Your comprehensive guide to efficient keyword selection

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Statistics [1] indicate that most internet surfers are only interested in the search results on the first page, and that half of the clicks go to the first three results [2]. Therefore, one of the most important things that you must pay attention to are the keywords that you want your website to target, and which you hope will rise to the top of the search pages in Google, as this will be an inexhaustible reservoir of monthly visits.

Search engines - led by Google - do not keep changing and updating their algorithms, until it has become difficult for even SEO experts to keep up. However, one thing has remained constant and indispensable, which is finding the keywords that people search for on search engines. This knowledge can help you build your content strategy.

Keyword selection is not limited to choosing words and expressions that are heavily searched, building links, or searching for an advanced ranking for a specific keyword, but is more comprehensive than that, and is the basis of any successful SEO campaign.

A study [3] conducted by Ahrefs on three million searches revealed that the page that ranks first in the ranking of search results for a certain keyword will also occupy the first ten places for a thousand other related keywords, and this means that it is enough for your site to dominate One keyword, and with it he will control a thousand more words.

What are the keywords?

Keywords are words and phrases that define the topic of the page's content, and in SEO language, they are the words and phrases that people search for on search engines.

Keyword selection is the skill of finding words and phrases that people enter into search engines for use in the content of your web pages.

Types of keywords

Keywords fall into three types:

Short tail keywords: consist of 3 words or less, and are highly popular in search engines, but are highly competitive.

Long tail keywords: consist of at least four words, are low on search engines, and are the main source of web traffic.

The main factor here is the determination, the longer the sentence, the more specific it is, and the less search results for it in the search engines, which means that the opportunity for competition and lead conversion will be better.

You can see how this works from the following chart from Backlinko:

Here's what this graph means:

If you search for "shirt" (short keyword), you will get 25 million results.

If you search for "green shirt", you will get fewer results (around 4.7 million results).

If you search for "adidas green shirt" (keyword extended), your search results will drop to just 0.4 million results, meaning the more specifics the user adds to their search, the more accurate the results are.

The importance of keywords in SEO

The importance of choosing the right keywords is not only limited to content creation, but also includes all promotional and marketing activities. Including content marketing and email marketing, it also helps improve pay per click advertising, and understanding of competitors. Keeping an eye on the keywords your competitors are targeting can help you build your content strategy.

In the past, the keyword selection strategy was simple, all you have to do is fill the content of your site with a lot of words that you expect people to search for, and this will be enough to raise your site pages to the top of the search results pages on Google. The quality of the content was less important than the keyword density.

Things have changed now, and this strategy no longer works today. On the contrary, Google has become penalized for excessive stuffing, so the wise choice of keywords is very important, and it is no less important than the quality of the content itself.

The importance of choosing keywords has increased with recent developments in the internet world, for example:

People are using mobile devices that provide smart assistance services, such as Google Assistant, which now supports Arabic. This means that people will use natural language to ask questions, not just write research sentences.

Google offers the instant answers feature in the Answer Boxes, which are selected based on the quality of the content and the appropriate keyword selection.

 In the old days, it was important to write the content you are looking for accurately, as you will only get pages in search results that contain the exact keywords you are searching for. But now Google is using the rankbrain algorithm to analyze research.

To clarify the matter more, go to Google, and type in the search box "iron is a price", you will find that all the results in the first three pages talk about "iron prices", which is the most common term, meaning that Google's algorithms not only rearrange the sentence, but rather transform it. To another, more common formula with the same meaning. But more than this, Google will give you results in English, and no page will give you the keyword "iron is the price".

With all of the above and other factors, keyword selection is more difficult than ever. It is no longer enough for you to guess the words that people can search for and then fill them in your pages. Rather, it has become imperative for webmasters to design a strategy for choosing keywords, because your competitors are more likely to do so.

How to use and choose keywords

1 - Create a list of important topics related to the content of your site or project.

Think about the topics you want to rank high in the search engine results. You can come up with 5-10 topics that you think are important to your project, then you will have to extract keywords from them. In other words, put yourself in the shoes of the researcher. What topics do you think your target audience is interested in?

2 - Getting initial ideas for keywords

For example, if your site specializes in digital marketing automation, here are some keywords that could be targeted:

E-marketing tools

The best e-marketing tools

Automate digital marketing

What is the meaning of digital marketing automation

Fetch hits

Email Marketing

And other keywords that people interested in your site's topic are likely to search for, which is e-marketing in this case.

The goal at this stage is not to create a final list of keywords, but rather the goal is to create a list that includes sentences and ideas that your target audience will use to find content related to the topics you selected in the first stage, we will filter this list later.

You can also get ideas about keywords by analyzing the keywords that people come to your site from from search engines, and one of the best tools is the Google search console, which provides you with reports on the number of visits to your site, assessing its performance level, and solving its problems, And improve its ranking on the Google results page.

Read also: A comprehensive guide to using Google Search Console

The Google search console helps identify the keywords that drive visitors to your site. You will find this information by clicking on the Search Analytics bar in the middle of the page on the main dashboard.

Scroll down a little further, and you'll see a list of all the keywords your visitors found you on, and the number of times someone clicked on your website link after searching for each keyword.

If you click on a specific keyword in the list, you can learn additional information, such as countries where people come to search for that keyword, and what devices they use. And other important information.

If you have an online store, for example, you may want to focus on visitors who return to your store. Try to know which pages they visit most often. The keywords that match the contents of those pages should be added to the keyword list.

New visitors versus returning visitors (Google Analytics report)

You can learn more about how to use Google Analytics from the following post: Start your analytics work with Google Analytics.

3 - Search for related words and phrases.

If you find it difficult to extract more keywords that people may search for in a specific field, go to Google, and take a look at the searches related to the keyword you searched for, which you will find at the bottom of the results page, as shown in the following image.

Or you can use Google Suggestions, which is a drop-down list that Google shows when you type in the search box, and gives you an idea of ​​what people are searching for. But remember that it is constantly changing.

For example, if we typed the phrase “marketing” into the search box, we would have the following suggestions:

You can also use the Keyword Tool, where you enter a word or sentence and it will give you hundreds of suggestions that can help you choose keywords, the beautiful thing about this tool is that it is not limited to Google, but rather it can give you suggestions for words and phrases that people search for in many Important sites, such as YouTube, Bing, Amazon, eBay, Play Store, Instagram and Twitter. This is very important if you want to choose the keywords for a YouTube video, Instagram content, or an app on the Play Store, and if you work in the e-commerce field, you can see what people are searching for on Amazon and eBay.

For example, if you search for the word "equipment" on YouTube, you will get the following results:

4 - Search for short or long keywords related to topics.

It is important to have a mixture of Short Tail Keywords and Long Tail Keywords so that there is a balance in your strategy. That's because people search for short keywords more often. This makes the competition very difficult compared to lengthy keywords.

For example, which of the following two terms do you think are more competitive:

Blogging

How to write a high quality blog post

Of course, the competition for the first term is much more difficult, but this does not disappoint you. It is true that the short keyword "blogging" gets more searches in search engines, and in theory can bring you a lot of traffic, but the visits that the lengthy keyword "how" Write a high-quality blog “Better, because if someone is looking for something specific like this, they are probably more qualified to buy your services and products (assuming you are in the blogging business) than someone looking for a loose and general topic like“ blogging ”.

Because lengthy keywords are specific, it is usually easy to guess what the people searching for those keywords will want. As for those looking for a short keyword such as "blogging", they might be looking for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

5- Monitor your competitors' ranking for your keywords

Understanding the balance between keywords that are difficult to compete with and those that you can compete for, will make your keyword selection strategy more balanced. There are many tools you can use to analyze your competitors' keywords, including ahrefs, Link Explorer, and more.

The following image is from ahrefs, and it gives you a lot of information about the keywords that the site "teespring.com" excels in, for example:

6 - Search for keywords that are well received in search engines

What's the point in targeting keywords that no one is searching for? At this stage, you will search for the intensity of your search for each of the keywords in the list. This will help you to identify the priority keywords.

The best way to find out the intensity of your search for a specific keyword is to use the free Google Keyword Planner tool. This tool will give you an idea of ​​the number of times a specific keyword has been searched, and similar keywords to it over a specific period of time.

For example, if you want to know the search volume for the keyword "create a blog", for example, all you have to do is:

Go to the Keyword Planner and click on "Search for New Keywords":

2. Write the keyword or keywords you want to know the search volume for. In this example, we will search for "create a blog":

3- Results analysis:

7 - Narrow the list of keywords

Not all keywords are equally important. So, at this stage, you will be filtering the list of keywords that you prepared, try to choose the keywords that are characterized by:

High turnout in search engines.

Low enough competition that you have a chance to land on the first page in search results

Relevant to your site or project, and can be used to create high-quality content.

The perfect keyword

Source

8 - Add keywords to your site

When adding keywords, try to make them look natural and inexpensive, and avoid over-filling. Nothing is more alienating than to find in the title or content of the page a single word or sentence that is strangely repeated. The goal should be to attract the visitor, not just the search engine.

Many visitors will quickly scroll through the contents of the page to find what they're looking for, rather than reading the entire content. Therefore, you have to organize your page in a way that makes it easy for visitors and search engines to browse the content and find what they are looking for. Here are some recommendations in this regard:

Put the keyword in the page title: The page title describes the general topic of the page, and appears in the first line of search results, so it's a good idea to put your keywords there.

Put your target keyword in the h1 header

Put the keyword in front of the first paragraph of content.

When you put links from external sites, put the keyword in the link (anchor), for example, use the link "sports equipment", and do not use the link "click here".

Try to focus on one keyword per page.

Search engines cannot understand the contents of the images on your site. Therefore, it is important to include the keywords in the alt text (<alt>) for images, and in their names if appropriate.

Adding keywords to the meta description

9 - Create content from keywords

If your site doesn't have any content related to your chosen keywords, this can be an inspiration for creating new content.

Try to focus on a different keyword on each page, and do not use the same keyword more than once, so that you do not find yourself competing with your content in search engines.

10 - Check the key density

Keyword density here means the density of the keyword you chose relative to the total number of content words. For example, if the number of words in the blog is 1000 words, and the keyword appears 10 times in the content, then this means that the keyword density is 1%.

There are several tools for calculating key density, including the free Keyword Density Checker.

11 - Follow the ranking of your site

Don't expect your site to rank better on the keyword search pages you've identified overnight. Because there are many factors that search engines take into account, and keywords are only one of them. So be patient and do not hurry.

You can use ranktrackr to track your site's ranking on Google and YouTube, whether locally or internationally. You can also use this tool to track the ranking by city, region, zip code, and country. Keyword data can be exported as PDF or CSV reports.

This tool is paid, you can replace it with the free google search console we mentioned above.

Mistakes in choosing keywords

In this paragraph, we will list some of the mistakes that website owners and SEO workers make while choosing keywords:

 Targeting the most searched words on Google: This mistake is usually committed by beginners, as they start with the words that are heavily searched during the month. Targeting for extended words is the most appropriate and easiest solution for beginners and small businesses.

Attempt to target keywords that are not related to the content you provide: In fact, this is very common, some people try to stuff as many keywords as possible in the pages of their site, avoid this matter, and choose the keywords related to the content of the page.

 Unconsidered keyword guessing: Try to set aside some time for searching and prospecting for keywords, so that you don't end up choosing keywords that are highly competitive, or have no interest in search engines.

Forgetting the user and focusing on Google's algorithms only: Some focus on Google only, so you see them keen to put keywords in the right places, monitor their density, and take into account everything except the most important element, which is the user who will read the content in the end.

Obsessing with key density: Some people exaggerate the control of key density, and consider them careful that the percentage of keywords out of the total content is not less than a certain percentage, and they forget that the most important is the remaining 99% of the content.

Neglecting the approximate and alternative keywords: If most people, for example, are looking for “buy sports equipment,” this does not mean that other keywords such as “acquire sports equipment” or “purchase sports equipment” ... etc. are neglected. The secondary keywords taken together have more turnout than the keywords the page is about.

Neglecting your keywords: Before looking for new keywords, don't neglect the keywords that you currently outperform your competitors.

Focus on a lot of keywords: Choosing keywords is not an easy job, and it can take a lot of time, so you have to set your priorities and focus your efforts on the sufficient number of keywords that serve your marketing goals.

Keyword selection tools

There are a large number of free and paid tools that can help you choose keywords, we will mention in this paragraph three of them, all of which are free.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool from Google that can help you choose the appropriate keywords to create your campaigns, by knowing the popular words in the Google search engine, as this tool helps you to choose the keywords that fit your business, by reading the frequency of keyword searches, And how much your search for it has changed over time, this will help you determine which keywords have priority.

The tool is free, you only need to have a Google account to use it.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a service provided by Google that provides a lot of useful information, such as the most searched keywords in the world or in a specific region. You can also find out the level of interest in a specific keyword in a specific area, and during a certain period of time.

For example, this tool can be used to find out a temporal and spatial distribution for the keyword "buy a car":

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is an extension that can be installed in Chrome or Firefox browser. This tool shows you search volume for a specific keyword, as well as cost per click data, and information on keyword competition.

Whether you are an SEO expert, advertiser, or blogger, this free tool will save you a lot of time, this tool helps to accurately find the keywords that your audience is searching for. Simply click on the 'Install for Chrome' or 'Install for Firefox' button and start using the tool.