Can a keyword research tool define & limit your SEO strategy
In a word, yes. What I have found out over the years about keyword research is that often in house, and in agency, you have to use and be limited by the tools. By these choices, often a SEO professional is unknowingly lead down a path of following the value system of the SEO keyword and strategy planner, not devising their own.
In addition, if you are being interviewed for a job, or networking or speaking at an event, be aware that avid tool followers are often ‘locked into’ an SEO zeitgeist of their own making. I conclude, that you have to take a holistic approach and going across as many tools as possible, you will have a more open mind to keyword research and its possibilities. Often, the possibilities are constrained with your resources, skill set, focus, business acumen and budget.
How is keyword research defined?
Keyword research is a fundamental aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) that involves identifying popular words and phrases people enter into search engines. The goal is to use this research to inform content strategies, enabling websites to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The approaches to keyword research can vary significantly across different platforms, each offering unique tools and methodologies. Here, we’ll explore the processes of keyword research as outlined by three leading SEO tools: SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz, and then compare and contrast their approaches to determine a robust strategy.
SEMrush Approach
SEMrush emphasizes a comprehensive keyword research process that involves the use of several core tools, including the Keyword Overview, Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Manager, Position Tracking, and Organic Traffic Insights tool. This suite of tools allows users to conduct in-depth keyword research, track keyword positions, and gain actionable insights for website optimisation. SEMrush’s methodology focuses on uncovering new, winning keyword ideas and understanding what competitors are doing to get ahead. It also provides visibility metrics, which measure how often a site ranks for a keyword over time, and updates its keyword ranking database daily.
Ahrefs Approach
Ahrefs offers a two-pronged approach to keyword research: the Keyword Explorer and Organic Keywords tools. The Keyword Explorer provides a list of keyword ideas when a main keyword is entered, along with potential clicks from those keywords. It also shows the organic keywords for which competitors rank, offering insights into their SEO strategies. Ahrefs emphasizes the importance of targeting high-volume keywords first, suggesting a strategy that prioritizes difficult keywords to maximize efforts.
Moz Approach
Moz focuses on organizing keyword research around semantic topic groups using a variety of tools. This approach is essential for creating content that aligns with how search engines interpret content. Moz’s methodology includes comparing different keywords, creating large lists of keywords organized by competitive topic area, and aligning keyword research with the sales funnel.
Comparison and Strategy Recommendation
When comparing these three platforms, several key differences emerge:
- SEMrush offers a broad suite of tools for a comprehensive keyword research workflow, emphasizing competitive analysis and daily updates on keyword rankings. It offers insights of keyword type – informational, transactional etc. This with competitor analysis is great, but it can lead you away from focusing on siloed and evergreen content
- Ahrefs focuses on exploring organic and competitor keywords, with a strategic emphasis on targeting high-volume, difficult keywords first. However, a lot of this is dependent on its off-page focus.
- Moz prioritizes semantic topic groups and aligns keyword research with the sales funnel, offering precise keyword tracking capabilities. It is highly commercial, and needs a very competent content based SEO professional and teams to realise this.
Each platform has its strengths, but the choice of the best approach depends on specific SEO goals and preferences. SEMrush is ideal for those who prioritize competitive analysis and want daily updates on keyword rankings.
Ahrefs is suited for SEO professionals who focus on organic search and link building, offering detailed insights into competitor strategies.
Moz is best for those who value semantic grouping and sales funnel alignment in their keyword research.
Given these considerations, SEMrush emerges for me as the most robust strategy for comprehensive keyword research. Its suite of tools covers a wide range of needs, from uncovering new keyword ideas to tracking positions and analyzing competitors. The daily updates on keyword rankings and visibility metrics provide a dynamic and responsive approach to SEO, allowing users to stay ahead in a competitive landscape.
However, the best strategy may involve using a combination of tools from all three platforms, leveraging their unique strengths to create a more holistic SEO strategy.
Keyword Research Process & Steps
What’s A Comprehensive Keyword Research Process?
The first steps in effective keyword research is understanding your target audience and their needs. It is crucial to identify who your customers are, what questions they have about your products or services, what they value, and how you can categorize them. This foundational understanding is often overlooked by SEO agencies, but it provides the real value and context for the keyword research process. Simply going through the motions without this customer insight is just a process without purpose.
The next phase involves the actual keyword research and analysis process. Start by typing top keywords into Google to see how it categorizes and relates them, providing insights into localization, language, and geographic relevance. Use this to generate keyword stems and combinations. Research words relevant to your industry and competitors’ sites to build out a comprehensive “keyword bucket.”
Explore related keywords that users also search for, and develop long-tail versions likely to be used by your audience. Tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner can then help refine the list.
There are several best practices to follow when conducting comprehensive keyword research. Prioritise keywords with high search volume and low competition, while also creating content silos around high-volume, high-competition terms. Always consider the intent behind the keywords.
Use tools to filter keywords by competition level and analyze keyword difficulty. Identify keyword gaps where you can fill content needs unmet by competitors. Leverage other sources like Google Trends, forums, social media, and keyword clustering techniques to uncover more opportunities. While tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz are valuable, no single tool is comprehensive.
Here it is in greater to the steps and mindset but in greater detail.
- Ask the client who are their market ‘customers’. What do they ask about your products/services? What do they value? How would you categorise them? This part is lost with most SEO agencies. Doing the below is more just a process. The real value is understanding who, what, where, when, how and more importantly – why.
- Type top keywords into Google and see how it categorises the keyword. Not done by most and sadly not present in many tools.
This very top, top of the funnel keyword tells me about ‘localisation’ is important, ‘language type’, domestic or foreign and as well ‘near me with towns like Cambridge – which is near where I live. From this basis and typing out the top, top funnel keywords I can generate keyword stems into keyword combinations and locate which keyword, in which order, may have more searches.
- Keyword Analysis: Research words relevant to the industry/business and analyse the keywords used in the website of competitors to create a Keyword Bucket. Typically, I use wildcard terms I think to use in a search, I would use at this phase. Other wildcards could come from stems. From the top, top of funnel and creating stems, the list now should be very prolific.
- Research related keywords: Find out the best related set of words along with the current set of keywords you have. Using ‘users also looked for’
- Prepare long-tail Keywords: Create a list of long-tail keywords that are most likely to be searched by users.
At this point you should test keyword phrases on Google Adwords Keyword Planner: Keyword planner will help you cut down your list and give you a set of keywords that will optimise the performance of your website. It will also give you an idea of seasonal words, plus words which keep a consistent amount of search volume throughout the year suggest ideal candidates for ‘selecting terms for ‘ever-green content’.
- Create ‘client’ profiles and fit all the below into each profile. Differentiate these by ideal type – some are one off, or bargain hunters, others are high profit and brand lovers, who create the best ROI – as they simply ‘love’ the product.
- Prioritise keywords with high search volume and low competition. At the same time, create siloed pillar and cluster pages around the top high search volume and high competition and create a longer term strategy of attracting traffic. The second action, will mean you achieve more sustained and less volatile ranks long term.
- Filter Keywords by Competition: Filter keywords by competition using tools like SEMrush and Google Ads. This helps you focus on keywords that have a high search volume and low competition.
- Keyword Niches: Sub categories, typically found with keyword wildcards or newly desired products, relating to the original business offering. A way to identify some of these pages is looking for affiliate websites with your products and services to see if the work has been done for you.
- Keyword Gaps: Terms not used by yourself, but used by the competitors (or an information website that is not a competitor)
- Understand Keyword Difficulty: Use keyword difficulty tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to gauge the difficulty of ranking for a specific keyword. This can help you prioritize keywords that are more achievable to rank for.
- Mine Long-tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases that drive targeted traffic to your website. They often have lower competition and can help you rank higher in search engine results. However, long tail keywords and how the sentence is structured, could mean similar content to a better defined top of funnel webpage which answers the entirety of a searcher’s question.
- Leverage Google Trends: Use Google Trends to identify trending topics in your industry and view their popularity over time. This can help you stay up-to-date with emerging trends and adjust your keyword strategy accordingly – however I find, keyword planner and using it to see if a keyword is seasonal or not works out better.
- Explore Forums and Quora: Mine forums like Reddit and Quora for fresh keyword ideas and long-tail keyword generation. This can help you uncover keywords that are highly relevant to your audience.
- Use Social Media as both are (cough) now search engines: Both YouTube and TikTok offer great ways to help you create not only ‘buyer’ profiles, but really narrow this down.
- Consider the intent behind the keywords. SEMrush is invaluable for this. This will need to be divided into buyer profile and mapped to site structure with the whole ‘conversion process’ mapped out. In essence, top to bottom of funnel keywords.
- Use Keyword Clusters: Organise your keywords into clusters based on their relevance to the end client profile.
- Analyze Keyword Density: This is not what you think. The old strategy does play a part in recognising that there are very similar secondary or tertiary keywords per page which, used with EEAT principles enable a page to rank better – rather than spamming a page with the same keyword combination.
SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz Keyword Research Tool Approach: Each tool has its unique strengths for the above. However, there is no one-tool to rule them all.
What is a post Keyword Research Strategy?
SEO is constantly evolving, so it’s crucial to monitor your keyword performance and be ready to make adjustments as needed. In-market language can change over time as trends ebb and flow. Analyse the data, track rankings, and listen to what your audience is saying. And listen to what your audience is saying. Yes I said that twice for effect.
Monitor Competitor Content: Keep an eye on your competitors’ content and adjust your strategy accordingly. With the rise of generative AI, the competitive landscape is bound to change, potentially making it easier or harder to target particular keywords. This can help you stay ahead of the curve and capture emerging trends. I typically see if they have adjusted their strategy and how long it took for various ‘top pages’ on my client’s site to be mirrored with their own or copied strategy.
Continuously Refine Your Strategy: Keyword research is an ongoing process. Continuously refine a strategy to stay ahead of the curve, capture emerging trends, and ensure your website remains optimised for search engines. Blogging and content strategies may evolve, so be open to adjusting your approach is also needed. You have to pay attention with anything seasonal, geo-locational or contracted on/offline.
You can find that there are trends felt elsewhere in social media that are not felt in SEO until after the fact. Keeping abreast with your PPC and Social Media teams are very important – which is why I recommend using ‘social media search engines’ in your strategy.
But all means, this is very comprehensive, but by no ways complete. If you think there are more important steps missed out – let me know below.
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