7 Advanced Keyword Research Tips for SEO (Works in 2022)
– Hey, in this video, I'm going to show you
seven keyword research tips you've probably haven't seen before, especially tip number six, which almost everyone ignores. Let's dive in. So if you're excited to learn some advanced keyword
research tips for SEO, then crush that like button
and let's get started. So number one, don't target
keywords with ambiguous intent. So it's critical that you
have a firm understanding of what a searcher wants
when they search a keyword.
And the reason is because it will dictate how you develop your SEO content strategy and how you structure the page. So there is one keyword type
that has ambiguous intent and could make your SEO life living hell. – This is fine – And keyword type I'm
referring to are head keywords. Head keywords are single words like basketball, shoes or cars. Let's take cars for example. So when you examine the
first page of Google for cars you'll see a perfect example of why you shouldn't target head keywords. First there's cars.com, which makes sense. Then there's a local pack showing
auto dealers in St. Louis. But as we scroll down, you'll
also notice that "Cars" the movie with Will Ferrell and Disney's animated
version of "Cars" is ranking. So what does all this mean? It means that Google doesn't
know with 100% certainty what the searcher is trying
to find with this keyword. They could be searching
for new cars, used cars, black cars, or even "Cars" the movie.
And I haven't even
mentioned that head keywords are insanely competitive in most cases. For example, the keyword cars has a keyword difficulty of 95. So here's what you should do. Avoid targeting head keywords
with ambiguous intent and instead use the head
keywords to find body or long-tail keywords
with more obvious intent. For example, let's say you sell used cars. Go to having same terms
in HS keyword explorer change the KD filter to a max of 10 and enter used in the include field. Now you'll see what lower
competition keywords with much clear intent are
available for you to target. Now let's move on to the
second keyword research tip which is number two, know the five primary
categories of intent. So if you've been following
me for any time at all you're probably sick of me
talking about search intent. But the reason why I continue to hammer it is because it's so critical
to your SEO performance.
It is the foundation of
achieving SEO success. So with that said, if you
get anything from this video please focus on this. So there are five primary
categories of search intent. Number one is informational, which are broad keywords
relating to your topic and they occur at the
top of the sales funnel. An example is how many
cars does Jay Leno have? Number two is investigative, which are keywords that
are beginning to show signs of transactional intent and occur as the searcher
progresses down the sales funnel. An example is best used cars under 10,000. Number three is comparison intent. Now some people lump keywords
with comparison intent into the investigative category but I prefer to place them
into their own unique category. An example of a keyword
with comparison intent is Honda Pilot vs Toyota Highlander. And the primary difference here is that with investigative keywords, the searcher is looking
broadly for solutions but he isn't set on one brand or another. Comparison searchers on the
other hand are brand focused and you may also find
review types of keywords at this stage as well like
Honda Ridgeline review.
The fourth type of intent is transactional which are the most
profitable types of keywords. And they occur at the
bottom of the sales funnel. An example is Honda student discount or buy used Honda Civic. And the final primary category of intent is number five navigational which are keywords that include your brand like Honda or how many miles
can a Honda Civic last. So those are the primary
categories of intent. But now I wanna show you
some new types of intent that no one is talking about. Which brings me to keyword
research tip number three which is learn the new types of intent. So the first type of new
intent is called visual intent. And some examples include modern
houses or even black shoes. When you analyze the search
results for these keywords you'll see that there's
a prominent image pack above the fold.
And the image pack pushes the traditional organic
results down below the fold and makes them nearly invisible. So if you ever encounter a
keyword with visual intent, you need to consider how you're going to
optimize your target page and how you're going to
optimize your images. So you can rank in Google images. And in most cases, ranking in the traditional
organic results is a prerequisite for ranking in Google
images for the same keyword. But you also need to optimize
your images correctly. That means first using a unique image and then optimizing that image by adding the primary
keyword in the file name and the image alt tag. The next type of new intent
is called video intent. And some examples include how to jump rope or how to apply eyeshadow. And just examine the
results for these keywords. And you'll see a video from
YouTube dominating the results. That means that if you encounter a keyword with video intent, then you need to focus
on ranking on YouTube before even thinking about Google. The fourth keyword research
tip is to target keywords at each stage of the funnel.
So now that you know the
different types of intent, you need to understand how keywords work within the confines of a sales funnel. For example, at the awareness stage, you'll find keywords with
informational intent. At the interest stage, you'll find keywords with
investigative intent. At the decision stage, you'll find keywords
with comparison intent. And lastly, at the action stage, you'll find keywords with
transactional intent.
And the next keyword research tip is to take advantage of site search. One of the most neglected
keyword research tactics is analyzing your website's site search. Simply go into Google Analytics,
go to behavior, site search and then click on the search terms option. And these are the exact
phrases users are searching on your website. Oftentimes these keywords
are an indication that you need to create new content to fulfill these searches. Or it's an indication that your site architecture
is poorly developed because users aren't able
to easily find answers to their questions. The sixth keyword research tip is to target unknown keywords.
So what I'm about to show you is a powerful way to be a
first mover on new ideas within your industry. All you need to do is use
websites like Quora or Reddit to find content ideas. Let me show you Quora for example. So just go to Quora, enter a keyword relevant to
your industry in the search and then go to the buy time
section and select past month. You'll now see all of the
most recent questions.
And I recommend focusing on the ideas that have the highest user engagement. Now here's the deal, most people doing SEO only use search volume as their only way of qualifying and
validating keyword ideas. And while this is a reliable approach, it's not the only way to validate ideas. You can also use user
signals on other platforms to validate ideas. For example, if an idea has
engagement on Quora, Reddit or even Tik Tok, then that's all the validation you need to attack it for SEO purposes. And trust me on this, most
SEOs are not doing this. They purely spend their
time finding keywords through traditional means. And the truth is new
ideas often get traction on social media way before
search engines catch up. And the seventh and final
keyword research tip is to not forget about intent modifiers. So what is an intent modifier? An intent modifier is any word that alters the original
intent of the keyword.
For example, let's say
cars is our seed keyword and it has a keyword difficulty of 95. Well, as you know, from
the previous example, cars is a terrible keyword to target because the intent is ambiguous and it's insanely competitive. But what if we add some intent modifiers? So now let's change the
keyword to best cars, 2021 which has a keyword difficulty of 49 which is still very competitive but it is 48% less competitive than cars. And this shows you the power
of adding intent modifiers. Not only can it help you rank easier, but it can also help you drive
even more organic traffic. For example, if you look at
our data from gotchseo.com, you can see that just by adding the year or best to the title, it's driven a substantial amount of additional organic search traffic.
And that wouldn't have been possible without using intent modifiers. And to finish off this video I'm going to give you one
bonus keyword research tip. So one of the smartest things to do at the beginning of an SEO campaign, is to target keywords that Google is already
favoring your website for. For example, go into Ahrefs and enter your website
into the site explorer. Then go to organic keywords and click on the positions dropdown and enter five through 15.
These keywords are what I
call low hanging fruits. And they're incredibly valuable because you're only a few tweaks away from getting substantially
more organic traffic. In many cases, all you need
to do is optimize the page based on recommendations from Surfer. In other cases, you
may need more backlinks or your website may need
more authority in general. But one big hack to
improve the performance of a given page is to create
more topical relevance. That means targeting keywords
that are closely relevant to the primary topic, but
have different intent. For example, if your page
was targeting baseball, baseball cleats would
support the primary topic but it has different intents. So it would require a dedicated page. So with that said, I highly recommend prioritizing
low-hanging fruit keywords because they are the quickest way to grow your organic traffic at the beginning of an SEO campaign.
So those are the seven
keyword research tips that you should take advantage of today. If you liked this video, please like it. Leave a comment below and subscribe. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video..
