From leveraging top competitor insights to mixing up both broad and specific keywords, here are the 11 answers to the question, “Can you share your most effective keyword research tips, tools, or strategies that allow you to do research in minutes? “
Leverage Top Competitor Insights
Ken Marshall, Chief Growth Officer, RevenueZen
The easiest way to do keyword research in a couple of minutes without a tool is to type in your seed keywords and analyze your top three competitors. You can get out a spreadsheet and write down the following for each of the three top results:
- Url
- Title tag
- Meta description
- Primary heading above the fold
- What terms are in their navigation
After you’re done, take a few moments to study what you found. Take note of any keywords used by all three, any variations of terms, and the modifiers used as well.
In order to build out a full SEO strategy and ensure that you’re selecting keywords that you uniquely have the right to own, you’ll have to go deeper. But doing the above simple analysis will ensure that you have an expanded list of seed keywords that you know have some opportunity and were relatively well optimized for.
Use SEOwind to discover keywords top SERPs rank for
Tom Winter, CGO, SEOwind.io
When doing keyword research I turn to SEOwind. Although its primary focus is to create SEO-based content briefs it is very helpful in doing keyword research. It provides you with keywords for top SERPs. Not any keywords but the ones that are relevant and have a search volume above 10.
It means you can quickly find out what other keywords to use when writing content.
Pro keyword research tip: The best SERPs often rank for dozens or even hundreds of keywords so it is worth writing your content including not one main keyword, but more of them.
You can also do it in a more manual way. More tips Tom shares in his video on how to do keyword research on steroids.
Use Google’s Keyword Planner
Matthew Ramirez, CEO, Rephrasely
My most effective keyword research tip, tool, or strategy is to use Google’s own Keyword Planner. It’s super easy to use and gives you a ton of data that you can use to help shape your digital marketing efforts. This is especially true if you’re a B2B company and need to focus on more specific terms.
The great thing about Google’s Keyword Planner is that it allows you to drill down to a more specific level than just generic keywords. For example, suppose you’re a B2B SaaS company targeting the IT industry. In that case, you’ll want to focus on more specific keywords like “software for IT asset management” or “software for IT asset managers.” These are more specific terms that are going to help you narrow down your target audience and get you a higher return on investment. Google’s Keyword Planner allows you to do just that.
Install Keywords Everywhere
Tasia Duske, CEO, Museum Hack
Keywords Everywhere is one of the most effective keyword research tools.
This handy tool acts as a one-stop-shop for keyword exploration and fits seamlessly into your search results research process.
By installing the browser extension, you can get:
- search volumes,
- long and short-tail keyword suggestions, and
- difficulty levels in the sidebar of SERPs.
Set a Google Alert, Then Reverse Engineer
Alli Hill, Founder & Director, Fleurish Freelance
I set up a Google Alert with a broad industry keyword (this is a one-time setup). Each day, I get an email showing me all of the Google News articles recently published that fit my keyword. I scan the headlines, then click on articles whose topics interest me. This part takes me less than a minute once the Google Alert has been set up.
I copy/paste the URL of the article into UberSuggest, my chosen keyword research tool, under the Keywords By Traffic feature. It gives me a list of the keywords the article ranks for. It also shows me the traffic volume for that keyword, the difficulty, and other metrics. This part also takes me less than a minute.
From there, you can export the keyword list to start writing your own article on the same topic or just use one of the keywords you discovered.
Try Out AnswerThePublic
Michael Alexis, CEO, Tiny Campfire
AnswerThePublic is an excellent tool for keyword research. It helps you quickly gain insight into what questions and topics people are asking about a particular subject.
To use AnswerThePublic, simply enter a keyword or phrase into the search bar, and it will generate a list of questions and topics related to that keyword. You can then use this list to identify potential keywords and topics to target with your content.
AnswerThePublic also provides data on the frequency of searches for a given keyword or phrase, which can be helpful in determining which keywords and topics are most popular. Using AnswerThePublic can help you do keyword research in minutes while getting a birds-eye view of associated terms.
Conduct a Quick Content Gap Analysis
Axel DeAngelis, Founder, Jumpcoast
One great way to quickly do keyword research is to conduct a quick content gap analysis. Using a tool like Ubersuggest or Ahrefs, finding content gaps is simple.
On Ubersuggest, you can enter a competitor’s domain into the “keywords by traffic” tool. Sort the pages by visit, and you’ll get a list of high-traffic keyword ideas. As a further step, you can use a tool like WriterZen or KeywordInsights.ai to cluster the keywords and determine the best topic and target keyword for your post.
Review Reddit Communities
Edward Roberts, SEO Specialist, Page Not Found
SEOs often overlook Reddit, but when it comes to keyword research it can be an untapped goldmine for potential content ideas.
Whatever your niche you’ll likely find at least one subreddit dedicated to it (and probably more). You can then segment the top posts from the subreddit based on upvotes, comments, and common themes to identify topics worth targeting. This will often uncover untapped long-tail keywords, common pain points, or trending topics.
It’s also worth noting, if the top result for your target keyword is a Reddit post, then it should be straightforward to outrank it with your own piece of content. Oh, and even better, it’s a way of doing keyword research that won’t cost you a thing.
PRO TIP: You can automate the process using Python and the Reddit API, making it even easier to pull a list of top-performing posts for any niche.
Incognito Search With the Keyword Surfer Extension
Beth Gillem, SEO Specialist, Dogwood Media Solutions
To conduct some very quick keyword research, I open an incognito browser (so that my cookies and location do not influence search results) and search the keyword in Google.
I have installed Google’s Keyword Surfer extension which shows me the average monthly traffic for those results right under the site listing. This gives me an idea of possible search volume relating to my keyword. Then I scroll and look at the different organic results and also note the “people also ask…” section on the SERP. This helps me decide if I should clarify my keyword further.
After looking at the listed results for my input keyword, the estimated traffic from Keyword Surfer, and reviewing the “people also ask…” I can get a better idea of how content for that keyword might perform and whether I want to pursue content or go another route.
Use Google Trends to see what is currently trending
Nik Andreev, Freelance SEO specialist, NikDoesSEO
Another way to find relevant keywords is to use Google Trends to see what is currently trending. You can use it to discover new breakout search queries which haven’t been searched for in the past (or recently). Trends are very much linked to what is happening right now. This means some keywords may be so new that Google can’t surface any good content as it simply doesn’t exist yet.
The tricky part is figuring out what type of content to produce or how to best incorporate the trending queries in relevant existing pages. The great benefit of this approach is that you may spot opportunities to create good content quickly to target rising new search queries and be one of the first to appear in the search results.
Mix Broad and Specific Keywords
Virginie Glaenzer, Fractional CMO, AcornOak Agency Cooperative
One effective keyword research tip is to use a mix of broad and specific keywords to cover a range of search queries and appeal to a wider audience.
This can help you attract more targeted traffic to your website and improve your chances of ranking well in search results.
