If you want to create web pages that rank on Google, keyword research is a requirement.
Finding, collecting, and analyzing keywords is a fundamental part of search engine optimization. Knowing which keywords your site should target is the first part of creating a content plan to capitalize on organic search. Understanding how to choose keywords is the first step toward growing organic traffic to your business' website.
Why is Keyword Research Important?
Keywords are the bridge between users and search engines.
Google and other search engines have intricate algorithms that use keywords to understand and rank web pages in their search results.
Therefore, it's simple: to make it to the top of search results — you need to understand and master keyword research, because that’s the only way to see through the eyes of your prospective visitors or clients.
If you've never done keyword research before, this is the guide for you. We've created actionable, step-by-step walkthroughs to help you go from empty hands to ready-to-plan keywords in no time.
Understanding Keywords
Keywords, in the context of SEO, are words or phrases that users input into search engines when they're looking for information, products, or services. These keywords or search queries hold clues about the users’ intent and what they expect to find on the pages appearing in the search results.
Understanding Search Intent
Understanding search intent is key to choosing effective keywords. Search intent refers to the reason why a user is conducting a particular search.
Are they trying to purchase something (transactional intent)? Are they looking for a particular website (navigational intent), or are they trying to learn something (informational intent)?
Understanding this intent helps you choose appropriate keywords and create the content your audience is seeking.
For example, someone typing "best personal injury lawyer in Chicago" is likely seeking legal services. Conversely, a search for "how to become a lawyer" signifies a user seeking educational information.
There are different types of keywords, and understanding them will help you develop a robust SEO strategy:
Short-tail keywords
These are typically one or two words long. They're broad and often yield a high search volume, but they're not specific and can have a lot of competition. E.g., "Lawyer"
While "lawyer" might generate a lot of searches, the keyword doesn't give any indication of the searcher's intent. Is the searcher looking for a divorce lawyer or a personal injury lawyer? Are they looking for online legal advice, or are they looking to hire a lawyer in their city?
Because it's so broad, you might bring a lot of traffic to your site, but that traffic may not necessarily convert because your services may not align with the visitor's specific needs.
Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are phrases that are around three words or more. They're more specific and have lower search volume compared to short-tail keywords, but they’re less competitive and have higher conversion rates. E.g., "Personal injury lawyer in Chicago"
The concept of long-tail keywords is rooted in the principle of supply and demand—the 'head' contains popular and high-demand keywords, while the long tail contains a vast variety of less popular keywords, which collectively represent a more significant quantity of searches.
The benefits of using long-tail keywords are:
- Lower Competition: Long-tail keywords have less competition than broad, generic ones, making it easier for your content to rank—especially if you're a small to mid-sized website.
- Higher Conversion Rates: Users searching long-tail keywords have a specific intent and are often ready to take action, leading to higher conversion rates.
- Cost-effectiveness: If you're using paid search, long-tail keywords usually cost less per click.
To find long-tail keywords, you can use keyword research tools like Ahrefs or look at search terms in Google Analytics to see what long phrases have led people to your site.
LSI Keywords
LSI keywords are synonyms or related words that search engines use to determine the content's context. Including LSI keywords in your content helps search engines better understand and rank your pages. For example, for the primary keyword "divorce lawyer," LSI keywords could include "divorce attorney" or "family law expert."
The primary purpose of LSI keywords isn't to increase your search volume directly but to improve the contextual relevance of your content, increase the content's quality, enhance user experience, and, in turn, improve your rankings.
Create a List of Seed Keywords
Before you dive into a keyword research tool, you'll need to do some prep work.
To start the research process, you'll need to create a list of seed keywords.
Seed keywords, also known as primary or main keywords, are the most basic keywords related to your niche. They define your industry or what services you offer and are typically one or two words long. These are broad, high-level terms that longer keywords and key phrases build upon. Think of these as "roots" from which all other keyword ideas will grow.
Why are seed keywords essential? Because they help define your niche and give you a starting point when looking for more specific keywords. They're the words potential clients would likely type into search engines when searching for services you offer.
You'll use these in your keyword research tool, along with include and exclude filters, to find hundreds or thousands of related terms.
How to Find Seed Keywords
How do you find seed keywords? Here are a few techniques:
a. Brainstorm: Simply sit down and jot down all the words you think potential clients would use when describing your services.
b. Think like a client: Consider how your clients might describe your business or what they might type into a search bar when looking for the services you offer.
c. Use Google: Start typing in your basic seed keyword terms, and let Google Autocomplete do the rest. This feature is based on common and trending searches related to what you began typing; it could turn up options you hadn't even considered.
d. Analyze Competitors: Take a look at what keywords your competitors are using. The "related search terms" at the bottom of Google's results page can also provide possible seed keywords.
With the seed keywords defined, you're ready to use keyword research tools to find other relevant terms, analyze competition, and determine search volume. Remember that seed keywords are just the beginning; they are often high competition and high volume. Your goal is to then expand these into long-tail keywords that can bring in highly targeted traffic.
For example, let's say you're doing keyword research for a lawyer wanting to attract more motor vehicle accident cases. Your seed keywords could be the following:
- accident
- accidents
- crash
- crashes
- wreck
- wrecks
When you enter these terms into your research tool, you'll see how other related keywords can build upon them. For example, the seed <span class="inline-code">crash</span> could be the root of both <span class="inline-code>"car crash</span> and <span class="inline-code">stock market crash</span>. One is ideal for our example website, and the other is definitely not.
That's where the second piece of prep work comes in.
As you think of seeds, you can also note some initial modifiers. These terms will help you weed out irrelevant keywords and narrow the set down to ones that are related to your website's primary topics.
For our personal injury lawyer example, you could note down some of the following modifiers:
As you conduct keyword research, you may add a few more terms, but it's a good idea to prepare a few in advance.
Certain sites have standard modifiers that they'll use in most rounds of keyword research. SEOs for e-commerce sites, for instance, will use terms like top, best, vs., and verses to find transactional keywords.
Using Keyword Research Tools
Now that you have your seed keywords, it's time to turn to keyword research tools to help you sift through the data and find the best keywords for your law firm. These tools offer a treasure trove of essential information about keywords, such as search volume, keyword difficulty, cost per click (CPC), trend data, and potential traffic they could bring.
Here are a few of the top keyword research tools and how to use them:
- Google Keyword Planner: This free keyword research tool by Google provides keyword ideas based on your seed keywords and valuable insights about those keywords, such as their search volume and competition level. To use this tool, input your seed keywords and review the suggested keywords, paying particular attention to their search volume and competition level.
- Semrush: Semrush is a paid tool that offers comprehensive insights, including keyword suggestions using the Keyword Magic tool, organic search volume, phrase matches, related keywords, and keyword difficulty. It also provides features for competitor keyword research.
- Ahrefs: Another paid tool, Ahrefs, is excellent for analyzing your competitors' keywords. Enter a competitor's website address and find their top keywords, examine their ranking page, and understand the keyword difficulty.
- Moz Keyword Explorer: Moz offers a depth of keyword suggestions, SERP analysis, and organic CTR data. Key features include search volume data, keyword difficulty, and priority, enabling you to judge a keyword's effectiveness at a glance.
- Google Search Console: Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. It offers invaluable insights, including the keywords your site is currently ranking for, their average position, impressions, and click-through rates.
When using these tools, there are a few points to focus on:
- Monthly Search Volume: This tells you how many times a keyword is searched for each month. You want terms with enough volume to bring in traffic but not so much that they will be highly competitive.
- Keyword Difficulty: This gives you an indication of how hard it would be to rank higher than current pages in the search results. Lower difficulty is generally better, especially for small or new websites.
- CPC: If you plan on using Google Ads, you'll want to pay attention to the cost-per-click, which tells you how much, on average, advertisers pay per click for ads shown for a particular keyword.
For the rest of these steps, we'll use Ahrefs for our examples. When doing SEO for lawyers, it's an industry-standard tool that's easy to use and has a ton of keyword data.
Regardless of which platform you choose, remember that effective keyword research for SEO isn’t just about having the best keyword research tool. It’s about understanding the data provided and using it to make informed decisions.
Generate Keyword Ideas
Once you have your seed keywords ready, it's time to move on to your keyword research tool.
To get started with keyword research using Ahrefs, go to their Keywords Explorer tool or sign up here.
The metrics in the walkthrough above will be important criteria for evaluating keywords later. But so far, we've only looked at the metrics for the seed keywords. To generate a massive amount of keyword ideas, use Ahrefs' Matching Terms report.
With those six seeds, Ahrefs returns over 4 million long-tail keyword suggestions.
Some of those are relevant to a personal injury lawyer, but <span class="inline-code">wreck it ralph</span>doesn't fit.
This is where we can turn to Ahrefs' filtering tools to make the keyword set more manageable. Filtering by monthly search volumes, keyword difficulty, and including and excluding keyword phrases can help you find relevant keywords more easily than sifting through millions of junk terms.
Ahrefs only allows you to use 99 include and exclude filter terms at a time, so you'll need to think carefully about the ones you use.
Fortunately, you can use wildcards to set broader filters. For example, instead of entering lawyer and lawyers into the include filter, you can just enter lawyer*. This tells Ahrefs to include both the singular and the plural versions of the word.
In the example above, we also used a filter to eliminate certain junk characters. This helps to get rid of useless or low-volume keywords. You can copy those terms from the list below:
<pre><span class="inline-code">_,",?,$,.,/,',:,;,www,-,+,\,|,(,),&,#,@,!,^,},{,],[,<,>,`~, site:</span></pre>
With the initial set of potential keywords you’ve generated, you’re ready to start shortlisting keywords.
When you select topics to add to your target keyword list, there are three operations to perform:
- Analyze each keyword for search intent
- Analyze the relevance of each keyword
- Assess the ranking difficulty for each potential keyword
The next three steps in the keyword research process cover each of these operations.
Analyze the Search Results for Search Intent
Each time someone searches for a keyword, they have an underlying motivation. Over time, Google tries to identify this need and serve up results that match the searcher's reason for using that keyword—their search intent.
SEOs usually sort search intents into four different categories:
- Navigational: When people search for a specific website
- Informational: When people search for an answer to their question or details on a given topic
- Investigational: When people search for information on how to do something
- Transactional: When people search for a product or service to purchase
Some search intents may not match the type of content for your website. For instance, terms with commercial intent might not fit a lawyer's marketing plan. Or, attorney advertising rules may bar them from making content directly comparing other lawyers.
Trying to target a term with a defined intent with a page that does not match the intent often results in a page failing to rank.
You can prequalify your keywords for intent before shortlisting them to avoid this problem.
You can also keep an eye out for terms with local intent. If your law firm's target audience lies in a specific city or neighborhoods, these terms might make your shortlist.
Finding Competitor Keywords
Competitor keyword research is usually included in a comprehensive keyword research process, but it's sometimes useful to do it on its own. Understanding which keywords are driving traffic to their sites, how they are using these keywords, and what type of content they are creating can provide you with invaluable insights and save you much time and effort.
To do that, you can use Ahrefs' Content Gap tool.
Adding keywords that your competitor's domains rank for can be a quick way to add relevant terms to your shortlist.
You can take the keywords you exported from the Content Gap report and run them through Keywords Explorer. Then, you can qualify each keyword using the steps above to add them to your list.
You can also navigate to the "Top Pages" report, where you can see which of your competitors' pages drive the most organic search traffic. Look at the primary and secondary keywords these pages rank for, and consider if creating similar content would benefit your own content strategy.
Remember that the goal is not to copy your competitors but to understand their keyword strategy and derive inspiration from it. Understanding what works for them can help you forge a unique plan that works for you.
Organizing and Prioritizing Keywords
Once you have a substantial list of potential keywords from your brainstorming, exploring long-tail and LSI keywords, and analyzing competitors, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with the amount of data at your disposal. The next step, therefore, is about organizing this information and prioritizing which keywords to target in your SEO strategy.
In this process, Ahrefs proves to be invaluable again, providing crucial metrics that help guide your decisions as you sift through your keyword list. Here's what you need to do:
Analyze Keywords for Topical Relevance and Business Value
The previous step helps you shortlist keywords based on whether it has an intent that you can service. In this step, you'll go a layer deeper and ask yourself if the keyword is relevant to your business or to topics you want to cover.
For example, <span class="inline-code">aviation accident attorney</span> has a fairly high search volume, and the search intent matches something a lawyer might want. But if the law firm doesn't handle those cases, then the keyword isn't a relevant one to target.
Assessing for search intent, topicality, and business value are all important, but there's still one other factor to consider before adding a keyword to your shortlist.
Assess Keywords for Ranking Difficulty
The next question to ask when shortlisting is whether or not your site can rank for the keyword given the competition.
Ahrefs uses a metric called Keyword Difficulty (KD) to show you the relative difficulty of ranking for the term. It's based on the number of backlinks the pages ranking at the top of the results for a given keyword. The higher the difficulty, the harder it may be to rank.
Just because a keyword has a high difficulty score does not mean you should discount it.
For example, a car accident attorney should still have a car accident lawsuit service page despite the difficulty score. People may not always find it through search, but they'll expect it on your website.
Assess the Search Volume
In the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, when you input a keyword, it displays the average monthly search volume of that keyword in a specific country or globally. This is an estimate of how many times people have searched for this exact keyword within a given timeframe on a specific search engine.
For example, if you choose 'Google' and 'United States,' you'll see how many times U.S. internet users have searched for that keyword on Google in a month.
A higher search volume indicates that a keyword is searched frequently. This popularity could mean more potential organic traffic to your site if you can rank well for that term.
However, high search volume keywords often come with stiff competition. A larger number of websites strive to rank for these popular search terms, making it typically harder to achieve a top-ranking position.
Keywords with strong search volumes can drive significant traffic to your site, primarily if you rank well for them. However, it's also crucial to ensure these keywords align with your content and are pertinent to what your law firm offers.
That being said, search volume shouldn't be the only metric guiding your keyword selection. It needs to be balanced with keyword difficulty and relevance to your content. Ahrefs allows you to see all these metrics side by side, helping you make informed decisions.
Consider Clicks
Not all search queries result in clicks. Some people might get their answer directly in the search results. Ahrefs’ “Clicks” metric shows how many clicks a search query receives, helping you consider whether ranking for the keyword will actually bring you significant traffic.
With this organized and orderly list of prioritized keywords, you're ready to map out your keyword strategy. This involves assigning each of your selected keywords to specific existing pages on your website or planning new targeted content around them.
Remember, tackling the most important keywords that are highly relevant to your law firm and have a harmonious balance of high search volume, low keyword difficulty, and high potential for clicks should sit at the top of your priority list. Crafting a meticulous plan dedicated to these terms will ultimately aid your website in climbing the SERP ladder.
Exporting Keywords and Planning Content
Now that you’ve created your shortlist, you’re ready to export it and begin planning content for your website.
With the qualified list of keywords you generated, you're ready to develop your plan for new pages and blog posts on your website.
Avoiding Keyword Cannibalization
One important thing to consider when planning is whether the keywords you want to target should result in one page or two. For example, a page about car accident attorneys can rank for <span class="inline-code">car accident lawyer</span> and <span class="inline-code">car accident attorney,</span>.
Creating two pages wastes your effort and can result in keyword cannibalization. This happens when Google can't decide which of two similar pages it should rank.
You can take the keywords you've exported and use Ahrefs's SERP similarity tool to tell if two different keywords are a part of the same topic or if they need to be separate pages.
Determining if a set of keywords should be one page or two can be a time-consuming process. But it's worth it to avoid wasting time trying to resolve cannibalization issues down the road.
Keyword Tracking and Analysis
After finalizing your keyword list and integrating these terms into your content, it's crucial to start monitoring their performance. Keyword tracking and analysis will help you understand the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, providing you with actionable insights to make necessary adjustments.
Ahrefs provides a reliable, efficient keyword tracking tool designed for this purpose. Here's how to utilize it:
Step 1: Start a New Project
Navigate to your Ahrefs dashboard and start a new project. Enter your website's URL, define the scope of tracking, and proceed.
Step 2: Add Your Keywords
You will then add your target keywords that you want to track. Ahrefs allows you to track how your website ranks for these terms over time.
Step 3: Monitor Your Rankings
The tool will start tracking your keyword rankings, updating them regularly. You can check your ranking progress over time, allowing you to understand if your SEO efforts are paying off.
Step 4: Analysis
Beyond the rank tracking, Ahrefs also gives useful metrics on search volume, clicks, keyword difficulty, and more, for tracked keywords. These metrics provide valuable insights into your keywords' performance and your overall SEO strategy.
Key metrics to pay attention to are:
- Position changes: This helps you keep tabs on how your rankings change over time. You can see keywords that have improved in rankings, those that have dropped, and new keywords for which your site has started ranking.
- Traffic: Look at the traffic estimates Ahrefs provides for your tracked keywords. This might help you understand the impact of ranking improvements on your traffic levels.
It's essential to review your keyword performance regularly. SEO keyword research is not a set-it-and-forget-it type of activity – it requires continual maintenance and adjustment. The information you gain from tracking your keyword rankings will help you tweak your SEO strategy, focus on what's working, and fix what's not.
Consider Working with SEO Experts
Keyword research is a hugely important part of an SEO-driven marketing plan.
Taking the time to learn how to do it can help put your website on the path to growth. If you don't have the time to get into the weeds, consider working with a professional SEO agency.
At Rankings.io, we help lawyers get the best results from their marketing efforts. Contact us today to see how we can help.
