5 Hacks For Better Blog Keyword Research

You can achieve great results with an excellent online store. But pair it up with a blog full of additional resources and use cases for your audience. You'll have even better outcomes.

However, having a brand blog isn't just writing about things you think people will like. Instead, you need to take the time to investigate your audience and find out what they're looking for, how they're looking for that, and target those topics. A crucial step of the blog writing process comes in: keyword research.

Keyword research is essential because it lets you gain insights into what your target audience is searching on Google. In turn, that helps you plan out topics and articles to attract more customers that will aid you in your larger marketing strategies. You have to choose keywords that satisfy both your customer's needs and those of the search engine.

The true power of keyword searching lies, as we said before, in understanding your target audience's market. Blog keyword research provides you with specific sets of data that will help you to answer questions like:

What are my customers searching for?
How many people are searching for it?
In what kind of format do they want the information?

You might already have a few methods or tools to refine your keyword research, but if you're ready to upgrade all of them and take one step further, this article will help you out. Here are five keyword research tips to refine your results.

1. Ask yourself questions

Before diving straight into defining keywords, it's important to ask yourself questions. Then, sit and think about what your business sells, what people are looking for, and why people choose your particular product.

For example, if you have a clothing brand, you can focus on these questions:

What kind of clothing items are people looking up for?
What words and word combinations do they use when searching?
Is there a specific trend or period when people search for clothes more? Is there any seasonality trend to be seen?
Are people looking for environmentally-safe materials of clothing nowadays?

The answers to these questions are the first step into keyword research, as they will give hints at what words to rank for. For example, suppose people are looking at environmentally-friendly outfits and have a line of products that match that query. Then, you may want to put more effort into creating articles and ranking for keywords related to that topic.

Seasonality also plays a role in determining topics and keywords: If the most searched-for item is scarves, you should look into keywords related to that, like "how to style a scarf" or "outfits with scarves." Research those keywords, and if they have a significant traffic potential and match your branding, definitely go ahead and craft articles based on that.

2. Define the keyword’s search intent

There is an important aspect to keep in mind when looking for keywords: search intent. Different internet users may look for the same thing but with different goals. For example, it's not the same to look for "buy hair straightener" because I'd like to get one than to look for "how to use a hair straightener" because I have one, but I've never used it.

It's normal to struggle with how to define search intention for your keywords, so keep the different types of search intent in mind when performing your research:

Transactional keywords are those that help potential customers find the products or services that they are looking for. Search engine users will use these keywords to find the right solution for them and the right place to purchase it. These have a relatively low search volume but a high conversion rate. For example, "Buy hair straightener" would fit this category.

Commercial keywords reveal a searcher's intent around specific products or services. Searchers typically research more about brands and their services, so commercial keywords come in handy here. At this stage, they aren't specifically looking to buy anything.

The difference between transactional and commercial keywords is that in the former, the customer intends to go ahead and complete their purchase for a specific product. But for commercial keywords, the searcher doesn't have to buy anything; they find out more information regarding a brand or a product.

People use informational keywords to find out more about a particular topic, person, product, or service. When users search for informational keywords, they wish to find the background or basic information to help them with their decision-making process. Here's where queries like "how to use a hair straightener" come in.

As the name suggests, navigational keywords are used to find a specific brand, website, or location. The user's intent is very specific because they are looking for a particular brand or location only (literally or virtually). An example of this category would be "coffee shops near me" or googling "Facebook.com."

When you come up with new keywords in your research, make sure you identify their search intent to craft your blog post accordingly.

3. Track SERPs

Another critical aspect of the keyword research process is to track your SERPs. That means periodically looking at the search results for the keywords you want to rank for and checking what your position is.

SERP tracking is crucial to monitor your progress and that of your competitors. However, if you don't want to check every page manually and you want to keep a proper record of your data, you can use a tool like Stillio to do the work for you.

With Stillio, you can automatically capture full-page screenshots of any SERP and archive them to your cloud or drive. You can set the interval of your liking - daily, weekly, monthly, or even up to 5 minutes! You can save all the SERPs to check and analyze whenever you want. You can set yourself to look at the results once a week. Just log into Stillio and take a look at the SERPs it captured.

You can add multiple URLs at once or add important tags. The best part about Stillio is that it lets you capture screenshots from over 150 countries worldwide so that you can check your results in many different markets.

4. Go for specific keywords

When we first start working on blogs, we want to go for the big words, those that have hundreds of thousands of searches. But that's not the best idea.

Suppose you use a very vague or generic keyword. Then, your chances of ranking high with your article are meager because the competition will be far greater. Typically, users begin with a simple search. When the search engines gradually start guiding them towards their solutions, their searches become more detailed. Therefore, to get a good SERP position and drive traffic, focus more on specific keywords, usually referred to as long-tail keywords.

A long-tail keyword is usually made of 3-5 words. These keywords are also much less competitive than generic ones because they better reflect how people search for their queries. Therefore, by using long-tail keywords, you can attract more traffic.

Over 70% of searches on the internet are made using long-tail keywords. You can add "near me" to shoot up on the SERPs if you're a local brand. For example, target keywords like "best clothing stores near me" or "organic clothing store near me." Another exercise you can make is to build a buyer persona, mapping your target accurately to help you understand what and how they search.

5. Choose the right tools to help you

Keyword research can be extremely exhausting if you plan to do everything manually, so consider using some tools to help you out. Here are some popular keyword research tools you can use:

Google trends

As the name suggests, this shows you current trends and their evolution over time. You can find trending searches around the world, or you can look for your desired keywords to see their evolution and related terms and topics. Google Trends is useful for blog keyword research, as it can let you define if your keyword is popular enough, and it can help you find new ones.

You can manually check Google Trends to track trends and results or use Stillio to capture full-length screenshots at set intervals. If you need more help with Google Trends, here's a quick guide to help you utilize it optimally.

Google’s related search terms:

When you look something up on Google, it also provides related terms below the search results. These can be used as keyword ideas, often mid or long-tail.

Google related search

You can also track these keywords automatically using Stillio's features: When you track a SERP, the full-length screenshots will also capture the related terms below.

Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is a Google Chrome extension that shows you related terms, popularity, and difficulty of a search query on popular platforms like Google or Youtube. It's useful to see if a keyword you'd like to rank for is particularly difficult and find related long-tail terms.

Ahrefs and SEMRush

Ahrefs keyword explorer tool can help you discover a lot of unique keywords to target. Simply insert one or several keywords in the search box and get hundreds of similar keyword suggestions.

SEMRush is the world's largest database of keywords, with more than 20 billion of them included in its powerful filtering system. You can estimate the click potential and uncover keyword difficulty using SEMRush's features.

Both Ahrefs and SEMRush are pretty broad tools, as they provide multiple SEO features. If you're looking for a solution that covers more than just keyword researching, you should look at them.

Conclusion

With advanced keyword research, take your blog's SERP position to a new level. Start a free trial with Stillio to see how you can automate your entire keyword search process and make things easier. If you wish to learn even more, you can also check out some of our other SEO articles, like our guide on image SEO tracking.