How To Do The Best Keyword Research For SEO Like a Pro?

Keyword research is like it sounds—a daunting endeavour. Why in the world do I need to research a keyword, anyway?

Wouldn't your organic marketing instincts serve you better in knowing what keywords are relevant for your company?

Not really. In this simple guide to keyword research, we'll guide you through everything you need to do to locate the best keywords for your business, including the meaning of keyword research, why is it important, steps on how to do the best keyword research for SEO, and more.

Let's begin!

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the search for words that individuals use to look up information about a subject, including the frequency with which these keywords are searched in search engines such as Google and Bing.

Keyword research is the most effective means of identifying new, targeted keywords for your paid and organic search marketing efforts.

Keyword research can be conducted through a variety of tools, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.

Still, the main goal is to find the right search terms that have intent aligned with your business’s content and offerings, along with decent search volume.

In addition to search volume, other keyword metrics may be helpful when conducting research and prioritizing which keywords to target, such as

🔘Cost-per-click (CPC)

🔘Competition (how hard it is to rank for that keyword)

🔘Your own site authority.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

The fundamentals for keyword research are essential to any SEO effort. If you choose the wrong keywords or target none at all, you may as well be yelling at a brick wall while your customers walk past.

If you invest the time in your keyword research, you'll get a much better payoff on the time, effort, and money you've spent in generating content to attract potential customers to your site.

It might even give you a competitive advantage over your competitors, so everyone's a winner! Without the optimal mix of quality keywords, your search marketing campaigns (paid and organic) will be entirely off track.

Latest Read: How to Leverage Digital Marketing for Personal Branding?

How Many Keywords Should You Have?

Your list of keywords and keyword phrases can spin out of control quickly when keyword research is in progress.

We recommend producing a final selection of 25-50 key phrases and terms to optimize differing web pages to or write based around.

You're bound to find lots of keywords to look up as you do your research, so it's also a good idea to utilize digital marketing tools for keyword research, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, etc., to assist in determining how useful the keywords are going to be.

You should also bear search intent in mind. If you enter your keyword into a search engine and all the sites that come up are highly informational or have no bearing on your business product or service, then that keyword may not be yours.

We've divided the entire keyword research process into bite-size steps that will assist you in your research regardless of your ability level.

What Do You Need Keyword Research For?

For online marketers, these are the three places keyword research is most important:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The most apparent and first reason we require keyword research is to optimize for organic search. Yes, you need to do the best keyword research for SEO purposes.

SEO aids Google bots in crawling and indexing our websites to rank organically on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines determine what to rank, which is one of the main ways through which they crawl for keywords that indicate relevance between your content on your website and the user's search query.

And while Google is constantly evolving its algorithms, keywords are probably never going to become irrelevant.

2. Building More Content

We all know that content and SEO go hand-in-hand. Without content on your site, good SEO will not happen.

"Good content marketing strategies begin with keyword research," says Search Engine Land columnist Nate Dame. "Contemporary keyword research reveals a lot about what audiences want and need."

Each and every bit of content on your website, be it a 300-word blog or a 5,000-word e-book, should be optimized for SEO.

That is, it is centred around a keyword that finds the perfect balance between high volume and competition.

3. Paid Ad Campaigns (PPC)

Many times, marketers would consider SEO and content regarding keyword research for all of your paid campaigns as they also need to be keyword-driven.

Whether it's your paid search ads, your display ads, your remarketing, or even your social campaigns, all these tactics must be keyword-driven.

The bottom line is that keyword research is most important in every search marketing campaign, including pay-per-click marketing.

Also Read: 20 Website Marketing Tips to Boost Website’s Traffic

Step-by-Step Guide: Do The Best Keyword Research For SEO

Here is how you can do your best keyword research for SEO marketing:

1. Create a List of Topics

Start by creating a list of topics related to your business. The best place to start is the types of services or products your business offers. For instance, if you are a digital marketing company, your topics may include:

🔘SEO

🔘Content Marketing

🔘PPC marketing

🔘Social media marketing

You now have four online marketing-related keywords that you can use to find even more related keywords. This is the least technical aspect of the keyword research.

You will most probably find four different types of keywords based on the searcher’s intent.

These are called search intent keywords and can be categorized into the following:

🔘Informational

🔘Commercial

🔘Transactional

🔘Navigational

Commercial and Transactional keywords could be paired together, like “hire a digital marketing agency” or “online marketing services“.

Informational searches are things like “How to hire a digital marketing agency” or “How to do SEO for your business.”

Navigational search is rather a simple concept. For example, when people want to visit Amazon’s website, they will search “Amazon” using the Google search option or Twitter/X login because they want to log on to the site.

2. Research on Competitors’ Keyword

Look at your competitors' websites and look at the keywords that they are employing to refer to the competing products and services that they offer.

Competitor research can serve as a means of generating innovative ideas and shaping the remainder of your keyword research.

As you search for keywords, observe what websites usually rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). You can then utilize these sites as a "seed list" for keyword suggestions.

Topic filter, URL filter, position filter, and more to discover relevant ideas. When conducting keyword research using competitor data, however, make sure the topics are pertinent to your audience.

3. Create a List of Long-tail Keywords

After having your list, the second thing is to break this into a more extended list of long-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords are about 1–2 words and describe vague phrases, whereas long-tail keywords are about 3–5 words and give more specificity.

The terms you brainstormed in step one may be brief and generic, such as "Digital marketing agency." But there may be thousands of companies nationwide attempting to rank for that very keyword.

Since you're a local business, you're not likely to rank in the top 10.

Instead, you prefer to look for more specific, longer keywords that would tell you if a user is particularly searching for the services related to your business.

Instead of "digital marketing company," you might attempt to use "digital marketing company in Delhi, India," to specifically narrow the intent of the search.

4. Use Keyword Research Tools To Find Related Keywords

SEO optimization is important for your business, so,  there are many keyword tools readily available, both free and paid. The search process for all of them is very much the same, but you might obtain varying results using different tools.

Some tools you must pay for, but they tend to have extensive features with regard to other areas of search engine optimization, so the cost is worthwhile.

5. Select the Best Keywords to Use

Now that you have a broad selection of keywords to work with, it's time to select the ones you plan to target. You will want to consider a number of factors when making your selection, including:

🔘Relevance

🔘Authority

🔘Volume

You can learn more about how to select the proper keywords later on this page. Once you've made your selections, it's time to begin adding those keywords to your content.

6. Incorporate Keywords Throughout Your Website

The second step is to include your keywords on your website.

But that does not mean that you should be simply going about dropping keywords here and there on pages that already exist.

Rather, you need to write new pieces of content and construct them around your focus keywords.

To determine the search intent of a keyword, you can just Google it and look at what is currently ranking for it. That will give you a good idea of the kind of content you can produce.

Naturally, as you produce that content, you will want to ensure that you include the keyword itself within. Here are some guidelines for ensuring Google and searchers get the best out of your keywords:

🔘Highlight a single target keyword and 3–5 supporting keywords that emphasize your page topic.

🔘Insert the target onto the page title, title tag, and meta description.

🔘Use your target or primary keyword in the first 100 words of your page.

🔘Don't include an outgoing link with your keyword anchor text.

🔘Try to use each keyword twice naturally.

7. Structure Your Keyword Hierarchy

After you have your list of keywords, you can decide how you want to integrate them on your site. Linking keywords and illustrating their relationship can serve Google and your users better.

If you locate keywords for which you already have existing pages, include the keyword in your title tags, header tags, meta descriptions, and other significant HMTL aspects, as well as the body copy on every one of those pages.

During the process of keyword research, you may have come across some keywords for which you don't have content yet.

Rather than promoting these keywords to just any random page, take this as a chance to produce more content for your website and more pages that will assist your customers.

From there, you can create internal links to explain how your keywords are connected.

For instance, if you've got a main page for a specific service, like a PPC service, then you might create links to additional pages on bike racks, wheels, chains, and so forth.

Don't keyword stuff or include keywords that aren't meaningful or needed where they are being placed. The entire content within your site ought to be intended for your users to inform and educate prospective consumers.

8. Make Keyword Research Continuous

We now have this long list of keywords, and we must determine which ones are worth targeting. There are a number of things we must consider when determining which keywords to retain and discard.

The main factors we’ll be looking at are:

Search volume

To know if the keyword is getting the correct level of traffic.

Keyword Difficulty

To know how tough it will be to compete for Google's number one stop with this keyword.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

To have an idea of what volume of ads are being advertised on this search term.

Traffic Location

This is to ensure we're reaching the correct searchers in the correct countries.

Recommendation: Best Digital Marketing Apps in 2025 to Take Your Brand To New Heights!

The Top 4 Tools To Do The Best Keyword Research For SEO in 2025

Here is the list of the best keyword research tools every marketer should be aware of in 2025:

1. Google's Keyword Planner

If you have a Google Ads account, then you have access to Google's free Keyword Planner. To get to this tool, log in to your Google Ads account and click the "Tools" bar on the right.

There are many ways to use Keyword Planner for keyword research. You can:

🔘Enter a broad topic to get specific keyword ideas.

🔘Upload a pre-existing list of keywords to see their search volume, seasonality, and other facts.

🔘Enter a URL of a website (your own or another's) to see what keywords they are bidding for and ranking in.

2. Moz's Keyword Explorer

If you want to take the more upscale path with your keyword research, I would suggest checking out Moz's Keyword Explorer.

You can check out their free version here or sign up for a free trial of the paid program to determine if it's something you want to splurge on.

3. SEMrush

SEMrush is another excellent tool that comes with intensive keyword research using both a paid premium and free version to experiment. There are always debates about Ahrefs vs Semrush, but Semrush is no less.

The free version also offers very useful data, ranging from organic search volume and CPC to competitive data and an organic search results list for every keyword.

To analyze more deeply with 10,000 results per report, you can pay for the upgrade, but based on your objectives, the free one might just suffice.

4. Google

Google itself is an underappreciated keyword research tool. Simply begin to type a keyword into Google to receive more useful suggestions.

For instance, take a look at some of the keywords that are displayed when I type "wedding cakes" into Google.

"Wedding cake toppers" and "wedding cake ideas" might not only be keywords you'd want to bid on but also keywords you'd want to create more content around.

Like a blog entry about "wedding cake ideas" or a chart comparing "wedding cake prices."

Google has various tools, such as Google Analytics 4, Google Keyword Planner, and more. So, just take advantage of these highly efficient tools.

When you're deciding what keywords to target, you can also do a Google check to find out what's already ranking. Get an idea of how competitive it is.

You should also check for SERP features such as the "People also ask" box and bottom-of-SERP-related searches. Adding these other related keywords to your content will enable you to fulfil the searcher's intent and get your content ranked!

Wrapping Up!

Keyword research might seem like a difficult task, but with an organized method and the right tools, you’ll find the perfect keywords in no time!

With this blog ending, now you’re ready to start optimizing your website with the best keyword research for SEO, including existing pages and other content, or create some effective new content and landing pages for these keywords.

Furthermore, connect with Arramton Infotech, an SEO service company, to assist you with optimizing your website if you are looking to hire one.

Connect with us today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is keyword research?

Ans: Keyword research refers to the act of determining keywords to aim for on your website. It is about discovering keywords that will direct respective traffic to your website and ultimately convert such traffic into leads and customers.

Q. Can I do keyword research for free?

Ans: Yes! You can quite easily do keyword research without paying any money at all. There are lots of free tools on the internet that will assist you in finding suitable keywords to go after.

Q. How can I maintain keyword rankings?

Ans: To keep rankings for the keywords you are targeting, you will want to regularly monitor the performance of your pages in search results, as well as any algorithm changes Google may make that could affect how your pages rank. When you see a change in rankings, you can reoptimize your content as needed.

Q. What are the best keywords for SEO?

Ans: There aren't any best keywords for SEO in general. One relies on context instead. The best keywords for you will be unique to your industry, your audience, and the specific topics that you cover in your content. That's why it is essential to follow the keyword research process emphasized earlier on this page.