SEO has not changed so rapidly, not so much in a year!
With multiple AI tools and Google updates flooding the internet, the one constant thing that has not changed is SEO.
I know, you might be thinking – Hasn’t the way we do SEO and keyword research changed in 2024?
You are absolutely right and with AI powered tools like Neuronwriter, Writerzen and Frase, you don’t even need to worry about secondary keywords anymore.
This totally changes the way we do SEO in 2024.
In this article, we will understand what is SEO keyword research in 2024 and how to use a tool called Writerzen to do SEO keyword research.
So let’s get started with the basics for finding the best keywords.
What is SEO Keyword Research ?
So, I was talking to a client some time back who wanted to have his site rank well in the search engines.
The client was providing the service of rodent-racing events.
I did a little research and found that they were not using the term “rodent-racing” anywhere on their website pages.
When I contacted the client regarding the same , he mentioned that they used an alternate term for rodents as using the term “rodent” was against their company policy.
Well, that was obviously the reason they were not ranking in search engines too!!
So Keywords are the exact set of words your target audience uses to find products or services related to your business.
If you use a different set of keywords, then you might not get found by the search engines and ultimately your target audience.
Thus, it is highly important to find the right keywords for your web pages and blogs and to optimise your content with them.
Now let’s understand what is SEO keyword research and how to do keyword research step by step
What is SEO Keyword Strategy
A keyword strategy is a plan that defines the search engine queries you want to rank for, how you’ll try to rank for them, and in what order. Meaning it helps you prioritise keywords and target them effectively.
And it’s distinct from keyword research.
While keyword research provides the data you need, a keyword strategy gives data meaning and direction. To ensure that your optimization efforts align with your business’s goals and resources.
For example, keyword research might tell you that “online accounting software” gets searched over 10 times more than “accounting software for contractors.”
But as part of your keyword strategy, you might decide to focus on the latter. Because it’s less competitive and more relevant to your audience.
Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?
Keyword research is important for SEO because it tells you what relevant audiences are looking for and helps you prioritise ranking opportunities.
By creating content that satisfies target users’ needs, you can earn organic rankings in search results. Just like the ones below. And get more valuable traffic to your site.
We will now look at the exact process of keyword research step-by-step.
Step-1 : Find Your Seed Keywords
So Step1 of SEO Keyword research is to find your seed keywords.This can be done in a variety of ways.
1) Brainstorm a set of keywords based on your products and services
For example, if your website provides SEO services – then Keyword research , Local SEO and Link Building might be good seed keywords to get started with.
In a similar way, make a complete list of your products and services in a Google Sheet and keep updating this list as you add more keywords
2) Get Seed Keywords from competitors
Visit your competitor’s SEO and services page and look for keywords the page is optimised for. Take a look at their meta titles, meta description, and put keywords into your list.
For example, a look at my competitor’s site eSEO Solutions helps me add the
following keywords into my list.
“Best SEO Services company in Bangalore”
“Search Engine Optimization services”
“High Quality Guest posting services”
“Content Marketing Services”
3) Use Soovle.com to Conduct Keyword Research
Soovle.com gives keywords from Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia etc for a particular seed keyword. For eg’ a search for the query
Seo services on this website returns results like this
Add these keyword ideas to your list.
4) Get Keyword Ideas from Google Autosuggest
Type your services into Google and get suggestions for your keywords from Google Autosuggest.
For example, a search for SEO services gives the following keyword ideas from Google Autosuggest.
Add these keywords to your list.
5) Get Right Keyword Ideas from Google Search Console
Once you have connected your site to Google Search Console, you can then see a list of queries your pages are ranking for.
Go to Performance tab and download the list of queries by position by searching for a related keyword – “seo”
If there are several queries that you are already ranking for in Google search console, then these queries can be picked to be optimised better
For example, these are the queries I picked from my Google Search Console related to SEO services.
We will add these keywords to our sheet under the GSC tab.
6) Download Competitor Ranking Keywords from SEMRUSH/ AHRefs
When we type our seed keyword “SEO services in Google’ , we now have our top competitor as ‘Thrive Marketing Agency – SEO Company’
We will now download the list of keywords that this page is ranking for. Choose a keyword tool like SEMRUSH/AHRefs to download the competitor details.
For the purpose of this blog, we will use SEMRUSH to download the competitor details. Goto Organic research tab and type the exact URL of your competitor and you will have the ranking keywords for this page.
In this example, we have this page ranking for 82 keywords. Download the keywords to an excel sheet and then select the seed keywords into our master keyword sheet.
We now have our consolidated list of keywords as follows.
STEP 2: Choose a Keyword Research Tool
Now that we have our seed keywords, the next step is to use a keyword research tool. This tool enables us to discover additional terms that we haven’t brainstormed or discovered and helps us determine which keywords are most important based on the search volume and competition.
Both free and paid versions of keyword tools are available.
Let;s explore some of the tools
Google Keyword Planner – Google’s version of the free keyword analyser is the Google ads keyword planner. To use this tool, you need to set up the Google ads pay-per-click advertising account. Although you can use the tool, Google limits the data it will give you unless you are actually using the account to run PPC ads. Hence, we will not use this tool for our keyword research.
AHREFS – We all know that the word AHREFS is synonymous with keyword research. Even though this tool has been used for keyword research since ages, there‘s a downside to it. Ahrefs costs $99/m. The problem with any pricing model is that the same amount could be insignificant for some players but still represent a good chunk of expenditure for others. Paying $1200 yearly might not seem like a lot for large websites or SEO agencies that use Ahrefs as part of their workflow, but it’s a major expense for most SEO beginners.
Hence, we will be looking at another tool called Writerzen for our keyword research which is not only affordable but also offers great keyword lists.
Why Use Writerzen for SEO Keyword Research ?
WriterZen is an all-in-one, web-based keyword research, content creation and optimization tool. The software contains the entire SEO workflow from topic research and clustering to keyword research and content creation and also includes a built-in AI assistant to help you write SEO-optimised content.
WriterZen is a must-have tool for:
– content marketers
– bloggers
– SEOs
– SEO agencies
– writers
– content creators
– anyone creating and publishing content that needs to rank online
Unlike traditional keyword tools, WriterZen was designed to cover the entire SEO workflow from keyword research to the content creation process. This makes it unnecessary to use multiple SEO tools, making the workflow simpler and also reducing the cost of digital marketing.
The tool also provides an Ai assistant to help you optimise your content using Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) model.
Another unique feature of WriterZen is the integration of modern SEO strategies like topic clustering, giving you the ability to create topical maps at the click of a button.
How to use Writerzen for SEO Keyword Research?
Now that we have selected our keyword research tool and have our seed keywords, the process is simple.
Just input your seed keywords one by one into the Keyword Explorer tab of Writerzen.
How to use this feature:
1. Enter a keyword (a root keyword)
2. Select a search engine
3. Select a language
4. Hit Search
What you get:
* search volume (as well as total search volume)
* SERP overview
* average CPC
* keyword ideas
* trends data (from Google trends) broken down by month, for the last 12 months
* keyword data section
* insights section
We will now input the seed keyword – “seo service provider” into writerzen’s keyword explorer.
We get the following results
We will now select only those keywords we feel appropriate for our list and then click on “Golden Filter” to find the other key metrics like “
Search Volume and Golden Score.
We now have our 10 selected set of keywords along with other key metrics for our seed keyword – SEO service providers.
Export these details to a Google sheet and note down the keyword, search volume, all in title and Golden score.
Repeat this process for each seed keyword in our list.
You now have a consolidated set of keywords for each seed keyword in your list with Writerzen.
Select your keywords as you find appropriate with a good search volume and golden score.
To understand more about what should be the golden score in writerzen, read this article.
What is the Keyword Golden Ratio in Writerzen?
That’s it ! Simple – Keyword research is so fast and easy with Writerzen.
STEP 3 – Select the Secondary Keywords for the Focus Keywords Chosen
Once you have selected the focus keyword, we need to select the secondary keywords to target for our page.
This can be done in 2 ways
Choose an AI SEO Tool – Use an AI SEO tool like Neuronwriter or Frase which automatically provides you the H1 headings, H2/H3 headings and the secondary keywords in the content to target. By optimising for multiple secondary keywords suggested by these tools from competitor SERPs, your chances of ranking in Google SERPs becomes higher.
Find and Choose Keywords with Writerzen’s Keyword Explorer Tool – Once you have the focus keyword, research the SERPs to find other secondary keywords or subtopics to include in your page.
In our example, the focus keyword selected was “ professional seo services agency”
We will now look at the SERPs and create the right content outline based on subheadings from SERPS
For example, we found the following keywords while analysing the SERPs
“Professional SEO service for your business”
“Professional SEO services to increase your revenue”
“What are professional seo services”
“Professional SEO Company”
Thus, by analysing the SERPs we can arrive at a list of secondary keywords which we can then input into writerzen to finalise the set of secondary keywords for our page or blog.
Importance of Keyword Research in 2024
We started with understanding “What is SEO Keyword research” and we now have the complete process to research your webpage or blog keywords using our above process.
Let us now understand the benefits of the keyword research process with an example.
Understanding Search Intent – Search Intent is more important and relevant in 2024, By understanding the intent of the keywords with SERP analysis, you can optimise your content better.
For example, “ how to motivate team to improve performance” tells you a story about your audience. We understand that our audience has the following pain points
Pain points from the searcher:
Worried their staff aren’t motivated
Want to understand the reasons why
Wants to know if they can improve staff productivity
If you could now target the audience from this search to a solution – on how your productivity software can help keep employees motivated,
Then this could be a highly targeted landing page to sell the product.
This is how you can use keywords to understand the search intent of the customer and thus tailor content to bring them down the funnel and eventually convert them into your customers.
Nowadays, the primary goal of creating content should be to help readers to solve all of the queries and doubts regarding the topic.
Since there are other parameters as well in the quality content, using keywords smartly can play a huge role in ranking as well.
Also, the ultimate goal of this content was to help you optimise your content
And I hope you learned something.
Let us know if this keyword research process helped you!