How to Do Keyword Research for a NEW Website (Full Tutorial)

39 Comments

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to do keyword research to find keywords you SHOULD target. The result? More rankings and organic traffic for your website.

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Additional Keyword Research and SEO Tutorials

Simple SEO Strategy: The “Middleman” Method

Keyword Research Tutorial Series ►
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In this video, you’ll learn how to do keyword research in 2019 for a brand new website. Even if you have an existing website, you'll learn some tips to better structure your keyword targeting for long term growth.

First, you’ll learn what a seed keyword is and a few ways to brainstorm a massive list of keywords.

You’ll then learn an effective trick that you can use to filter your list down to the keyword ideas that you want to target.

Next, you’ll learn how to identify 3 types of keywords. Each type is important and the way you target them should be different.

These are:

1. Low Competition Keywords
You’ll learn how to find such keywords by using filters on keyword research tools. You’ll then learn a method to decide between targeting multiple keywords with one page, or creating individual posts targeting a single keyword.

2. Link-Bait Worthy Topics
You’ll learn how creating content around such topics can help rank other pages and build authority across your website. You’ll also learn how to reverse engineer the success factors of pages that have already generated a ton of links.

3. Money Terms
You’ll learn how to focus on transactional intent and identify keywords that will be your core revenue drivers.

Once you have your list of keywords, you’ll learn how to identify search intent for each of your keywords.

Another important thing you’ll learn is how to assess ranking difficulty by analyzing the SEO metrics of the top ranking pages. This step helps you understand what it’ll take for you to outrank who you’re up against.

Finally after qualifying your target keywords, you’ll find out how to extract subtopics based on the keyword rankings from the top 5 relevant pages. This process gives you valuable “clues” of related subtopics you should include in your content.

Keyword research isn’t rocket science. It’s a data-driven process.

Using the process outlined in this tutorial, you’ll be able to find the keywords that truly matter to your business.

Timestamps:

1:11 Generate keyword ideas from 2-3 seed keywords
3:45 Filter keyword ideas to find those matching your goals
5:32 Find low-competition keywords
7:24 Get keywords with link-bait potential
9:50 Find money terms for your money pages
10:58 Identify search intent for each keyword in your list
12:12 Assess the ranking difficulty
16:16 Extract subtopics using keywords from the top 5 relevant pages

#KeywordResearch #HowToDoKeywordResearch #SEO

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39 Comments
    • Sara Sheraka
    • June 30, 2022
    Reply

    Thank you Sam for your deep explaining I love your tutorials so much… I start a blog around 3 months ago .. some articles are already indexed by google.. just I want to ask you, I’m writing now about 2 topics and can I write about more topics or should i stick only to 2 or 3 topics ?

      • Ahrefs
      • June 30, 2022
      Reply

      Hard to tell without seeing the website. But as long as you stick to the chosen niche of your blog – why not?
      -Helen

    • Jessica Weischedel
    • April 12, 2022
    Reply

    This is awesome From the actionable steps and the easy paced tutorial, to the transcript as you talk us through each step. THANK YOU

      • Ahrefs
      • April 12, 2022
      Reply

      You’re very welcome! 🙂
      -Helen

    • All Things Serious - News and Christianity
    • November 23, 2021
    Reply

    I’ve been teaching small classes for 25 years and you are a stud! I’m starting a new site and find your presentations informational, energetic, and though not intentional, entertaining (well I guess the karate game was funny! – I loved that game in the day. I’m 67).

    • Doris Koine
    • October 8, 2021
    Reply

    As a start-up, we are very pressed for finances. Do you think adding keywords and meta descriptions is something we can do ourselves now that our website is up? The cost for an SEO developer is outrageous for a startup. What are your thoughts?
    Great how-to videos!

      • Ahrefs
      • October 13, 2021
      Reply

      Of course you can do it yourself 🙂
      – SQ

    • Ernesto Sazo
    • May 7, 2021
    Reply

    Hey, Sam Thanks for the reply. I’m talking about the actual tech moves. For example,. building your site connect your URLs to your home page. How everything technically comes together, Connecting the responder to squeeze page. I know it would be a long video if you provided all the details at once. Just the tech moves from your host to the responder to capture/squeeze page etc. Anyway, thanks much appreciated. Hey, one last thing your really good at teaching instructor/mentor. Precise to the point and easily understandable. I don’t know how many times you had to do a retake but your good. lol I would take it to the next level. As a matter of fact I just scrolled down and read a couple of comments saying the same thing. lol

      • Ahrefs
      • May 10, 2021
      Reply

      I see. We’ll think about making a video on that topic. Thanks!
      – SQ

    • SL Lamia
    • May 1, 2021
    Reply

    Impressive amount of informations with the best presentation!!
    Thank you for the effort you put in every video!
    You have the best team there!
    Best regards from Algeria!

      • Ahrefs
      • May 3, 2021
      Reply

      Thank you!

    • M. J. W.
    • April 3, 2021
    Reply

    Thanks from Germany! This will help my business a lot 🙂 Signed up for the 7 days trial and will stay a customer 😉 AWESOME work Sam. The tool together with the videos is the best education one needs

      • Ahrefs
      • April 5, 2021
      Reply

      Awesome! Thank you so much!
      – SQ

    • Muhammad Ahmed
    • February 2, 2021
    Reply

    Presentation skills are on another level.

      • Ahrefs
      • February 2, 2021
      Reply

      Thanks!

    • Sidney Hui
    • November 28, 2020
    Reply

    Great lecture! really learned a lot from it 🙂 and i noticed you spelt low-competition keywords wrong (competion) at 5:11 lol.

      • Ahrefs
      • December 1, 2020
      Reply

      Our bad.

    • Elmer Cruz
    • October 8, 2020
    Reply

    Hey @Sam! Thanks for your awesome videos! What do you actually do when a keyword with low KD has a parent topic that has high KD?

    • Theresa Hoong
    • September 20, 2020
    Reply

    Excellent lecture! There’s a massive amount of information to digest. Thank you.

      • Ahrefs
      • September 21, 2020
      Reply

      Glad it was helpful!

    • Craig Walker
    • September 13, 2020
    Reply

    Very valuable information for understanding how to measure keyword ideas, ranking difficulty and search intent. Thanks for the information

      • Ahrefs
      • September 14, 2020
      Reply

      Glad it was helpful!

    • Waqas Ali
    • July 25, 2020
    Reply

    Thanks, Sam for this great Tutorial
    I have some questions related to keyword research:

    1) Is it possible for new bloggers to rank on a topic that is already covered by great authority websites? Like what if I want to write about digital marketing; There is huge competition already. So, Is there a possibility for me to rank on even long-tail low competition keywords?

    2) Is my blog going to rank on this niche as already there are big authorities are writing in that niche?
    Please answer me as I am following you deeply for my blog research.
    Many Thanks, Waqas

    • Rocket Expansion
    • February 28, 2020
    Reply

    Hi Sam thanks! I’ve recently gotten Ahrefs and I love it. Do you have advice or any good videos for local SEO? I have a client in a competitive city and it’s tough.

    • MegaBenschannel
    • January 29, 2020
    Reply

    Great content thank you. Going a bit too fast for me but not complaining, shows there’s a lot to learn…

    On a slightly off topic can you share which tool you are using for those beautiful slides?

      • Ahrefs
      • January 30, 2020
      Reply

      These are created manually by our video producer using Adobe After Effects.
      – Max

    • Chris Yu
    • January 25, 2020
    Reply

    Thanks for the video, may I know if you have any suggested number of search volume for each keyword for a new website ? I am trying to set my 300 products title for each page.

      • Ahrefs
      • January 27, 2020
      Reply

      You want to look for the highest search volume with the lowest competition
      – Max

    • Jeff Patterson
    • November 19, 2019
    Reply

    Loved this video!

    Question: How big should my lists be? My Seed Word? My relevant keyword lists? Should I brainstorm as big of a list as possible?

    Thanks in advance

      • Medico Study Streams (Unreserved)
      • August 9, 2022
      Reply

      Same question!

    • Hữu Tài Lê
    • August 31, 2019
    Reply

    as well informative as always.
    But I actually love your 1 or 2 years ago tongue when you started your first tutorials.
    It sounds better, powerful, assertive.
    I get more alert watching.

      • Ahrefs
      • September 2, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you for the feedback! Looks like we should go over our old videos and make a recap🙂

    • Paul Maindivide
    • August 24, 2019
    Reply

    Hi Sam, thanks for your awesome videos, I always watch them when you upload them and everytime I learn something new thanks for that :). I have two questions for you:
    – you never use the Google Keyword Planner to find keywords ideas ? For example to find the money pages ?
    – Wouldn’t it be easier to simply look at the organic keywords of your competitors and spot the most important ones ? What would be the downside of this method?

    Thanks :).

      • Ahrefs
      • August 25, 2019
      Reply

      Hey Paul,

      1. No, I don’t use Keyword Planner since I use Ahrefs 🙂 Even prior to creating videos for them, I had been a user for several years. I’ve personally found the data to be better representations of search volume as well as additional keyword / seo metrics like clicks, traffic, organic keywords etc.

      2. Regarding the downside to looking at your competitors’ organic keywords:

      a) The downside can be wasted time. At this current time, Ahrefs blog ranks for 55,633 keywords. That’s a lot to filter through.
      b) Some keywords are very similar and in my opinion and have similar search intent. So there’s no point in creating separate pages targeting the same keyword. For example “keyword tools” and “keyword research tools” have the same search intent, so for us, one page ranks in the top results.

      Instead, I prefer to use the Top Pages report in Ahrefs to understand topics, and then to narrow in on search intent and keywords from there.

    • JP MK
    • August 21, 2019
    Reply

    This SEO tutorial is so beginner friendly and explained so well. It’s exactly what I was looking for. I subscribed, thank you!

      • Ahrefs
      • August 22, 2019
      Reply

      Glad you found it helpful! Hope you’re able to put the tips and strategies into action.

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