Finding out keyword ideas is not the most challenging part of keyword research.
The most toughest part is to choose the right keywords for your web content.
These days almost anyone can do in-depth keyword research and find keyword ideas for their website.
But most of the people fail on the keyword selection part.
And that’s where the main problem comes in…
It doesn’t matter how good you are in terms of keyword research, but if you can’t select the right SEO keywords for your website and business, this isn’t going to help you to rank higher on search engines.
But the main question that comes up right now is: how to choose the right keywords for SEO?
In this post, we’re going to show you step by step how you can select the right keywords for your content.
Excited?
Let’s jump in…
What Are Keywords?
In general, keywords are the search terms that people use on search engines like Google to find any particular information.
While in SEO terms, keywords are the search queries that website owners or SEO professionals use to optimize their website to get discovered on search engines like Google.
It’s the most essential part of SEO, and if you do it right, you can easily rank on Google for your targeted keyword terms.
Of course, backlinks, technical SEO, user experience, and all of these play a vital role in SEO, but keywords are basically the baseline of everything you’ll do.
And if mistakenly you mess up on this part, then it doesn’t matter what SEO techniques you use. Your website isn’t going to rank on Google.
That’s why if you want to run a successful SEO campaign and want your website to rank on top of Google search results, then you have to pay special attention to the keywords you target.
How Can Keyword Selection Make or Break Your SEO Game?
We’re constantly saying that choosing the right keywords is more crucial than finding the keywords from the beginning of this post.
But have you ever wondered why it’s like that?
The main reason behind this is because you can find hundreds and thousands of keyword ideas within a few seconds using some keyword research tool like Zutrix keyword planner.
But certainly, you can’t use all of the keyword ideas.
Some keywords might be super competitive for your website, while some keywords might not be that much valuable for your business.
And obviously, putting effort into ranking those keywords would be totally worthless.
Instead of putting efforts on the keywords that do not have any monetary value and are super competitive at the same time, if you put in the same amount of hard work and efforts on the keywords that are valuable for your business and less competitive, you can easily win over SEO.
In simple words:
The whole game of keyword research is not actually finding the keywords but choosing the right keywords.
And if you can master this keyword selection process, then no one can stop you in SEO.
But how can you choose keywords that are suitable for your business and SEO?
In the next section of this post, we’re exactly going to discover that.
How to Choose The Right Keyword For SEO (5 Step Process)
Choosing the right keyword for SEO is not an easy task.
But at the same time, it’s not that difficult as well.
If you follow the right system and process, you can easily select perfect keywords for SEO without spending hours of time and guesswork.
Most people do not follow any form of process and mainly select their keywords based on guesswork.
But as you might know, SEO is a game of data, not guesswork.
Instead of guessing, if you follow the right system, you can select the perfect keywords that are worth going after.
To make it easier for you, we’re going to show you a 5 step process that we follow, and you can follow too for choosing the right keyword terms for SEO.
Step 1: Understand The Right Search Intent of The Keyword
Understanding the search intent of the keyword is the most crucial part of keyword research.
Search intent is basically the main goal a user has while searching for something on search engines like Google.
For example, if someone searches for “best laptop under $1000”, that means the user is looking for a list of laptops under $1000.
And if unintentionally you include a laptop that’s more than $1000, then the content won’t align with the search intent of the user.
The primary aim of Google is to provide the correct information to the right user.
And if you can create content that aligns with the search intent of the user and gives what the user actually wants, then you can pretty easily rank your site on top of search results.
But how can you understand the search intent of any keyword?
That’s super easy.
Just search for the keyword on Google and look for the top 10 results.
For example, if you search for “animated explainer video”, you’ll see most of the pages ranking on the first page are either landing pages or home pages of animated video creation companies.
Let’s suppose you also own an animation company. What kind of content you’ll create to target this keyword?
Blog? Landing page? Or home page?
Obviously, you have to either create a home page or landing page.
Because the users who are searching for this keyword do not want to read any blog post about explainer videos. Instead, they might want to inquire about any explainer video company.
That’s just an example.
The main point is: if you want to know the exact search intent of any keyword and want to know what kind of content you should create for that particular keyword and how you should approach it, just look at the top-ranking pages for that exact keyword.
But sometimes, if you find out that the top-ranking pages are not totally aligning with the search intent of the keyword, then that’s a golden opportunity for you.
You can tap into that spot and create content that will really serve the user’s intent.
And by doing that, you can easily rank for that keyword even without building a single backlink.
Step 2: Competition of That Keyword
The next very crucial metric you have to look for when choosing a keyword for SEO is the competition of that keyword.
Many newbies make a common mistake is that they don’t measure the competition of the keywords and often unknowingly run after super competitive keywords that are almost impossible to rank for.
But if you want to master SEO keyword selection, then closely measure the competition of the keyword that you’re going to target.
That step is especially vital for small and mid-range websites that do not have much authority.
If you try to compete on some particular keywords with industry-leading or high authority sites, you’ll most probably fail because of the trust factor that authoritative websites have build over the course of years.
But the main question is: how will you measure the competition of any keywords?
Competition of any keyword can be measured based on four major factors:
- The authority of the site
- Content quality
- Number of backlinks
- Relevancy
First of all, you have to figure out the authority of the top-ranking pages.
For that, you can use a tool like MozBar that will show you the DA (domain authority) and PA (page authority) of sites right inside the search results.
Then check for the content quality of the top-ranking pages.
If the quality of pages are top-notch, then to compete for that keyword, you would have to create 10x better content than what’s already out there.
And lastly, you would have to check the number of backlinks those pages have (along with the backlink quality) and the relevance of the pages with that keyword.
If this process sounds complicated to you, then you can also use the keyword lab feature of Zutrix to quickly figure out the competition of any keywords with a click of a button.
Step 3: Potential Search Volume
Now that you’ve figured out the search intent and competition of the keyword, it’s time to know the potential search volume of that keyword.
As we’ve already mentioned, SEO is not a guesswork.
You have to move ahead with your SEO campaigns based on data and facts.
And one of the crucial data that you have to measure before choosing any keyword is the potential search volume of that search term.
You can either use the keyword lab or keyword planner tool of Zutrix to quickly figure out the search volume of the keywords that you want to target.
For example, let’s see how you can use the Zutrix keyword lab to know the potential search volume of keywords.
To do that, log in to your Zutrix account, click on “keyword lab”, enter your keyword and click on “search”.
And within a few seconds, it will show you the potential search volume that keyword is getting on a monthly basis.
Step 4: Your Authority on That Subject
You might not believe this, but people skip this step and do not pay much attention to it.
But in reality, it’s one of the most crucial steps of selecting a keyword for SEO.
And by chance, if you skip this step, then I don’t think you can ever choose the right keywords for your SEO campaigns.
Whenever you’re selecting keywords or a list of keywords for your SEO campaigns, you have to ask yourself: Do I have authority or knowledge on that subject?
For example, if you have a medical blog and you start posting digital marketing-related content, do you think it would rank on Google, or rather someone would read those articles?
I don’t think so.
Because your audience and Google know that you have authority on medical-related subjects and not on digital marketing related topics.
So it doesn’t matter if some keywords have really huge search volumes and significantly less competition. If you don’t have authority and knowledge on that subject, then just don’t pick that keyword at any cost.
You’ll not only waste your time running after that keyword, but it will also massively hurt your reputation in the eyes of your audience as well as Google.
Step 5: Earning Potential of That Keyword
Now here we come to the last step of our keyword selection process for SEO.
This step does not directly impact SEO. Instead, it affects your whole business.
After all, what’s the point of ranking a keyword and driving lots of traffic to your website if that traffic doesn’t convert for your business at all?
The main goal of every business on this earth is to get customers, revenue, and profits.
And since you’ll spend tons of money on SEO, I believe that would be the same goal of your business too.
So after you go through all the above mentioned steps, you also have to look for the monetary value of those keywords and filter out the ones that you think would not bring any value to your business.
Of course, you can’t always run after high-earning potential keywords all the time.
But you have to maintain a healthy ratio between high monetary value keywords and other informational keywords.
For example, if you target 6 high-earning potential keywords a month, you also have to target at least 4 informational keywords.
But that varies from business to business.
To simplify this last step, you can also use the keyword planner tool of Zutrix to easily know the CPC (cost per click) of any particular keyword.
Final Words
Choosing a keyword for SEO is never an easy task.
Most SEO tools, including Zutrix can help you find tons of keyword ideas, but no tool can ever tell you which keyword would be the best fit for your website and what keyword you should choose.
It’s a manual process that everyone has to do.
But if you follow the 5 step keyword selection process that we’ve shared in this post today, it will not only make your work a lot easier, but will also help you choose perfect keywords for your SEO campaigns.
