Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis

Rowan Soliman
stacksmarket
Published in
6 min readDec 28, 2021

Well, we seek advantages in everything that we do. Fair enough, reading this blog will make you know about the importance of keywords in climbing search rankings. You will take your keyword research and competitor analysis to the next level and select the best keywords. We think that knowledge about keyword research is essential in this modern era of SEO.

How to Find Keyword Ideas

First, we need to determine:

Why and How vital is keywords research and competitor analysis?

Keyword research and climbing rankings are like an antagonistic pair. Keyword research is how you dig out the popular keywords that people use in different search engines like Google. After digging out these keywords, people place them in their content to climb through the search rankings on a search engine results page (SERP).

The keyword research and competitor analysis can also tell you the following:

  • Density of keywords
  • Your keywords ranking
  • Which keywords are your rivals ranking
  • What people are searching for

SEO is like a bunch of grapes where each grape serves a unique purpose that improves the user experience and website usability.

Keyword research and competitor analysis are how you can grab a keyword or two and implement them into your website to climb the mountain of rankings.

The website users trust search engines like a trustworthy friend to discover new top keywords. The websites that appear on top after a search gain the trust of the users.

How to dig out keywords by research

  • Dive into your niche
  • Put yourself in the customer’s place ( how to think )
  • Create a list of root keywords (Brainstorm, keyword fundamental)
  • Use a best keyword research tool
  • Find out about your competitors. ( using the tool to analyze competitor sites or using a plugin as AIO SEO plugin )
  • Identify long-tail keywords and Find the keyword which matches your brand or service ( talk about what is it and its importance as a low competitor and easy to rank )

The point is that you should know how to analyze the keywords. Analyzing the keywords is a critical aspect. The analysis will let you know the importance of the keywords.

Factors Involved in Analysis

  1. Search volume

The search volume is defined as the total number of searches performed on a keyword on a search engine. The search volume depends on the niche that you are following. To catch up with the latest keywords, you need to perform a lot of research based on your industry, check Google trends, and the type of rank that you want to achieve. This means that if you’re going to rank easily, it will require less grind. You will need keywords that have low competition and low volume and vice versa.

You should generally go for low search volume keywords in the beginning because the initial steps should be more manageable. Consider the keywords with at least 1000 searches per month for quick results.

2. Keyword difficulty

There are the following classes of keywords in keyword research and competitor analysis:

  • High-difficulty keywords are the ones that have a density of over seventy percent. You need to invest time and money to be able to compete & rank in this type successfully.
  • Moderate difficulty keywords are the ones that have a density between thirty and seventy percent. Moderate difficulty keywords are the best in the beginning as you have a realistic chance to compete in these.
  • Low-difficulty keywords are the ones that have a density of below thirty percent- they are usually long-tail keywords.

3. Clicks

Clicks also play a vital role in keyword research and competitor analysis. Clicks are the average of monthly clicks on the search results for a particular keyword. Organic clicks are natural ones that attract more traffic. The search volume and clicks must be balanced for the website to climb the ranks. High search volume means there should be more organic clicks and vice versa. The clicks and search volume shouldn’t be miles apart from each other.

Keyword research tools

Like shopping, there are so many different varieties of keyword research tools that a person may become confused in selecting any one of them during keyword research and competitor analysis.
Shopping is made easier if you have someone expert to guide you. We will make the selection of keyword research tools easier for you in the same way during keyword research and competitor analysis.

Best Keyword Research Tools:

Ahrefs tool

Ahrefs is one of the best keyword research tools. It gives a free test drive for seven days, just like a branded car. If you choose Ahrefs, there are some facts that you need to look at while keyword research and competitor analysis

  • Ahrefs provides the maximum number of keyword suggestions as compared to other tools
  • The keyword difficulty from Ahrefs is as reliable as a stone as its stats are based on backlinks
  • Search volume with all its types are explained with full accuracy (Organic only, Paid and organic & Paid only)

The Ahrefs Webmaster Tool is completely free to use. It is not a keyword explorer, but it can provide a fantastic analysis such as site audit resulting in a boost in your website’s SEO performance. It keeps a tab on your SEO health and knows your backlinks too.

Moz tool

Moz tool has 10 queries available with no credit card required, and with a credit card, you can have up to 1 month of free usage.

  • Has 1000 keyword suggestions limit for a particular seed keyword
  • Talking about the accuracy of their keyword difficulty, their difficulty score performs well as it calculates keyword difficulty by using Page authority and Domain authority metrics of the top ten pages
  • Moz tool doesn’t provide search volume and searches data in keyword research and competitor analysis

Google keyword planner (free)

You will need a Google Ads account to access this tool. It is mainly used by advertisers due to it being efficient in SEO. It will work for you, and the perk is that it is free.

  • The number of keyword suggestions is moderate as compared to other tools
  • The range of the search volume provided is not accurate often. It provides absolute search volume data.
  • It doesn’t show the keyword difficulty in keyword research and competitor analysis.

SEMrush

SEMrush is similar to the Moz tool. It has the following features:

  • Just like the Moz tool, you can run 10 queries per day if you want to use it for free.
  • It provides a lot of keyword suggestions. They are a lot but only forty percent of Ahrefs’ keyword suggestions.
  • One of the standout features of SEMrush is a search volume trend graph covering a period of the past 12 months
  • It displays keyword difficulty by taking into consideration the authority of the domains.

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