What are keywords?
Keywords are words or phrases that users enter into search engines when looking for information, products or services. These terms give us insight into what users are searching for and can help us tailor our website to better meet their needs.
Why are keywords important?
- Understanding your target audience: keywords give us an idea of what is important to our visitors.
- Content optimization: It helps us create relevant and valuable content.
- Search engine visibility: By tailoring our pages to keywords, we can improve their position in search results.
1. How to collect keywords?
At the very beginning, it's a good idea to do your research and collect as many terms as you can find. Ideally, do this research where your target audience is. This could be competitor websites or social networks. Different online discussions can also be a good source, where you can best understand what people are asking about, what is bothering them and at the same time they can't find an answer.
I probably don't need to stress that you should focus on topics relevant to your business and also check the date of the sources you are drawing from. Gleaning information from a 10 year old discussion may not be a good strategy.
Output:
The output of this effort can be a mere list of words and phrases (every line a keyword or phrase). If you are particularly careful, you can also list the source from which you obtained the phrase in the next column of the table. Any spreadsheet editor is a good tool here. I use Excel. The number of keywords is entirely up to you. It will definitely depend on how detailed a field you are searching in as well. There will probably be more words in the cosmetics category in general than someone who only offers a single product.
2. Use of keyword analysis tools
Now, take the keywords you got in the previous step. Use one of the keyword analysis tools to expand the original phrase list and assign search volume to it as well. There are many tools that you can use to collect keyword data. I'll list some of the most popular tools I use here.
Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner is part of the Google Ads system for creating and managing ad campaigns. This tool from Google is free and will provide you with keyword suggestions based on your input (from point 1), as well as an approximate monthly search volume for each keyword. If you've already spent a certain amount of money on advertising in this tool under your account, you'll see more accurate numbers of monthly searches for individual words.
Sklik
Seznam's Keyword Tool is very easy to use and it's also free. In it, you will find the results of searches for individual keywords in the Seznam search engine. For each word, you will also see the development of search volume in individual months, which can be especially useful for seasonal words. Are the most searched terms related to summer holidays in April or from January? This is good to know in order to create or update your content on this topic in a timely manner.
Suggestions
This is a slightly different and interesting perspective on the issue of keyword search. Autocomplete is partly trying to guess what people will be looking for in the future. Whereas the previous two tools only show what people have already searched for. Which doesn't automatically mean they'll be looking for it next month or year. On the other hand, there is the question of how well autocomplete manages to correctly guess the search words in the future.
For example, if you start typing in the Google search box, the tool will start offering you other phrases under the text you type. For example, you type "weight loss" and the autocomplete offers you "weight loss after childbirth", "weight loss by walking" or even "weight loss Brno".
Extracting keywords from autocomplete manually word by word can be quite tedious. On the other hand, during the search process itself, you can filter out phrases irrelevant to your business. But there are also tools that can find hundreds of related suggestions based on your input keyword. For example, SEMOR is definitely worth trying.
Output:
Now you should have a much larger list expanded by search volume. You can divide the search volume at least according to the search engine platform. That is, separately the column with search volume on Google and separately on Seznam and then their sum. You may not find any search volume for some terms, such as some words from autocompletes. If you still want to have them on the list, nothing prevents you from doing so. I just recommend that you mark such words appropriately so that you know about them.
3. How to work with keywords?
Once you've gathered your keywords and their searchability, it's time to do some combing.
Keyword preprocessing
Data must be prepared for analysis. This can include cleaning the data of duplicates, removing errors and incomplete phrases, and removing irrelevant keywords that slipped into our list.
Keyword segmentation
Divide keywords into groups or categories based on topics, user intent, or buying cycle stage. For example:
· Informational keywords: Words that users use when searching for information, such as "how to bake bread" or "how to do keyword research".
· Transactional keywords: Words that users use when they intend to make a purchase, eg "buy running shoes".
· Local keywords: Words associated with a specific location, e.g. "café in Mikulov" or "website development Brno".
Keyword prioritization
Not all keywords are equally important. Prioritize them based on several factors:
· Search Volume: How many people search for that keyword each month? What keywords have high search volume but low competition? This "low-hanging fruit" can present great opportunities for quick results.
· Relevance: How relevant is the keyword to your business or content?
· Competition: How hard will it be to rank high in search results for a given keyword? Or how much quality content already exists for a given word?
· Seasonal Keywords: What keywords have seasonal trends? Planning content around these keywords can maximize traffic during peak months.
For each word or phrase, write down its priority. It is up to you whether it will be a number series 1 to 5 or perhaps just the designation high - middle - low.
Output:
The previous list was probably a little shortened (purification) and expanded by other important parameters. These parameters significantly increase the useful value of the entire analysis.
4. Completing the Keyword Analysis Report: How to Create an Effective and Understandable Report
What do you do with this data once you have it? How do you present them to your team, clients, or yourself? Let's see how to complete and present your keyword analysis report to make it as effective and understandable as possible.
What should be included in the report?
A keyword analysis report should be comprehensive, but at the same time concise and easy to understand. It should include:
· Overview: A brief introduction to what the report includes and why the analysis was conducted.
· Methodology: What data was collected, what tools were used, and how the data was analyzed.
· Data visualization: Charts, diagrams, and charts that show key metrics such as search volume, competition, and trends.
· Recommendation: What keywords should be a priority. Also, determine what kind of content you should create for each keyword, whether it's blog posts, product pages, videos, or infographics.
Data visualization
Data visualization can be crucial for understanding and interpreting your findings. Use appropriate chart types and mark the boundaries in them that still make sense to deal with and that would be ineffective. For example, Excel or Microsoft PowerBI are powerful tools that you can use to visualize your data. PowerBI has the advantage of being interactive and easy to update with new data. But if you don't know how to use PowerBI yet, Excel's features and charts will give you enough space for effective visualization.
Summary
Completing your keyword analysis report is the final step in the SEO analysis process. With a well-structured, visually clear, and information-rich report, you can inform your team, management, or clients about key opportunities and strategies for maximizing traffic and conversions.