What are the best tools and techniques for keyword research and analysis?

1 Identify your goals and topics

Before you start looking for keywords, you need to have a clear idea of what your website is about, what your goals are, and what topics you want to cover. This will help you narrow down your focus and avoid irrelevant or too broad keywords. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or SEMrush to analyze your current traffic, performance, and ranking, and identify your strengths and weaknesses. You can also brainstorm topics based on your niche, audience, and competitors, and use tools like AnswerThePublic, BuzzSumo, or Quora to find out what questions and problems your potential customers have.

2 Find and evaluate keywords

Once you have your topics, you need to find and evaluate keywords that match your intent, relevance, and difficulty. There are many tools that can help you with this process, such as Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, or Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. These tools can help you generate keyword ideas, check their search volume, competition, and difficulty, and filter them by various criteria. You should aim for keywords that have high search volume, low to medium competition, and high relevance to your topic and goal. You should also consider the search intent behind the keywords, and whether they match the type of content you want to create, such as informational, navigational, or transactional.

3 Analyze the SERPs and your competitors

Another important step for keyword research and analysis is to analyze the search engine results pages (SERPs) and your competitors for the keywords you have selected. This will help you understand how Google ranks the pages for those keywords, what factors influence the ranking, and what gaps and opportunities you can exploit. You can use tools like SERPChecker, MozBar, or Ahrefs Site Explorer to analyze the SERPs and your competitors, and look for metrics such as domain authority, page authority, backlinks, social shares, and content quality. You should also look at the features and formats that Google displays for those keywords, such as snippets, images, videos, or maps, and try to optimize your content accordingly.

4 Organize and prioritize your keywords

The final step for keyword research and analysis is to organize and prioritize your keywords based on your goals, topics, and findings. You can use tools like Google Sheets, Excel, or Trello to create a keyword spreadsheet or a keyword map, and group your keywords by categories, subcategories, and themes. You should also assign a priority score to each keyword, based on its importance, difficulty, and opportunity, and use it to decide which keywords to target first, and which ones to save for later. You should also update your keyword list regularly, and track your progress and results.