Targeting the right keywords is the foundation of excellent SEO results – we want to “fish where the fish are” and drive the best results from all of our SEO efforts.
Keyword research is a critical step in the process, but is often dominated by talk of Google’s Keyword Tool, so today I want to share the other tools we use in our keyword research process.
For those of you who love a cheat sheet, check out the infographic below. Read on for the full deets on each tool.
Uber Suggest
Uber Suggest is a free tool used to generate a list of possible keywords. When typing a search phrase into Google, you’re provided with a drop down list of possible predictions so you can select the term you may have already been typing.
Uber Suggest helps you understand the predicted volumes of keywords, cost per click data and level of competition.
When we type in air conditioner and select, ‘Look Up,’ we see the volume is 36800 monthly searches, the average cost is $2.75 and the keyword has a high level of competition (Zero means no competition and one means high competition). See below for a visual explainer.
Google Trends
Google Trends lets you look at the search volume for a particular keyword over a given time frame and/or relative to other search terms. You can define a time period or geographical region. The example below is the search term “iPhone” compared with “Samsung” in Australia over the past 12 months.
On average, iPhone receives more searches but January shows the beginning of a downward trend. Samsung shows less search volume but is consistent throughout the entire year.
MOZ Keyword Difficulty
Moz’s Keyword Difficulty tool comes with a Pro subscription and is extremely useful for providing a fast understanding on the difficulty to rank for a given keyword. The tool uses Moz’s domain and page authority metrics to look at the top ranking websites for a given term – helping you consider your site against top competitors.
Here we’ve searched “health insurance”. In Australia, there are 30,000 – 70,000 searches a month.
A difficultly of 39 suggests it’s moderately simple to rank on the keyword, the click-through rate is high, however figure would drop is paid advertising was added to the mix. Lastly, a priority of 79 suggests a sweet spot — moderate to low competition, high click-through rate and large monthly volume.
From this data, we would suggest going ahead with the keyword, “health insurance”.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is a free keyword search extension used to search volume, the cost per click for a keyword and competitive data.
It can be easily installed on Chrome or Firefox. Keywords everywhere pulls keywords data from several keyword tools including Google’s Keyword Planner, Uber Suggest, Moz and Google Trends.
As an example, we’ve searched, “marketing trends 2019”. Below the search bar you’ll see competitive metrics including the search volume, cost per click and the difficulty to rank on that particular keyword.
On the right-hand-side you’ll see related keywords and other keywords people also searched for. This gives you a wide perspective of the search volume for particular keywords and helps make informed decisions about which keywords to target.
Choose a tool that works for you
Using more than one keyword research tool helps make informed decisions about which keywords to target.
Uber Suggest helps provide a brief understanding on keywords.
Google Trends is helps predict the long term search volume for a particular keyword.
MOZ allows you to understand the difficulty to rank for a particular keyword.
Keywords Everywhere is effective for on-the-spot results.
Choose a tool that works for you or use all four! While conducting your research, paste the keywords and results in a spreadsheet and compare results for a deeper analysis.
