How to do a keyword search for a WordPress Blog

Blog Keyword research helps you to create engaging content tailored to the needs of your audiences, improve the visibility of your blog, and gives it a better ranking on a search engine.

For your blog to be successful, there are things you need to put in place, one of which is blog keyword research.

Keywords research helps you in choosing the right keywords for your content to increase traffic flow to your blog.

Several beginner bloggers out there are not familiar with the term keyword and how it can help them improve traffic flow to their blog. Well, if you’re one of them, you’re at the right place to learn all about keywords and how to use it to translate to improved revenue.

The best place to start a blog keyword research is the Google search engine. Google receives more than 100 billion searches monthly. However, the top three search results receive about 60% clicks, hence having a good ranking on a search engine is quite essential to the success of your blog.

Google receives more than 75% of all search traffic from desktops, and also receive more than 94% of traffic from mobile devices. Hence, most blog keyword research focuses on Google.

What is a keyword?

Keywords are words or groups of terms most commonly inputted into search engines to search for information, products, and services.

When a user searches for a term on any of the search engines using a specific keyword you have used in your blog content, your post ought to appear as one of the search results in the search engine result indexing.

How to use keywords in posts

You can’t insert random keywords in your article and expect it to rank on Google. Using keywords goes way more than adding mismatched keywords in articles. The readers are not going to find reading your blog post easy, and search engines will not also find it easy to rank your blog. Therefore, when using keywords, there are rules you should follow

Rule one: Make your content easy-to-read for your audience. Easy-to-read contents are more likely to attract and retain audiences.

Rule two: 1 to 2% of your content should be your keyword. Keywords should not exceed a maximum of 5% of your content

Rule three: spread your keyword in all of your content, do not concentrate your keywords in the first, middle, or the last paragraph.

Rule four: let your keywords appear in your page title and subheadings. Let your keyword also appear in your meta description and first paragraph.

How to do a blog keyword research

Before starting with your blog, you need to be specific about your blog and figure out the specific niche for your blog discovery. i.e., you need to research the specific words your audiences are using in their search terms and develop engaging content around your audiences’ search terms. Only then can your blog rank on search engines.

To help you more, you should ask yourself these few questions

1. What is your reason for creating this blog?
2. What niche and sub-niche do you want to focus on?

• What types of audiences is your blog targeting?

Therefore, keyword research is the processes you go through to find the actual search terms your audience enters into search engines to find related products, services, or information.

Why is blog keyword research necessary?

1. Keywords give search engines clue about what your ost is all about. For example, if you’re writing on cryptocurrency, and if the word ‘cryptocurrency’ appears once or twice in your content, search engines will not have a clue of what your content is all about. Also, search engines will not have an idea of what the keyword (important word) is. Therefore, you must use keywords quite often in your blog posts.
2. Also, when you use the right keywords, it directs traffic to your blog. Hence, you need to do a blog keyword research on what your audiences are commonly searching for online.

• Keyword search helps you to discover popular terms your audience are searching for

1. Keywords help you understand your audience and their needs. This is very important in tailoring your content to suit your audience’s needs.
2. Keyword search also helps you to discover ideas to create engaging contents for your audience
3. Keyword search also enables you to keep in tune with your competitors’ progress and how to stay ahead of your competitors

Other keyword related terms

Before starting on blog keyword research, you need to familiarize yourself with the following commonly used terms in keywords research.

1. Search volume: search volume refers to the number of searches conducted for a specific keyword within a defined time interval. Search volume does not necessarily translate to search traffic. Some keywords have a high search volume and low search traffic, which means that users rarely do click on the results.
2. Search traffic: this is the number of visits a blog receive from search result clicks.

• Search intent: Search intent indicates the reason behind a user’s search using a specific keyword

These terms are essential in blog keyword research because they help you understand the right term to use when doing blog keyword research and developing your content.

In doing a keyword search, it is essential to understand the specific keywords readers are using in their search and the intent behind their search.

Search intent is classified into four categories:

1. Informational: searches starting with ‘how to’ or ‘what is,’ ‘best ways to,’ ‘I need to,’ etc. Example: what is a blockchain wallet?
2. Navigational: searches relating to specific brands. Example: blockchain wallet login, Instagram login, etc.

• Commercial: These are searches relating to specific features. Example: Versus, best, cheapest, top 10, affordable, comparison, largest, etc. e.g. ‘the cheapest cryptocurrency,’ men’s large shoe sizes, etc.

1. Transactional: searches related to buying or purchasing an item. E.g., buying a bitcoin online, downloading a free ebook on cooking

Based on this information, you should create content that focuses on your readers’ intent and ways of meeting their needs and adding value to your audience.

Steps to doing blog keyword research

Step one: list all relevant topics associated with your chosen niche

Think out topics highly relevant to your chosen niche that you want to blog about. After figuring out enough topics for your blog, focus on getting specific keywords from the topics.

To come up with audience-specific keywords, you should ask yourself what topics are your audience searching for?

For example, if you’re blogging on the cryptocurrency niche, you can come up with topics like blockchain, bitcoins, altcoins, mining, bitcoin halving, etc.

Step two: develop keywords for each topic

After listing out the topics you want to build content on, you should focus on identifying keyword phrases that are strongly connected to your chosen topics. These keyword phrases are quite crucial in ranking your blog on Search Engine Result Page.

For example, assuming I am writing on bitcoin, my keywords can be bitcoin, bitcoin price, bitcoin value, bitcoin to USD, and Bitcoin mining.

The idea in this step is to generate a list of keywords or keyword phrases your audiences are continually searching using search engines.

Another way you can generate keywords is to find what keywords readers use to discover your blog. To do these, you can use any of the available tools available for blog keyword searches. Google Analytics is one of the common web analytics tools you can use to come up with the right keywords to use in developing your content.

Asides Google analytics, you can also use the HubSpot marketing analytics to find out popular keywords your audiences are searching for.

You can apply this step to generate keywords for the other topics you have listed.

Step three: checkout related search terms

If you’re not able to figure out keywords readers are searching for in your chosen niche, use Google search engine.

Type the topic in google’s search engine and scroll to the bottom of Google’s search page. At the bottom is a section for ‘related search terms,’ e.g., when searching for Bitcoin using Google search engine, you get the following ‘Searches related to bitcoin.’

• Bitcoin account
• How to buy bitcoin
• Bitcoin mining
• Bitcoin news
• Bitcoin price
• Bitcoin cash
• Bitcoin app
• Bitcoin price prediction

These suggested keywords from Google can give you ideas of what keywords to use for your chosen topic. ‘The people also ask’ of Google search engine can also provide you with insight into what readers are searching for online.

Step four: Use a mix of head terms and long-tailed keywords

Head terms are shorter keywords, usually of one to three-word lengths, while long-tailed keywords are keywords phrases with three or more words.

You should use a mix of both head terms and long-tailed keywords because head terms generate more traffic flow, but are more competitive and quite challenging to rank. On the other hand, long-tailed keywords are more specific than head-terms, and it targets users searching for specific information.

While doing a blog keyword research, you should focus on an ideal combination of both head terms and long-tailed keywords in your content. Example, if you’re writing on bitcoin, you can use a mix of the  head term ‘bitcoin’ and the long-tailed keyword ‘what you need to know about bitcoin’ or ‘all you need to know about bitcoin.’

A mix of headwords and long-tailed keywords is healthy because its easy to build content around head terms, but your blog ranks for long-tailed keywords.

Step five: monitor your competitors’ activities

It is not necessarily advisable to use similar keywords your competitors are using because they are getting higher ranks on search engine result indexing. However, understanding what works for your competitors is an excellent way of evaluating your keywords list.

If you’re using similar ranking keywords with your competitor, you can as well work on improving your ranking based on the set of keywords. Still, you should also consider using other keywords not on your competitors’ list because it can be your chance of getting your fair share of the market.

Step six: use Google Adwords keywords planner and Google Trends to trim down your list of keywords

Google AdWords keyword planner and Google trends are two essential tools you can use when doing a blog keyword research. They are critical for getting search volumes and traffic estimates for your keyword lists.

The Google Keywords planner is essential in determining keywords with extremely low or high search volume and keywords, which are often difficult to use in a mix of head terms and long-tailed keywords.

However, before cutting out such keywords from your list, it is essential to check out their trend history and trend projections using Google Trends to predict whether such keywords with low search volume might trend upward in future, say a year or less from now.

Also, you can use Google Trend to predict what long-tailed keywords to focus on, with the possibility of an upward trend.

Step seven: re-evaluate your keywords regularly

A quarterly review of your keywords is essential in ensuring that your blog gets a good ranking on search engines. Also, you can add more keywords relevant to growing your presence in your chosen niche.

Additionally, there are several tools you can use for doing blog keyword research. Some of the commonly used keywords tools include

• Ahrefs keywords explorer
• Moz explorer
• SEranking
• LongTailPro
• SERPs keyword research
• Semrush keyword search

Conclusion

Since your aim of establishing a blog is to generate traffic and increase your revenue generation, conducting blog keywords research is essential to determine the specific words your audiences are using in their search. These keywords will go a long way in helping you develop content specific to the needs of your audience.

Finally, you should always endeavor to do a follow-up on the performance of your keywords and also make desirable changes along the line. Hence, the need for you to do a regular re-evaluation of your keywords.