What are Keywords and Why Do They Matter for SEO?

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Keywords are the foundation of most SEO strategies.

Although the user should be your primary focus, you need those people to actually find your blog.

So many bloggers – myself included – start off by writing about whatever they feel like, or as things happen.

But they don’t consider how a user is actually searching for the topic.

Keywords are anything a user types into the search bar of a search engine, speak to their Alexa, or search in any other way online.

They can be multiple words, a single word, or even a nonsensical grouping of words that make no sense grammatically.

Writing blog posts around these words get you in front of your target audience for what they’re already searching for on Google.

Not quite sure what I mean or how to do this? Don’t worry, I’m gonna explain in more detail.

👉 Get Keysearch – my favourite keyword research tool – for 30% off with code “sheknowsseo”!

Real Life Example of Why Keywords Matter for SEO

I started blogging years before I knew what SEO was.

One of the posts I wrote was called “What I’m Most Excited To Do in Singapore”.

It got no traffic.

Why?

Because it didn’t matter to my audience. None of them were searching for that.

What they were searching for was “things to do in Singapore”.

I phrased it completely wrong, and that meant that they couldn’t find it.

It’s kind of like trying to explain a podcast to your 94 year old grandma. She doesn’t understand what the heck you’re talking about until you put it in terms she’s familiar with, like calling it a radio show.

I changed the post to focus on that keyword, and finally it started getting organic traffic.

It became a post they were actually searching for and that they knew would answer their question.

That post never became a major hit, because it’s not a major post for my niche and it’s not super high traffic, but it started getting a few hundred searches a month.

That’s a lot better than 0!

So how do you do this too?

How to Find SEO Keywords

SEO keywords (also known as queries, keyphrases, or search terms) can be found in a ton of ways.

I’m going to stick with the most effective ones, cause let’s not waste your time on strategies that won’t actually work, right?

But before we kick off with the strategies, I want to share the strategy you need to know first: niche analysis.

You need to know your niche and your audience before you begin your keyword research so you know who the heck you’re writing for.

These methods will generate thousands of keywords for you, which is extremely overwhelming if you don’t have any way to narrow them down.

So know who you’re writing for and what will actually matter to them to help eliminate some keywords.

For example, a solo female travel blog shouldn’t write about the best activities for kids in a location. It wouldn’t make any sense for your audience.

1. Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is the best way to find your first keywords.

First off, it encourages you to actually find your competitors.

I do SEO coaching a few times a year (join my email list to get alerted when I next open my coveted coaching spots. They go fast!) and one of the questions on my intake form is “who are your competitors?”.

The amount of people who say “I have no competitors”, “I don’t know”, or “everyone is my competitor” kinda shocked me.

I ask the question on purpose: to make them consider their niche and their audience in more detail.

Now, once you have an idea of at least 3 competitors writing in the same niche as you, it becomes incredibly easy to find keywords this way.

The strategy essentially examines your competitors to see where they’re already winning at keyword research.

They’ve basically done the hard work of keyword analysis for you to figure out what your ideal audience is searching for.

Then you can write for these keywords, too.

I explore this strategy in depth here.

Remember though, we aren’t stealing content. Never plagiarize someone else’s blog posts.

2. Zero Volume Keywords

Zero volume, zero competition, or hidden keywords are essentially keywords Google – and other bloggers – haven’t figured out that the user is searching for yet.

These are my favourite way of ranking on Google quickly since there’s so much less competition for them.

Most bloggers get drawn in by the large search volumes they find on platforms like Keysearch. And that usually includes those DA 70+ bloggers who’ve been around for 2 decades that a beginner can’t compete with.

You’d need a full-time staff building you backlinks and doing press to be able to get that one post to outrank them anytime soon.

Instead, we can go for the low hanging fruit that our users are searching for, but they aren’t getting quality answers to.

The names vary – and I’ve broken it down even further in the Profitable Part Time Blogger to explain 3 different types and how to find them – but the keywords themselves are the same: they don’t have quality content answering the question, and keyword research tools under report their search traffic.

That does mean they’re riskier since they may actually have 0 searches in the end (I’ve literally never had this happen though).

But since Google like #1 rankings in your niche, worst case you’d still add to your topical authority if you rank for it.

Most of my zero volume keywords receive at least 300 visitors a month. I had the odd few that are seasonal, so they don’t have a consistent number.

But my top 10 posts on my travel blog are all zero volume keywords and they generate thousands of pageviews every single month.

💰 Want to learn how to find zero volume keywords and rank #1 on Google? I share all my secrets here.

3. Topic Clusters

One way to find keywords is to look for topic clusters that people are searching for around your niche.

There are a number of ways to find these, but the easiest is with Answer the Public and Answer Socrates.

Answer the Public is a free tool (3 searches per day) that allows you to find topical maps for any query.

For example, if you search “Rome”, it’ll show you related searches users are actually making – however, it lacks the search volume to tell you how many people are searching for this.

The system works like Google Autofill (another more tedious method of doing this and of finding hidden keywords) to find questions people are searching, alphabetical queries, and more!

Answer Socrates is similar but only serves question keywords. You’ll notice some overlap between their outputs because of this.

I recommend using this as a starting point, but verifying the searches with another method to check the volume. And always ensure the ones you choose actually matter to your audience.

Don’t just write on something to write on it. Every post should benefit your audience.

4. User Research

Once you know your niche and your audience, go where they are to find common questions they’re asking.

People don’t just search for questions on Google. They also do it in Facebook groups, Reddit threads, and on Tiktok.

Go where your users are and regularly check their questions and pain points.

I keep a list of these questions in a Google Sheet, and when I’m preparing content, I’ll check keywords based on those questions.

Or if a question came up often enough, I’ll write on it even if the keyword research shows it’s way too hard or doesn’t even exist as a keyword on Google.

But when possible I try to factor in a bit of a keyword so it may rank down the line.

You can drive traffic to these posts via internal linking or social media/your newsletter if you have them. If it’s on topic for your user and a common pain point, even if it doesn’t work for SEO, it’s useful to have on your site.

On this site, many people check out my DA 13 site on Raptive deep dive post. It has 0 SEO keywords or rankings, but my audience want to know how to get on an ad network quickly, so it’s of interest to them.

And see how I just internal linked it to that post (you may have even clicked on it cause you’re curious)? That’s what you’re going to do within your site to drive traffic to other posts (however, I recommend using better anchor text than that).

5. Long Tail Keyword Analysis

Long tail keywords are probably my second favourite type of keywords, after zero volume (although most zero volume are also long tail).

Long tail keywords are anything 4 or more words long.

But in the travel niche, I’d argue they’re 6 or more words long. That’s because our queries aren’t just “Rome” like an automotive niche would be for a “Tesla”. “Things to do in Rome” is technically long tail by the general standard, but it’s actually a very short keyword for travel.

These keywords are hyper specific, which means they are going to attract a very specific audience.

For example, “best things to do in rome with toddlers” is for family travel blogs. While “dog friendly places to stay in Rome downtown” are for pet owners.

These tend to be less competitive, because those behemoth bloggers are targeting the higher volume keywords (these are more specific, so fewer people search). But they tend to be more lucrative.

My time on page, ad revenue, and affiliate conversions are all higher for long tail keywords than they are for shorter keywords because I’m reaching my ideal audience and I can give them exactly what they want.

The easiest way to find long tail keywords specifically is to use Keysearch or Ahrefs.

On Keysearch, press the “filter” button (it’s small, I know. It’s beside the “Bulk Check” button on the left hand side of the screen”) and set the minimum number of words to 4 or 6.

Then hit “filter” and it will only list the keywords related to your main search that have 4/6+ words. Like this:

In Ahrefs, you can change the “Word Count” to be a minimum of 4/6 words and filter the results.

Like this:

6. Low Difficulty Keywords

Finding low difficulty keywords is difficult.

Most people think they can just write on anything that’s “easy” according to a keyword research tool, but they’re wrong.

Just because Keysearch tells you something is easy, doesn’t mean it actually is.

That’s because these tools are largely focusing on backlinks, DA, and the number of times a post uses the keyword.

But that’s not all you need to consider before classifying a keyword as easy.

I once wrote a post on “beach packing list” because it was green (aka. easy) on Keysearch. And I never ranked for it.

Because I had no business writing that post!

I had 0 beach content on my site, and no plans to write any.

My competitors wrote on island destinations or family outings to places like the beach. They had plenty of posts on the topic that they’d interconnected with internal links, proving their authority to Google.

Why would my site about living abroad that never mentions beaches, swimming, or even summer rank against them?

So that post was actually hard for me, because I’d have had to write at least 10 posts on beach-related topics to compete.

These posts also tend to have lower volume, because the more difficult keywords are the higher volume ones everyone is vying for.

To find these keywords, you’ll start with a keyword research tool. I recommend Keysearch but the process is similar on any tool.

Use the filter button, and select a “score” up to 39 (this is the highest difficulty before the green score turns yellow). Then filter for easy keywords.

Like this:

But don’t stop there!

Now you need to actually evaluate the keywords.

Do they matter to your audience? Are they on topic for your niche? Would you need to write more posts for them to make sense on your blog?

Then score them appropriately based on your specific site.

Also if you have a higher DA or more topical authority in the keyword topic, your “easy” keyword score might be higher than the ones set by a keyword research tool.

7. Golden Ratio Keywords

Golden Ratio Keywords were originated or at least made popular (I haven’t deep dived into the history, so if someone else invented them please let me know), by Doug Cunnington.

They’re based on a similar principal to zero volume keywords (where there aren’t quality answers for the user but Google hasn’t figured it out).

However, the way they’re determined is based on the number of results Google returns for the keyword search.

The way you find them is searching “allintitle:[keyword]” on Google. Then you divide the number of results that come up by the total search volume for the keyword (as shown by your keyword research tool of choice).

You should target keywords with scores under 0.25 according to this method.

Here’s an example of it in action:

My problem with this method is that you’re relying on a keyword research tool for the volume, and the volume varies significantly between different tools.

I’d be interested to hear if you’ve used it and had success – or not. Feel free to let me know in my free FB group.

8. Keywords You Already Rank For

“But, Nina, that’s keyword cannibalization!”

Nope! I’m not telling you to write two posts on “things to do in Rome”.

But I am telling you to look at keywords you already rank for but don’t have a blog post on.

So if you have a post on “things to do in Rome at night” but you notice it also gets picked up on any page of Google for “free things to do in Rome”, write on it.

This means Google either trusts you so much that they’re ranking content that isn’t really on topic for this keyword. Or they don’t have enough content on the topic so they’re ranking you highly (this is kinda the closest I get to the whole golden ratio thing).

Now I put this lower on the list because beginners can’t use this trick. You don’t have content yet that’s ranking, so you won’t have data to pull from.

You want to wait until your posts “settle” on Google too (aka. 6+ months) so you don’t accidentally write for the keyword but that first post already ranked #1 for it (it’s rare but it happens!).

I’m lazy so I don’t want to do extra work for no reason, and I’m sure you don’t either.

Other Methods of Keyword Research

We’d be here for a year if I went through all the methods of keyword research, especially the ones that I don’t feel work very well, so I’m gonna run through some others quickly:

Google Trends – Great for finding ideas, but they aren’t keywords per se. You still need to organize them into something someone is searching. However, they do work well for Discover traffic
Related Search Terms on Google – Good for finding secondary keywords and sometimes relevant topics, but need to back it up with a keyword research tool and checking the top 10.
Google Autofill – This is a method of zero volume keyword research but I’m separating it out since I see it on a lot of “how to do keyword research” type posts on social media. I like this method a lot but just because it shows up in autofill, does not mean it’s “easy”. ALWAYS verify keywords please.
Google Adwords – Google adwords is one of the most annoying tools to use to be honest. It’s very vague with keyword data so I skip it, but I know people who want free tools often use it. My problem with it is the minimal ability to search and that you still have to verify everything manually. You can use it for keyword research, but always check the results to see if you can actually rank for a keyword.
Root Keywords – Root or single word keywords (I call them root because they are the linguistic root or subject of the keyword) aren’t keywords, really. Because none of us little guys are going to rank for them. There’s also no clear intent. So “Rome” on Ubersuggest or Adwords will come up as a keyword, but is it worth writing on? No. That’s why we go for long tail keywords – also because they’re specific so it’s a lot easier to figure out what the heck to write.

How to Use SEO Keywords

There are a number of places to use keywords in a blog post.

I go through them in my SEO content writing checklist, but I’ll highlight a couple here:

Title
Slug (aka. the URL)
At least 1x in the text
Alt text
Headers, if relevant
Meta description

The Power of SEO Keywords

Keywords are what drive blog traffic.

They are how I grew my travel blog to 245k pageviews in 1 month.

They’re how I got people onto my affiliate posts to purchase tours, hotels, etc. so I got a commission.

And they are how you knew what the heck this post was about and if it was relevant to you.

If I called it “I Wrote a Blog Post That Got No Traffic”, would you have cared? Probably not.

Because that doesn’t mention SEO, keywords, or how the heck it’s relevant to you. But knowing that this post is about SEO keywords helped you figure out that this post is about a topic you want to read about.

Now that you know what SEO keywords are, I want to help you use them the right way (cause I used them the wrong way for a LONG time). Check out my guide to SEO writing so your posts actually rank on Google, cause it’s not as simple as using a keyword once and magically ranking.