Key concepts:
What are the keywords
Where to look for them and how to use keywords in content writing
Keywords are relevant words that users search in order to obtain the information they are looking for. These are the ones that help us position ourselves higher in the search results, as being the suitable information provider for the user’s problem.
Let’s see 9 tools to help us in this matter:
Google Keyword Planner
Found in the Google Adwords, this tool provides information regarding how often a word or phrase is being used, which can indicate if it’s suitable or not to be used in your contents also. More than that, it can also suggest various connected keywords with high search rates. Download the data you find and see how you can include it in your content, while taking care that you write for the user (easy, friendly to read), not for the search engine (full of keywords).
Search bar of various platforms
Once you start typing something in the search bar, you will already see some suggestions the engine gives you. With the words we’ve seen are among the most searched ones for what interests us, we can try to search for those words in the bar and see what suggestions pop up. If they appear as suggestions it means that people do search for those (from most searched to least searched).
Some search engines have even more recommendations to give you (at the bottom, in its sides) connected to the phrases you searched. These give you even more information and what people look for and what words to use in your text. Even with these new words you can repeat the previous process and extend the search.
Google Footprints
Using such “codes” you can study other pages that appear high in results. Have you noticed how pages with similar ideas as Wikipedia appear the first ones in results on infinite topics? Well, they have filled in their texts smartly with keywords and you can study what they use so you can include too in your content.
All the data collected from here, we can put them in the planner and suggestions from the search engines and retake the previous steps to acquire more words for us.
What kind of footprints could you use (research for more):
site:<name of the site> = search in a specific site;
@<social media> = name of the social media platform (accounts, pages);
#hashtags = shows all the publications with that hashtag
-<word> = excludes that particular word from the search (any content that doesn’t include that word);
“<words>” = the quotes search for the exact words, no variations of texts or suggestions;
* = replacing a word, can give you results that include the previous words and various other suggestions;
<word> OR <word> = gives results that combine both words (both words are searched together and shown);
related:<website> = shows similar websites;
Info:<website> = gives you all the information related to cache (previously used and stored information on your computer), similar pages, the official website, places where the website appears, and the list can go on.
answerthepublic.com
This is the place where you can put the keyword you are interested in in the search bar, select the country you want to look for and it will generate various questions that are searched.
The results are grouped on themes that can also help you see what people are searching for and want to find out, and how you can use their questions to address as information in your content.
Google Search Console
This helps you identify the keywords that helped you grow organically, without an extra effort put into it. This means that whatever Google identified as keywords from your text, you can exploit further as it will continue to boost you up.
keywordtool.io
The full option of it it’s paid, however the free version also gives you various suggestions for searches on different platforms, as well as the search volume.
ahrefs.com
This is a tool to see what other pages use as keywords in SEO and SEM contents. You can search the first results in the search bar or even go to know-it-all sites such as Wikipedia.
The people
Your followers can always be the best “tool” to help you improve your content by asking them to tell you what they are interested in, ask you questions so you can explain concepts, and so on. Once they give you questions they give you keywords too.
Serpstat
It helps you search keywords and related words, tail long, opportunity, semantic words, whichever are the ones that other websites use and help them position higher.
For sure there are more tools that you can use. Important is to start with a few of them and what you find in one (list) use in the others so you can supplement it from all points of view. You should do this for every topic of content you want to write, if it differs a bit from the main one.