keyword research isn't about search
volume I'll even argue that it's not
entirely about traffic either it's about
choosing topics that potential customers
are searching for serving their needs
and eventually converting them into
customers so in this keyword research
tutorial I'm going to show you how to do
keyword research that will help you
increase traffic and revenue stay
[Music]
tuned what's up seos Sam here with HRS
the SEO tool that helps you grow your
search traffic research your competitors
and dominate your nich now this keyword
research tutorial is going to be a bit
different than what you might be used to
seeing rather than focusing on things
like low competition topics I want to
show you how to find and map keywords
that will actually drive revenue for
your business so whether you're creating
a new website or you want to revamp your
current keyword targeting the processes
I'll outline today will help all right
so let's say that I'm starting a new
e-commerce store selling computers Parts
software and accessories I'll obviously
need product and category pag
but I'll also want to use a Blog to fuel
my traffic the first step is to generate
keyword ideas and I'll be using H's
keywords Explorer for this so I'll start
by typing in a few broad keywords
related to my online store like computer
computers laptop laptops and PC next
I'll go to the having same terms report
which shows us all keyword ideas that
contain the target keywords as a broad
match and there are well over 17 million
keyword ideas now the point of this
exercise isn't defined as many random
keywords as possible is to filter them
down and group them by search intent
search intent just means the reason
behind the searches query now these can
generally be categorized into four
groups first are informational keywords
and these are queries where a Searcher
is looking to gain general knowledge on
a topic for example what is ddr4 RAM
next are navigational keywords for these
the Searcher usually knows the
destination they want to reach for
example something like Newegg ddr4 Ram
third are commercial investigation
queries these generally show that
someone is looking to get information on
something that they want to eventually
buy so these will often be comparisons
and include keyword modifiers like best
ddr4 Ram finally are transactional
keywords which show that someone is
ready to make a purchase like by ddr4
RAM and if you're familiar with the
sales conversion cycle you'll see that
each of these groups fit into one of the
four stages now you might be wondering
why not just go after transactional
keywords since these are the ones that
are going to drive Direct Revenue two
things first you'll limit your reach
generally speaking search demand will be
the lowest for transactional keywords so
if you're ignoring things like
informational queries you'll be missing
out on opportunities to squeeze yourself
into your target audience's conversion
Journey informational content can also
help you build trust and Authority so
that when someone actually comes to a
point of commercial investigation they
may recognize your name or when they get
to the transactional stage having
previous exposure can be the difference
between choosing you over a competitor
the second distinct Advantage you have
is that you can accelerate people's
buying journey through internal linking
retargeting or whatever method to get
your content in front of them for
example if my store had a blog post on
what to do with an old laptop and the
post mentioned a buyback program we do
it could lead to a conversion quickly
now how can you determine search intent
for a keyword phrase with some of them
you can't from the keyword alone but a
good chunk of them can be found using
keyword modifiers a modifier is an
add-on to a base keyword for for example
that could be best top or the current
year here's a short list to get you
started take a screenshot and let's keep
going now I'm back in our keyword ideas
report and I want to filter for keywords
by search intent category so I'll grab
our list of informational keywords and
paste them into the include box here
make sure to set the tab to any which
will show us all keyword ideas that
contain any of these keywords all right
so the filtered results still show over
3 million keywords so let's set another
filter if you're looking for low
competition keyword targets then you can
set a maximum keyword difficulty score
of something low like 10 personally I
prefer to focus on search Demand by
setting the volume in tiar so we'll set
a filter to show only keywords that have
a minimum search volume of a th000
monthly searches and we've narrowed our
17 Million results down to around a
th000 now you'll need to manually filter
through these since we're focusing on
keyword research that drives Revenue
you'll have to focus on the business
potential of a keyword at h TRS we
assign a score between 1 to three the
larger the number the greater value the
keyword has to our business an easy way
to determine the business value is to
ask yourself this question can I plug my
products or Services into these posts
naturally or ask yourself would someone
searching for this query be interested
in purchasing my products or Services if
the answer is no then you should
probably move on a quick way to sort
through this list is to sort the table
by parent topic since a single page can
rank for hundreds or thousands of
keywords you can use the parent topic to
see if you can rank for your Target
keyword while targeting a more General
topic on your page instead for example
you'll see high volume keywords that all
have the same parent topic of Xbox One
Controller driver rather than creating
numerous dedicated articles on these
queries about connecting an Xbox
controller to a PC just choose the one
with the most search volume as long as
it provides value to your business for
example this keyword on what is a
computer worm could be a good one for a
computer shop since we provide antivirus
software so while it is an informational
topic we could easily link to the
different software products in our store
so I'll add a check mark to it then
select the rest of the keywords in your
filter list by scanning the parent topic
groups now before we switch to the next
page scroll to the top and click on add
to and create a list with the keyword
category as the name so these would be
informational keywords if you find that
your keyword list is too short then just
change the volume filter since we've
already gone through searches with
greater than a, monthly searches I'll
set the next one to searches that have
500 to 9999 monthly searches and do the
exact same thing until I have a large
enough pool now do the same thing for
your other keyword categories and you
should have a nice list of topics to
Target in every stage of their buying
Journey but there's still some work to
do the next step is to analyze Google's
top 10 search results now this is a
super important step to keyword research
the top 10 ranking pages are going to
give you information on things like
content format and it'll help you
understand how hard it's going to be to
rank on Google for your Target keyword
for example if we click on the Ser drop
down beside this keyword you'll see the
top 10 ranking Pages now the first thing
you want to analyze are the titles of
the ranking Pages you can immediately
tell that all of the pages are blog
posts you'll also see that the titles
talk about what computer worms are and
how they work rather than completely
Reinventing the wheel and trying to rank
this with a product page you'll want to
stick with the content format so for my
site I might create a post called what
is a computer worm how to fix it when
you've been infected now just to show
you how serps can differ if we look at
the Top 10 rankings for 4K monitors
you'll see that the serp is dominated by
product and category Pages which to me
shows more transactional intent you can
also do this step by running a search in
Google for a keyword you want to rank
for the next part is to assess how hard
it'll be to rank on Google for this
keyword now there are a few things that
I'll look at here first will be the
number of unique websites linking to
these pages we call that referring
domains in this example it doesn't look
like the top ranking Pages have that
many unique links outside of Wikipedia
in fact some of the pages in the bottom
half of the serup have zero unique links
pointing at them now as I'm looking
through the referring domains I'll also
look at the Domain rating which
represents the overall strength of a
website's backlink profile in this case
you can see that the ranking Pages all
come from pretty powerful domains so if
your website has a Dr of let's say 15
you have to account for the fact that
you'll be competing against pretty
powerful sites in general you want to
play in the same domain rating ballpark
region or be prepared to build more
links than the top ranking Pages the
final step that I'll look at is topical
relevance since a computer worm is in
the antivirus category you'll see that a
lot of the top pages are antivirus
companies so this may also tell us that
it'll be a bit harder to penetrate but
not impossible so with all of these
things considered I would put an
estimated number of unique links I think
we'll need to rank for this topic from
there I'll decide whether it's worth
putting my time and resources into
ranking now it's just a matter of doing
this for all keywords that you're
interested in targeting and I highly
recommend creating a spreadsh sheeet of
some sort so that you can track your
keyword targeting plan all right so by
this point we've gone through most of
the cookie cutter keywords where search
intent is easy to identify using keyword
modifiers but not all of the keywords
are going to include our seed keywords
like computer laptop or PC a great way
you can get more keyword ideas is to
reverse engineer the topics that are
driving track traffic to your competitor
websites you can do this by going to hre
site Explorer just enter a competitor's
domain and then go to the top pages
report now if I were looking for product
pages that I want to rank I would search
for a site like newegg.com that has a
lot of product page rankings or if I
were looking for blog posts I could look
at the top pages report for a site like
Tom's Hardware now it's just a matter of
skimming the traffic and top keyword
columns and if you want to find lower
competition topics then just look at the
referring domains column to get a B
basic understanding of ranking
difficulty once you find a topic that
you want to Target then go through the
same process of categorizing by search
intent assigning a business value and
analyzing ranking difficulty getting
traffic from keyword research is great
and all but as you go through this
process you want to make sure that the
keywords you're targeting are serving
your potential customers and that's why
it's so important to map keywords to
problems they face you have the
opportunity to showcase how your
products and services will make their
life easier and guide them towards your
end goal a conversion now if you enjoyed
this video then make sure to like share
and subscribe and if you have any
questions on keyword research leave a
comment below and I'd be happy to help
so keep grinding away and I'll see you
in the next tutorial
