Keyword research is essential for any SEO campaign. Therefore, today there are several SEO tools that facilitate keyword research. One of the best known of these is Ahrefs. Below you can read how to conduct keyword research with Ahrefs in 8 steps that will maximize your traffic.
1. Look at search volume and clicks
In Ahrefs' site explorer, you can view the search volume of your keywords. Search volume shows the popularity of your keywords. Popular keywords get a lot of searches but do not guarantee effective traffic. For this, you need to look at clicks. In fact, not all popular keywords get a lot of traffic. This is because clicks are more likely to be determined by search intent.
2. Determine the search intent of your keyword
When choosing keywords, sooner or later you are faced with the question: search volume or search intent?
The answer is simple: search intent is more important.
SEARCH INTENT CATEGORIES
Most searches can be divided into 4 categories:
Informational:
How to's (e.g., how to create a Web site).
Navigational:
Branded searches (e.g. Facebook, KU Leuven)
Commercial Exploration:
Product/service comparisons, trends (e.g. Macbook pro vs Dell XPS, best brands of hiking boots, etc.).
Transactional:
Buy, download, order, etc.
To find out the search intent of your keywords, you can use google. Type in your keyword and look at the top ranking pages: what kind of content do these pages have? This is a good indication of the search intent of your keyword but be critical because usually it is not immediately clear anyway what kind of content is behind the keywords.
Think carefully about which search intent best suits your content. Then choose the keywords that reflect this search intent.
3. Look at your competitor's pages that generate a lot of traffic
Look at your competitors' top traffic pages to find topics that generate a lot of traffic or have business potential. Then analyze these pages to find out what kind of content and keywords they contain. Determine if you can better fulfill the search intent behind these keywords with your content and include the keywords in your content plan.
4. Find out the ranking difficulty
Ahrefs shows a keyword difficulty score by default but it is better to discover it yourself.
To do this, look back at the top-ranking pages for your chosen keyword and evaluate the quality of their inbound links and other on-page factors.
Can you build more and better links on your pages? Can you outrank this content and satisfy the search intent behind these keywords even better? If so, go for it!
5. Do a content gap analysis with the top 3 ranking pages for your keyword
Once you are sure of your keyword you do a content gap analysis for this keyword. In a general content gap analysis, you are going to look at your competitors' rankings for a particular keyword to find out which other keywords they are also ranking for and you are not.
With the Ahrefs content gap analysis tool, you can analyze the top 3 ranking pages for a particular keyword for all their common keywords. This tells you which keywords you still need to incorporate into your content to rank higher.
6. Use the keywords from the content gap analysis
Use the new keywords in the content gap analysis in your content. For example, you can use these keywords as H2, H3. You can also choose to create separate pages around these keywords. Don't forget to link internally to these pages.
7. Build links
Build links to your new content to significantly increase your organic traffic.
8. Repeat
Repeat this process as often as necessary. By going through this process, you will immediately find the keywords with which your content has the most potential to rank in search results.
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