Far too many business bloggers shoot themselves in the foot by neglecting to choose and use keywords strategically. Here is how to master keyword research.

16 Tips to Select Better Keywords for Your Articles

By Barry Feldman

Far too many business bloggers shoot themselves in the foot by neglecting to choose and use keywords strategically.

In the cutthroat SEO world—where the glory goes to those who claim page one rankings on the Google search engine result page (SERP)—it’s a mistake of the highest order. Conversely, when you understand how to select the best keywords for your blog posts, you gain an immense advantage over your competition.

The practice calls for understanding the keyword research process, taking advantage of SEO keyword research tools, and of course, placing your keywords in your article’s headline, copy, links, images and meta descriptions.

Ready to master these important skills? Let’s blast through a list of useful tips for selecting the best keywords to rank high on search engines and drive quality traffic to your blog posts.

Keyword research begins with strategy

> “What is your organic search strategy? If you don’t have one, you’re missing a key piece of your business strategy—and shutting out many potential customers who are looking for your business.” – Vanessa Fox, Marketing in the Age of Google

I read Vanessa’s book some years ago and this fundamental principle has stuck with me ever since. SEO is a core marketing activity. It must be tied to your business goals. Succeeding with search forces you to carefully examine what your message is and whom it’s for.

Got it? Good. Now, where do you begin?

1. Get suggestions from the source

Obviously Google has more data on search activity than anyone. Ever noticed as you type a phrase into the Google search field it begins guessing what you’re looking for? The system is anticipating your needs based on the popularity of past searches and attempting to save you time by offering suggestions. Aptly, this is called “Google Suggest.”

You might find a keyword phrase you like right there and get to work on it. Or check this out…

KeywordTool.io is Google Suggest on steroids. The tool helps you discover thousands of long-tail keywords related to any topic by automatically scraping every phrase from Google Suggest.

2. Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner

The Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool was created to serve the needs of companies using their popular pay-per-click ad program. However, you can create an account whether or not you plan to pay for search ads.

The data offered via the tool is vast. Most importantly, it will serve your blog planning needs by delivering approximations of the search volume for the keywords you enter, and related keywords. Enter an idea, or several, and the tool will return up to 800 suggestions pulled from Google’s massive database.

3. Dig into related searches

We covered the suggestions Google offers as you type. Their suggestions don’t stop there. At the bottom of your SERP, you’ll find “searches related to” whatever you entered.

You might use these related phrases a variety of ways:

• Select one as your focus keyword.
• Use one or more of the phrases in your post for semantic search purposes.
• Take a related search and start your keyword research over again.

Bonus tip: copy and paste the related searches into Google AdWords Keyword Planner. You’ll get a whole new array of ideas.

4. Go question shopping

Whether or not users pose their search as a question or use a question mark, the most successful business bloggers think of every search as a question. The articles they compose present the answer. This post is a perfectly good example. I wrote it because I know you’d like to know the answer to: How do you select better keywords for your articles or blog posts?

Tools like AnswerThePublic.com and Bloomberry.com gather questions being asked across the web on forums, helping you discover the exact questions people ask relative to your topic.

5. Mine the world’s largest wiki

> “If you want to find keywords that are closely related to your seed keyword—but not straight-up variations—you need a human mind. Or better yet, the thousands of human minds that contribute to Wikipedia.” – Brian Dean, Backlinko

Wikipedia can be a powerful library of SEO resources and ideas. As Brian points out, it’s based on human knowledge and therefore uses language the way humans do.

6. Hack books and courses

Want fast access to keyword ideas related to your subject? Borrow them from authors and instructors. Amazon (or any book e-tailer) is prime pickings for this tactic as is Udemy (or any online course resource).

The “Look Inside” feature on Amazon almost always reveals a table of contents chock full of ideas and the same goes for course outlines on Udemy, Skillshare, Lynda and other online learning websites.

7. Hack reviews

Continuing on our theme of website hacking and mining the human mind, examine reviews of books, courses, and products for additional ideas. A detailed review is loaded with potential keyword ideas, including some you’re unlikely to find elsewhere.

8. Do some pay-per-click advertising

Obviously, pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is not free. However, a small investment in PPC can bring you valuable insights for organic search that pay for themselves many times over. Your PPC campaigns will reveal the keywords that deliver not only the highest levels of traffic, but the highest quality as well.

> “I like running PPC campaigns next to organic marketing campaigns. PPC offers the most accurate tool for assessing keywords and their potential.” – Stoney Degeyter

9. Size up your keyword choices

You’ve forged a keyword strategy. To pare your list, it’d be helpful to understand the search volume of the contenders. Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner for broad approximations (10–100, 100–1,000, 1000–10,000). To some degree, the bottom end of the range is the number you actually do want to know. If a phrase shows no volume, it doesn’t mean there is no volume; it means the volume is fewer than 10 monthly searches.

10. Get serious with Moz Pro Keyword Explorer

Approximating by 100s or 1000s doesn’t do it for you? Moz Pro Keyword Explorer provides a broader set of long-tail keywords and many filters to deliver a wide range of keyword results, plus a look into the keyword difficulty. If your domain authority is greater than the keyword difficulty, you have a chance of ranking.

11. Uncover trends

Google Trends taps historical search data to deliver a representation of the relative volume of searches over time. It can be particularly powerful for researching regionalized or local search insights and comparing global history of search activity.

Gauge the competition

A major factor in keyword selection is analyzing your keyword competition, the measure of how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword.

12. Check authority with MozBar

MozBar is a free extension for Chrome that gives you instant metrics while viewing any page or SERP. Look at the domain authority (DA) of the pages ranking for your keyword. After choosing a keyword, you want to find SERPs where the results include listings with domain authorities lower than (or in the range of) yours.

13. Check the difficulty factor

Use the SEMrush Keyword Difficulty tool to assess which keywords are worth targeting. The tool provides a keyword difficulty index from 1-100 percent to show you how difficult it’ll be to beat your competitors with the specified search terms and phrases.

14. Find competitive gaps

Serious SEO pros keep an eye on competitors. A great tool from Alexa, the Audience Overlap Tool, helps you discover other websites your target audience visits. You can see which keywords your top competitors are ranking for, which keywords they’re paying for, and which keywords are gaps in your SEO strategy.

Think beyond the exact match

There was a time us search folks gave a fair amount of consideration to "exact match." Those are days gone by. It doesn't mean there’s not value in optimizing for exact matches, but it does mean there’s MORE value in optimizing for topics.

15. Approach keyword planning semantically

In the SEO world, "semantically" means the relationship between signifiers in words and phrases. Google's has evolved to become a semantic search engine. Future-proof your content by targeting topics more broadly. In applying your keywords, address topics, not only exact phrases.

16. Double-down on your keywords

Make your keywords work double-time, or more. Optimize your posts—especially the titles—for overlapping phrases and/or multiple keywords. For example, a title like "Lead Magnet Ideas, Titles and Templates" attempts to rank for "Lead magnet ideas", "Lead magnet titles", and "Lead magnet templates".

Another way to double-down is to create a blog post or page that targets two distinct but related phrases using a two-part headline.

Got it? In an effort to wrap this baby up, I'll let you figure out how keyword phrases were doubled-down and overlapped. Hey, you wouldn’t hang out here on our blog if you weren’t also a search geek. What ideas do you have about selecting better keywords?