which keywords should you target when
you're just starting out and can you
actually rank for them in today's
keyword research tutorial I'm gonna show
you how to do keyword research for a
brand new website stay tuned
[Music]
what's up SEO Sam oh here with HFS the
SEO tool that helps you grow your search
traffic research your competitors and
dominate your niche
now this tutorial isn't full of rainbows
and butterflies there isn't exactly a
cookie cutter formula that'll solve all
of your keyword research woes if you're
not willing to put in the work or you're
not willing to pay someone to do it for
you then don't bother watching this
video but if you want to get results and
predictably rank for keywords that are
going to drive traffic and revenue for
your business then let's get to it
so to make this tutorial as actionable
as possible I wanted a keyword research
with you in a completely random niche so
last week I searched for lists of niches
in google clicked on the first result
copy the categories down and put them
into this random wheel spinner I spun
the wheel dating and relationships
dating in relationships and here's our
topic for the day
alright so the first step is to generate
keyword ideas using two or three seed
keywords a seed keyword is usually a
broad term related to your niche
generally speaking there'll be one or
two words long so in our case fitness
and weight loss would be our seats now
it's drill down on the idea of seeds
let's say we had a site on pet care our
seed keywords might be pet pets dog dogs
cat cats you get the point now in order
to research keywords you'll need a
keyword research tool the two tools I
recommend our keywords everywhere in HFS
keywords explore keywords everywhere is
great because you can get basic keyword
metrics like search volume and CPC data
for free so if you're just starting out
this might be a good tool to try but
naturally it'll come with some
limitations HFC keywords explore on the
other hand has all the bells and
whistles a massive database of around
eight billion keywords and will give you
numerous layers of data that are
critical for keyword analysis so I'll be
using that tool for the rest of the
toriel so let's start by taking our seed
keywords and enter them in keywords
Explorer now I'll run the search next
I'll go to the all keywords report in
the sidebar and you'll see a massive
list of 2.6 million keyword ideas now if
you look at the keywords you'll see that
a lot of them are irrelevant so I'll
need to brainstorm a list of keywords
that are relevant to your seats since
we're talking about fitness and weight
loss some words that come to mind for me
would be diet bodybuilding training
calorie and dumbbells so let's make a
note of these on our relevant keywords
list next look to Google autos chest
first I'll type in to weight loss you
know see words like pills smoothies
foods and programs so let's add these to
our list too now I'll do the same for
fitness but it doesn't look like there's
anything relevant so I'm actually going
to run the search next I'll scroll to
the bottom of the page and look at the
related searches so we have workouts and
body let's add these to our list too now
if you find the auto suggestions to be
helpful that you can get a much larger
list using the search suggestions report
in keywords Explorer if we go to that
report with fitness and weight loss as
their seeds then you'll see around 2600
keywords to look through so equipment
shakes and real plans will be good ones
to add to our list one last place you
can look is Google Coralie so I'll
search for weight loss and now we can
see some more interesting words like fat
abs birth weight or protein in fact the
word abs makes me think of other body
parts like chest shoulders and legs now
that we have a list of relevant keywords
to our seeds let's go back to the all
keywords report and filter our list down
to ones we can consider targeting to
remove a lot of these irrelevant
keywords let's click on the include
filter and paste in a comma separated
list of our relevant keywords I'll also
set it to show any word which will
narrow down our list to only keywords
that contain any of these words and
we're now down to around a hundred and
eighty eight thousand keywords from 2.6
million and as you can see the list
looks much better alright so rather than
skimming through a hundred and eighty
eight thousand keywords we're going to
start adding additional layers to
filters to
even more targeted now generally
speaking you're going to see three types
of keywords the first are money terms
and these will usually be your core
business drivers they're generally hard
to rank for it because people don't want
to link to pages that target these kinds
of keywords because there's very little
value add for them and their audiences
next our keywords around topics that
generate backlinks the primary goal of
creating content around these keywords
isn't about ranking or getting a ton of
search traffic it's about creating
content around these linkable topics so
you can generate as many quality links
as possible and the goal is to build
authority to these pages and funnel
PageRank to other topically relevant
pages finally our low competition
keywords these are keywords you can rank
for without building a ton of Link's
targeting these keywords are important
because they'll help you get some search
traffic faster and slowly start the
progression of natural link growth now
at this stage of keyword generation all
we're trying to do is find as many
keywords that are relevant to your
business so for now don't worry about
keyword analysis because we'll dive deep
into that later so let's start off by
finding low competition keywords let's
go back to where we left off in the all
keywords report since we still have a
pretty large pool of keywords let's
narrow this down to keywords that have
at least 500 monthly searches much
better now to find low competition
topics let's set a keyword difficulty
filter to a maximum something lowish
like 20 looking at the keyword list
you'll see a couple of irrelevant ones
at the top related to planet fitness
which are clearly branded corney's so
let's exclude these from our keyword
list by clicking on the exclude filter
and I'll type planet and apply the
filter since our list looks pretty clean
the last thing I'm going to do is sort
the list by parent topic if you're
unfamiliar with parent topic it
determines if you can rank for your
target keyword while targeting a more
general topic instead for example rather
than creating a post on what is the best
diet for me and then another one on best
diet for me
the parent topic is telling us that we
really only need to create one post and
we could rank for both keywords as a
result now before you go off and start
targeting only parent topics
take note that if the parent topic is
different from the quarry in the keyword
column then you should check its keyword
difficulty scores too for example the
keyword whey protein for weight loss has
a KD of 13 but if we click on the parent
topic whey protein you'll see that it
has a much higher keyword difficulty
score so what should you do that'll
depend on what you see in your keyword
analysis which again we'll dive into
later so for now I'll quickly sift
through this list and rather than
analyzing every keyword I'm just going
to add a checkmark beside the ones that
seem like interesting topics to create
content around after I've gone through
the first page I'll scroll back to the
top to create a list let's call this one
weight loss low competition then go
through the remaining pages until you're
satisfied with the number of keyword
ideas next let's fill our second bucket
of keywords with potentially linked bait
worthy topics again the purpose of these
pages is to get quality backlinks so you
can build Authority to your pages and
pass PageRank by linking internally to
your other pages this will help you rank
your low competition pages money pages
or both so the way we're gonna discover
these keywords is by finding pages that
have already generated a ton of links
reverse-engineer why they might have had
such great success and then take that
angle but create better content for some
skyscraper styled link building so let's
start by entering some seed keywords and
keywords explorable
next I'll go to the phrase match report
to find keywords that contain our seed
keywords in the order they're written
now we're actually gonna do the opposite
of what we did for low competition
keywords we're gonna set a minimum
keyword difficulty score to something
high like 70 and the reason we're doing
this is because hsq are difficult to
score is calculated by taking a weighted
average of the number of referring
domains pointing at the top ranking
pages meaning the higher the KD score
the more links there are pointing at the
top 10 pages and I can't take credit for
this little hack this is something that
Gale Breton from Authority hacker shared
with me at a conference last year so
thank you again I'm going to sort this
keyword list by parent topic to group
our list of potential link bait topics
together now to remove some of the ultra
longtail keywords in this list I'm gonna
set a filter to only show keywords with
at least a hundred monthly searches
rather than scanning two keyword ideas
column I'm going to scan the parent
topic column and that's because we're
looking for topics to create link worthy
pieces on rather than keywords to target
for example we could create a tool
that's a weight loss calculator and
you'll see below are a bunch of brand
new queries that we probably won't go
after so I'll go to the next page then
we see a couple topics on losing weight
and losing weight fast based on the surf
for this topic a well research guide
with a case study might work well to
generate links now looking further we
have the parent topic of fitness tracker
and based on the keyword ideas under
this parent topic
I'm guessing this has something to do
with fitness tracker reviews and
comparisons now since most affiliates
aren't actually buying the products
testing them in reporting back that's
something I might do to gain a bit of an
edge and have plenty of link prospects
to reach out to now in terms of the SEO
strategy that goes along with these link
beat style pages I'll link up our video
on the middleman method in the
description so you can carry this out to
completion
finally our finding money terms now
money terms will vary depending on the
nature of your business for example an
ecommerce store might want to rank for
keywords that have transactional intent
like by product name and an affiliate
site might want to rank for queries that
include words like best top comparison
verses or review so assuming our fitness
and weight loss website monetizes
through affiliate commissions I'll go to
a filter list version of the phrase
match report and add those keywords in
the include filter I'll also want to set
the option to any word so I can see all
phrases that mention any of these words
and just like that I have a massive list
of keywords that will be easy plugs for
affiliate products like best fitness
tracker best fitness watch and more from
here you can create your own combination
of filters to target low competition
keywords keywords with decent search
volume or both again sift through the
list add check marks to anything that
interests you and create a new list I'll
call this list weight lost money
keywords at this point you should have a
ton of keyword ideas but not all them
will be worth going after so let's move
on to the next step which is to identify
search intent for each of the keywords
on your list
search intent basically means the reason
behind the search is courting and here's
a rule to follow what doing SEO if you
can't match what searchers want then
don't go after that keyword the easiest
way to identify search intent is to look
at the top 10 ranking pages for your
target keyword most of the time you'll
notice that all or most pages follow the
same content format and type for example
looking at the top 3 results for how to
lose weight you can tell just by reading
the titles that all the pages are
informational blog posts if you have a
blog and can write a guide on losing
weight then yes you can fulfill search
intent whereas a quarry like fitness
equipment shows product and category
pages for e-commerce stores if you don't
have an e-commerce store then don't
bother going after this quarry because
you won't be able to match search intent
there's no proven trick around this and
it literally takes 10 seconds to do so
do it for all keywords that you're
interested in going after and make a
known assertion 10 now if you set up a
list in keywords Explorer like I did
earlier than instead of googling every
single keyword you can just click on the
search button to see the top 10 ranking
pages and in first search intent from
the titles this brings us to the next
step which is to assess ranking
difficulty now SEO and ranking on Google
is like a game certain levels are easy
to beat and others require you to level
up before you can beat the bigger bosses
for example if you couldn't see the
health bar for your opponents then you'd
have no idea what it would take to win
in the same way you need to know who
you're up against so you'll know what it
takes to rank them and for that reason
you need SEO metrics to create some sort
of predictability in ranking the way we
assess ranking difficulty is by
analyzing the SEO metrics of the top 10
ranking pages now there are three things
you need to look at first are the number
of referring domains which are unique
websites linking to the page second is
the authority of the ranking domains and
third is topical relevance of the top
ranking pages and websites let's run
through some examples here if we look at
the syrup for weight loss workout for
men you'll see that there aren't a whole
lot of unique websites linking to the
pages in fact this one here has zero
links yet ranks pretty high not bad on
that front
next is to look at the authority of the
ranking domains and we can do this by
using the dr or domain rating metric
which represents the overall strength of
a website's backing profile looking
through the results you'll see these two
with lowest domain ratings at 34 which
have managed to rank pretty high in the
organic search results and with a little
bit of link building they can probably
be out right finally we'll look at the
relevance of the top ranking pages as
well as their domains as a whole just by
looking at the domain names you can tell
that all of them are related to health
and fitness so overall the top pages
come from relevant domains now when
you're looking at topical relevance of
the page we're focusing on a bit of the
on-page SEO part and oftentimes the
title will give us enough context on
whether they've optimized for your
target keyword generally speaking people
tend to use their primary keyword in the
title or a modified version of it and it
looks like only results number three and
for doing that which also happened to be
from the lower authority domain so as a
new or developing website this might be
an opportunity to leverage specificity
and generate more clicks by speaking to
the target audience so in my opinion it
wouldn't be too difficult to rank in the
top five for this keyword if a you have
a topically relevant domain B you can
get some quality backlinks to your page
from different websites and see your
pages targeted specifically at men the
last layer to look at here is the
traffic column looking at the top of the
irrelevant pages for our target keyword
you'll see that this page gets around
2,000 monthly search visits from the US
alone use these numbers to make informed
decisions on whether ranking your page
will be worth your time money and effort
in my opinion this one is worth the
perceived effort now if we were to do
this for another one of our so called
low competition topics like weight loss
workouts for women then we'll come up
with a slightly different analysis for
the most part they seem to have double
digit referring domains they all come
from highly authoritative websites in
topical relevance of the pages are quite
high for example you'll see that the
first two results from self calm and
shape com don't have mentions of women's
but these two websites create content
that's mostly targeted at women
and these two articles are no different
the next result from LIVESTRONG is
clearly about workouts for women than
the one from bodybuilding calm doesn't
appear to be targeted at a specific
gender but when you look at the content
you'll see that the writer wrote it for
women by saying but for some reason when
we women decide it's time to lose fat
bla bla bla so all things considered
this may not be as easy of a keyword to
rank for considering the current
competition in the top ten but looking
at the global traffic potential you
might think that getting somewhere in
the ballpark range of 10,000 monthly
search visits will be well worth the
work this is why it's important you
analyze every single topic before you
start creating content if you're going
to spend hours writing a new piece or
spend hundreds or thousands of dollars
for production then it's important to
know what you're getting yourself into
now after you've qualified your target
keywords and you're ready to start
writing there's one last piece two
keyword research that I highly recommend
and that's to extract subtopics based on
the keyword rankings from the top five
relevant pages by looking at the keyword
rankings for the top pages you can
essentially get clues of related
subtopics you should include in your
post so using the example of weight loss
workouts for women I'll click through on
the keywords number to see the pages
organic rankings to keep things relevant
I'll set a filter to only show keywords
that rank in positions one through five
now it's important to note that this
step isn't about stuffing keywords in
your post instead use it to form an
angle for your post and extract
subtopics that you should cover
throughout your content for example
you'll see that people searching for
this are likely beginners they want a
routine for the gym and an interesting
angle to take might be to create it as a
one week workout plan take all these
points create an outline and you'll have
a data-driven way to create your content
as you can see keyword research isn't
rocket science but it's a process and
there's a ton of different ways to do it
so I highly recommend digging through
some of our other keyword research
tutorials on topics like longtail
keywords and mapping keywords to your
sales funnel and before we wrap this up
make sure to like share and subscribe
for more actionable SEO and marketing
tutorials like
and if you have any questions on keyword
research leave one in the comments below
and I'd be happy to help
so keep running away and I'll see you in
the next tutorial
