Good Keyword Research

1) Ask yourself “Why is the person searching this keyword?”

This is also known as searcher intent.

Someone searching “criminal defense law” might not be looking for a lawyer, but someone searching “criminal defense lawyer near me” definitely is.

2) Understand the SERP

SERP = Search Engine Result Page

Also known as page 1 of Google.

You should always look at the SERP to see what features are being triggered.

Are paid ads showing? The map pack? Videos? Tweets?

This will help guide you optimization efforts.

3) Analyze What’s Working

The posts on page 1 of Google are there for a reason.

Read those pages. Take notes on what topics are discussed and make sure you include and expand upon the topic in your post.

4) Is there enough volume?

If people aren’t searching for this keyword it might not make sense to write about it.

5) Keyword Difficulty

What’s the domain authority of the ranking posts? How many backlinks do they have?

6) Parent Keywords

One strategy to research is to start with a broad topic, for example coffee.

You shouldn’t try to rank for the keyword coffee, but it can be your parent keyword.

A parent keyword has sub-topics and those sub-topics can have long-tail keywords within them.

Going back to our coffee example.

Some subtopics could be pour over coffee, french press, and espresso.

And each of those subtopics could have long-tail keywords beneath them, for example “how to make a french press”