Keyword Research Tutorial: From Start to Finish

41 Comments

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to do keyword research that drives more organic traffic AND conversions.

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Additional Keyword Research Resources

How to Choose Long Tail Keywords For Explosive Search Traffic ►

How to Rank on Google for THOUSANDS of Keywords (With One Page) – Data Study ►

Complete Series on Doing Effective Keyword Research ►

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In this keyword research tutorial, Sam Oh goes through a step-by-step process to research keywords and map them to the buyer's journey.

You'll learn both basic and advanced keyword research tips to attract customers in every stage of their buying journey. Best of all, it's broken down as a step-by-step process.

First, you'll learn the four types of keyword categories, what they are, and how they fit into the sales conversion cycle.

Then we'll get straight into generating keyword ideas.

The keyword research tool used in the tutorial is Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. You'll learn how to generate millions of keyword ideas and narrow them down into focused groups that target buyers based on search intent.

The next step is to analyze the top 10 Google search results for your target keyword. This will give you information on things like content format, search intent, and context of a topic.

Using the top 10 search results, you can also analyze how hard it will be to rank on Google for your target keyword. Sam goes over analyzing 3 metrics and finding a balance between referring domains, Domain Rating, and topical relevance.

Finally, you'll learn an effective way to find topics that are driving organic traffic to your competitors' websites.

Using this data, you can find low-competition topics as well as high traffic opportunities.

Timestamps:

1:03 Generate keyword ideas
3:20 Determine search intent for a keyword
6:19 Analyze Google's Top 10 search results
7:21 Measure ranking difficulty
8:07 Analyze topical relevance
8:56 Reverse-engineer competitors' traffic generating pages

#keywordresearch #seo #tutorial

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41 Comments
    • Gian Crystal
    • July 25, 2022
    Reply

    Hi Sam Oh. Thank you for the tutorial. I just have a minor question, how do SEO Specialists assign primary and secondary keywords in the content.

      • Ahrefs
      • July 26, 2022
      Reply

      Hi! If you’re talking about using your keywords in your blog content, then it’s better to use your primary keyword in the title, meta-description and in your content. Secondary keywords are used for subheadings and in content.
      -Helen

    • Oliver Clifford
    • July 21, 2022
    Reply

    So, roughly how long should your final keyword list be?

    I know it will differ for every business, but any indication would be really helpful.

    Without a number in mind it’s hard to picture what the end goal of this process is.

    • Hadi Khan
    • November 3, 2021
    Reply

    Hey Sam Thank you so much for all of these amazing ideas and tips all I need to ask is that as you mentioned that there is a funnel which depends on these four searcher intents but the question is when we should shift from funnel’s first step to second is there any expected number of blogs for funnel step one: informative intent. Because that is how the funnels works you cannot skip or shift from first step to another without completing the criteria of first. Or We just need to create content for all of them together as we found the right keyword for us?

      • Hadi Khan
      • November 7, 2021
      Reply

      @Ahrefs Thankyou so much Sam completely got your idea may god bless you.

      • Ahrefs
      • November 4, 2021
      Reply

      The idea of the funnel is that you have to create content for each stage. Not that you have to create those content in that order.
      – SQ

    • Film Fests
    • October 27, 2021
    Reply

    Great video, thanks. Just have a question.
    Imagine I have done my research and come down to 70 keywords for my website. How should I implement this to my website? Should I just include those words into website by writing things related to those keywords? May I please know the implementation process? Thanks.

    • Dylan Lewis
    • September 6, 2021
    Reply

    This tutorial was amazing!!!!!! I do a little bit of this but it’s soo good to see you reassure my knowledge. I will also try the paid tool. Thank you so much and well done!!

      • Ahrefs
      • September 7, 2021
      Reply

      You’re welcome!

    • Au pays des piments - Kris
    • May 11, 2021
    Reply

    First time I come across a clear, informative, useful and complete video about the topic! Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

      • Ahrefs
      • May 11, 2021
      Reply

      Glad it was helpful!

    • Glen Burnett
    • March 1, 2021
    Reply

    Hi, great video. Thank you. I have a question. Towards the end of having saved the keywords of interest, you recommend to then delve into the serp drop down to check whose using those keywords and to take note of things like the DR and so forth in order to determine if its easy pickings or not. Is that what the keyword difficulty indicator would be summarizing by chance?

    • Data Won't Lie
    • February 18, 2021
    Reply

    Hi, Sam Oh, I love all your videos so much. I need a little help: 1.If a product keyword on Google was occupied by many B2B platforms, and Ahrefs shows this keyword’s KD is 0. In this case, is this keyword worth doing the ranking? 2.And I wonder whether the Google first 3 pages of a keyword totally occupied by the B2B platforms is easy to rank?

    • DUAL 777
    • October 6, 2020
    Reply

    1:40 – 2:23. Damn. That was some insanely helpful content. Simple but so powerful. And obviously the whole video is a gem.

      • Ahrefs
      • October 7, 2020
      Reply

      Thanks!

    • SlowDay
    • September 22, 2020
    Reply

    Love this video and how it’s emphasized to focus on business potential of KWs and ensuring that we focus on helping our potential customers! I was left scratching my head in the business potential ranking section…
    I want to put together a system for this but if assigning a business value rating (1-3 scale was mentioned) happens before adding to a list and looking at top10 results (as suggested), how do I practically do that while the data is still in Ahrefs? Is there a way to add notes or a new column where I can add the 1-3 scale value? Or does your team ensure that each KW achieves a 2, for example, in order to make your list? I suppose given the way it was presented, it’s unclear how to do this in a practical way but it seems hugely important nonetheless.

      • Ahrefs
      • September 23, 2020
      Reply

      We don’t do it within Ahrefs, but on Google Sheets.
      – SQ

    • Piyush Sharma
    • June 12, 2020
    Reply

    You’re one of the most honest tutor. Thank you!!

      • Ahrefs
      • June 15, 2020
      Reply

      Happy to help!

    • Kunjal Chawhan
    • May 18, 2020
    Reply

    Wow! Really loved the analogy of speculating DR & RD to logically assess the practicality of ranking.

    • Griffin Thompson
    • February 5, 2020
    Reply

    Love the video! Really helped me out! I had 2 quick questions
    1. Let’s say you have an e-commerce site that sells 100s of products that are all very similar. The only difference is the design of these products. Should you try to target a different keyword within each of these products? Or should you just focus on the keywords within the collection page of these products?
    2. If these 100s of products all have crucial details that need to be included in the product description, will your SEO be negatively affected because of “duplicate content”?

      • Ahrefs
      • February 5, 2020
      Reply

      I am not an eCommerce specialist, but I assume these 100 product pages need a canonical URL that will point to a main version of this product. In other words, only one page will be indexed, while you can still offer slightly different content for similar variations.
      – Max

    • Kagura TheWindSorcerer
    • August 16, 2019
    Reply

    Hi Sam, thanks for your inspiring video as usual! I want to ask you a question related to DR. You explained DR indicates how strong the backlink profile of a website. What about for completely new website with no backlinks? I found the keyword i am going to target may compete with powerful websites, while those keywords are the only options with search volume traffic (> 0), although the RD < 20. Should I give up on those keywords or what to do in my situation as a website with DR = 0? thanks before!

      • Kagura TheWindSorcerer
      • August 16, 2019
      Reply

      @Ahrefs thanks a lot for the response Sam! I see. I will take deeper look on their SERPs. There may be more information I have missed there. Since the KDs are relatively low, I may put those keywords in my consideration list at the moment.

      • Ahrefs
      • August 16, 2019
      Reply

      This is another “it depends” question. Check the SERP and review the backlink profile of the pages that ranks high for this keyword. If they have relatively the same backlink profile as your page, you may go ahead.

    • Marko Miljković
    • August 14, 2019
    Reply

    This is definitely the best keyword research guide out there.

    Keyword mapping explanation is simple and straighforward, even beginners like me could understand it.

    Keep up the good work! 🔥

      • Alnero
      • June 19, 2022
      Reply

      So how’s it working out for you then?

      • Ahrefs
      • August 14, 2019
      Reply

      Thanks, Marko! Glad you were able to get value from the video 🙂

    • Glow0110
    • April 24, 2019
    Reply

    Man, thank you so much for all of the valuable content you put out. THIS is how it’s done – a company who creates something highly useful AND shows people how to best use it / harness it’s power.

      • Ahrefs
      • April 25, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you! 🙂 Appreciate the kind words.

    • Eric Van Buskirk
    • April 13, 2019
    Reply

    One of the best SEO videos I’ve ever seen. 1/2 of the reason is that ahrefs makes all other tools look like child’s play. So I love it how you give totally actionable tips and stay always in the tool to show things that otherwise seem daunting for newb SEOs. I already started sharing this with some people I know that want to get into SEO or start their own online biz.

      • Ahrefs
      • April 15, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you Eric! Really appreciate it 🙂

    • hellocourage
    • March 29, 2019
    Reply

    This is really awesome! And thanks. : ) Two questions. If the volume is high for commercial investigation, would it be good to go for it rather than informational KWs? Side track a bit: What’s the video software you use to create such nice videos?

    • Kumar Gaurav
    • March 28, 2019
    Reply

    Sam, your videos are awesome. They are informative and help a lot in understanding what needs to be done. Keep up the good work man.

      • Ahrefs
      • March 28, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you Kumar! Appreciate the kind words 🙂

    • SEOquick
    • March 27, 2019
    Reply

    Thanks, Sam. It’s always useful. KD is the most important metric more than even volume. This metric helps a lot to promote simple keywords.

      • Ahrefs
      • March 28, 2019
      Reply

      Glad you found it useful 🙂

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