hey it's sam oh and welcome to the first
module which is on keyword research
in this first lesson we're going to talk
about what keywords are
and how to choose them using a simple
four point checklist
let's get started so what are keywords
in the context of seo
they're simply just words and phrases
that people type into search engines
to find what they're looking for for
example
if you are shopping for running shoes
you might search for keywords like
men's running shoes or simply just
running shoes
now keywords are actually super
important in seo
because it sets the entire foundation
for search engine optimization
the basic goal of seo is to rank your
pages for keywords that your target
audience
or customers are searching for and if
you're not ranking for
keywords that actually get searched then
your seo efforts are kind of meaningless
for example we rank number one for the
query seo checklist
and this keyword is responsible for
driving around 1500 monthly visitors
from google
and that's just in the us so keyword
research
is the process of finding keywords that
people are inputting into search engines
and we'll get into this process in the
upcoming lessons
so how do you actually choose keywords
that are worth targeting
let's run through a checklist that
should help you choose keywords
effectively
the first thing to check is if your
keyword has search demand
search demand represents the volume of
monthly searches made for a keyword
and this is measurable with a keyword
metric that we call search volume
you can find the search volume for a
keyword by using a keyword research tool
like ahrefs keywords explorer
for example the quarry kilometers to
miles gets searched around 478
000 times per month in the us alone
but as you can see here in hfs keywords
explorer 80
of searches go without a click to a page
and that's because google has a handy
calculator right here
that'll solve the searcher's problem so
search volume alone can actually be a
bit misleading
which is why it's worth looking at the
second checkpoint which is to check the
traffic potential of the topic
traffic potential represents the total
search traffic you could get
if you were to rank at the top of google
for your keyword
let's look at the stats for our seo
checklist page in hf site explorer
so again we rank number one for the
quarry seo checklist
and it sends us approximately 1500
monthly search visits from the us
but if we look at the total global
organic traffic to the page
you'll see that we get approximately 3
000 monthly visits from google
every single month and that's because
this page ranks for over 200 keywords
and this page isn't an outlier
in our study of three million keywords
we found that on average
the top ranking page ranks for nearly a
thousand other keywords in the top ten
so while you may be optimizing your
pages for a main keyword
your page will likely rank for hundreds
or even thousands of other relevant
keywords
and because of that the monthly search
seo checklist is actually higher than
its monthly search volume
this is what makes traffic potential a
much more reliable metric than search
volume
and the way you determine traffic
potential is by looking at how much
traffic the top ranking pages are
getting
for example if we go to ahrefs keywords
explorer and search for
submit website to search engines you'll
see that it has a search volume of 1100
monthly searches
in the us now if i scroll to the bottom
of the page
you'll see a serp overview which shows
you the top 10 ranking pages for that
keyword
and serp just stands for search engine
results page
and as you can see our page gets an
estimated 5 300 monthly search visits
from the us alone
and we rank for over 1300 keywords
making traffic potential of this keyword
higher than its search volume
now it doesn't always work out this way
for example the query
keyword cannibalization has a search
volume of 150 monthly searches
but the traffic potential is well under
so it becomes more of a business
decision whether you want to tackle the
topic or not
now choosing keywords based on metrics
alone is not a good idea
which is why the rest of the checkpoints
are meant to ground you
the next point on our checklist is to
assess the business potential of the
keyword or topic
business potential simply represents the
value a keyword has to your business
and value really comes down to your
niche as well as your business model
so an easy way to do this is by
assigning scores between
one to three to keywords you're
researching the higher the number
the more important the topic is to your
business so
let's say you have a site about golf and
the way you make money is by selling
used golf clubs
bringing this back to business potential
that means topics where you can
organically recommend products to
visitors
would hold the highest business value
for example
people searching for something like buy
are likely ready to make a purchase here
and now
so in my books this would have a
business value of three
now a keyword like best golf clubs would
also be relevant to your site
people are likely ready to make a
purchase soon but just don't know which
clubs to buy
but it's actually quite easy to plug
your products because for the golf clubs
you recommend
you can easily link back to your product
pages leading visitors
closer to making a purchase so i'd give
this a business value of two
now a keyword like what is a handicap in
golf would be really tough to
organically recommend your products
but nevertheless it's a way to attract
relevant traffic to your site
so i'd give this a business value of one
so these would hold the lowest priority
and anything that has a score of zero is
probably worth ignoring because it's not
going to impact your bottom line
so something like happy gilmore review
would have a business value of
zero because it has nothing to do with
your business other than the fact that
it's a fantastic movie about golf
alright the next point on this checklist
is to see if you can match search or
intent
this is a concept that we covered in the
first lesson of this course
but it's something that i'm going to
keep talking about because it's super
important
so again search intent represents the
reason behind the searches query
and the way we determine that is by
looking at the top ranking pages
for the keyword we want to rank for for
let's say you have a recipes blog and
you want to rank for toaster oven
looking at the top ranking pages you'll
see that almost
all of the pages are ecommerce category
pages this tells us that the intent of
the searcher
is likely to buy or at least to shop
around for different toaster ovens
so unless you can actually satisfy the
intent of the searcher
it's unlikely that you'll be able to
rank high for this query and we'll dig
deeper into search intent in the next
lesson
the final point on this checklist is to
determine whether you can rank for your
search volume traffic potential and
business potential mean
absolutely nothing if you can't rank for
your keyword
in the not so distant future and
understanding the level of difficulty to
rank for a given keyword
takes a bit of analysis and practice
this is why i've created an
entire lesson on assessing ranking
difficulty because mastering this
process will help you get predictable
results in seo
so i'll save that for a later lesson now
actually choosing keywords comes down to
finding a balance in this checklist
you have to ask yourself does the topic
drive enough traffic
and have business value to make it worth
the effort
and this is the question you should ask
yourself before you create pages
with the intent to rank in search and
these five points in the checklist are
exactly what we're going to dive deeper
into
throughout the rest of this module
tomorrow we'll be publishing the next
video in this course
on searcher intent so make sure to
subscribe so you don't miss that
and if you're watching this video at a
later date then check the description
because we'll have a link to the entire
course there
see you in the next lesson
