as a first approximation. If you don’t know the conversion rate, you can use a rough estimate of the expected conversion rate. In this example, we used a 1% (“0.01” in the spreadsheet) - but keep in mind this will vary a lot from one business to the other.
32. 32 Add another row for “Total Monthly Conversions” and use the same principle as you did when you calculated the “Total Monthly Volume” (multiply “TAM” by the “Expected Conversion Rate”).
33. 33 Enter another row for “Top Line Revenue” (gross revenue you would make with each conversion) and another one for “Bottom Line Revenue” (net revenue you would make with each conversion). These numbers vary a lot from one business to another, but for the purpose of our example, we used $10,000 for Top Line and $5,000 for Bottom Line.
34. 34 Create two new rows, one for the “Monthly Top Line” and one for the “Monthly Bottom Line” and calculate them by multiplying “Monthly Conversions” with the “Top Line Revenue”, respectively with the “Bottom Line Revenue”.
35. 35 Keep in mind: these calculations depend on a lot of variables (for starters, the average monthly searches, which could be off - or your conversion rate, which may vary a lot from one business to another, and one location to another). So, this is just back-of-the-envelope valuation - but it can at least give you an idea on what you could do with a properly optimized website.

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