Keyword Analysis: How to Find the Right Keywords (+10 Best Tools) (2023)

Your keyword analysis is one of the most important elements to SEO success.

You primarily want to identify keywords that have relatively high traffic but aren't too heavy to rank for – which is often easier said than done.

What is keyword analysis?

A keyword analysis is a part of SEO that involves finding the right keywords that will allow your website to rank higher in search engines (Google, Bing, etc.).

Based on those words, you can create custom relevant content to help customers find you and visit your website.

Why is keyword analysis important?

Thorough keyword analysis is important to understand what keywords your customers are using. If you use the wrong keywords on your website, i.e. words that nobody is looking for, you will miss out on a huge number of potential customers.

Unfortunately, many companies have developed their keyword list based on how they talk about their products and services. But when they look at keyword performance, they find that customers are looking for completely different things to find similar products.

The result is that customers and companies can't find each other because the words that should connect them don't fit.

Therefore, it is extremely important to do proper keyword analysis before creating landing pages on your website that talk about your products.

Important words and phrases to remember

As with any industry, there are a number of specific words and phrases you need to be aware of when it comes to SEO.

Of course, you can do without them, but it's easier if you want to deepen or expand your knowledge. So here I will describe some of them.

search intent
Search intent refers to what the consumer intends to do with their search - i.e. why they are searching the way they are. This is important for understanding how you design your website content.

How you structure your work around keywords and keywords differs depending on whether the customer is looking for information or ready to make a purchase.

Search intent is also often reflected in how the user types their search and what they expect to find. If you are not aware of this, you run the risk of directing an information seeker directly to the checkout or directing a shopping person to an information page.

In both cases, customer frustration arises, which reduces the desire to become your customer.

Focus on keywords or key phrases
Focus keywords refer to a specific string of text that you enter for each individual page on your website so that search engines understand what the page is about.

For example, if you have a website that sells running shoes, you might have a page dedicated to women's shoes, one page dedicated to men's shoes, and another page dedicated to children's shoes.

Your keywords should be these three, and your keyword could be something like “Here you can find running shoes for kids of all ages. We have children's shoes in sizes XX to YY”.

long tail keywords
Long tail keywords, or long search phrases, are keywords that are at least three to four words long.

Unlike normal broad keywords, long tail keywords are more specific, which generally makes them easier to rank because there is less competition.

Long search phrases can also generate significantly higher conversions than common keywords because the searcher knows what they want.

Therefore, including them in your keyword research is something I recommend you do to get the best results from your SEO work.

Take the keyword "office design" for example - a highly competitive keyword and therefore difficult to rank for. Here you can use long-tail keywords, which have lower search volume but significantly less competition.

keyword strategy
A keyword strategy is the strategy you implement to work your content on the page.

The strategy aims to create a long-term plan for what you should improve, how you want to track results, and then define the work of continuous improvement.

Because remember that working with SEO is not a job you do once and then you're done. If you want to maintain your search engine position and keep customers finding you, you need to continually optimize your website with the right content.

How to do a keyword analysis - step by step

Now that you've mastered the basics, it's time to start keyword analysis. I've put together a simple step-by-step guide on how to do keyword research.

1. What is your objective?
Start by developing your SEO objective. What is your company's objective? What makes you special Who is your target audience? The answers to these questions form the basis for keyword analysis.

2. Make a list of your keywords
Now it's time to compile a list of your keywords. Try to find out what your target audience is looking for and write down the keywords in Excel or Google spreadsheets, for example. Write down as many keywords as you can think of.

If you're struggling to find inspiration, one tip is to use Google Autocomplete. There you will find valuable keywords that you might not have thought of:

3. Research your keywords
Now it's time to research the keywords you've chosen. There are a variety of keyword tools you can use, both free and paid.

I personally like Mangools or Ubersuggest, but if you don't want to pay for the tool, there are plenty of free options that work well. Later in this article, I list 10 tools that I think are good to use (both free and paid).

In these tools you can see, among other things, search volume, how hard it is to rank for the keyword (keyword difficulty), number of clicks, CPC (cost per click) and how search volume has changed in recent years .

You can also see related keywords, questions, prepositions and comparisons.

You'll also get a variety of alternative keyword suggestions where you can see search volume, keyword ranking difficulty, CPC, SERP results, and more.

No matter which tool you use, you'll get plenty of synonym and related keyword suggestions.

4. Don't Forget Long Tail Keywords
It's easy to just focus on the main keywords, but there can often be very stiff competition for them.

For best results, it's good to combine your main keywords with long tail keywords. Long tail keywords usually have a lower search volume, but are generally much easier to rank for due to less competition.

Also, Long Tail tends to convert better because the user knows exactly what they want.

On Mangools or Ubersuggest, you can sort your search by keyword difficulty. In the example above, I chose to filter the search by 0-30.

Then I get suggestions like “Office Design Startup”. As you can see, there are significantly lower search volumes, but at the same time there is less competition.

5. Analyze your competitors
Now it's time to find out how competitive your keywords are. Start with Google your main keywords. The results that appear on the first page are the sites you are competing with for your keywords.

It's harder to rank when your competitors are established, large companies. But you can always look at their content and get suggestions and ideas on keywords and content.

Many payment tools also allow you to see your competitor's best keywords, see what content is driving the most traffic, and discover where you have the most potential to reach your audience.

6. Create landing pages
By completing your keyword analysis, you should have a clear idea of ​​which keywords/search phrases are right for your specific business.

Then it's time to create relevant content and delete landing pages. Of course, you don't have to create all these pages at once, but it's a long-term task.

So which keyword tool or tools should you use? Below are my 10 favorite tools (for every budget) that can help you identify the keywords your business should be focusing on.

10 SEO tools to find good keywords

1.KWFinder (Mangools) Starting at $29/month

KWFinder, an easy-to-use tool that makes it easy to find long-tail keywords. The tool looks like several of the other payment tools on the list and provides stats like search volume, trending, and an indication of how difficult the keyword is to rank for:

The advantage of KWFinder over, for example, SEMrush and Ahrefs is the price: from 29 USD per month. However, the free version is very limited and only offers two searches per 24 hours.

2.Ahrefs from $99/month
Ahrefs is arguably one of many professional's most popular (but expensive) tools for various SEO purposes. One is new keyword ideas.

You can find suggested search terms on Ahrefs by clicking on “Keyword Explorer”. Then enter your keyword and click the search button:

The keyword's search results page provides information about the search volume/month, the keyword's difficulty to rank, and suggestions for other relevant keywords:

A new feature that can be helpful when planning long-tail keywords and content for your site is search phrases with the selected keyword containing a search query:

Another way to get keyword ideas on Ahrefs is to look at your competitors.

To do this, go to a competitor's website and click on "organic keywords".

3.SEMrush Starting at $99/month
Along with Ahrefs, SEMrush is one of the most popular SEO tools for keyword analysis.

Like Ahrefs, SEMrush is packed with features, including search volume information, keyword trends, and suggestions for long tails and related search phrases:

4.Keywordtool.io Starting at $89/month
As the name suggests, the Keyword Tool is a tool that helps you find relevant keywords based on Google's autocomplete.

Enter a keyword in the field and the Keyword Tool will generate many relevant phrases containing the entered keyword:

This is a particularly good tool for those of you who already have a keyword in mind but want more long-tail keyword suggestions.

For example, if you sell car seats, the Keyword Tool will give you search suggestions that include the word car seat, such as: B. "4 year old car seat", "infant car seat", etc.

There is also a "Questions" tab where you can see searches made as a search using the keyword. For example: “how long without a car seat” and “seat how many years”:

The advantage of the keyword tool is that you get a lot of suggestions. The tool usually gives significantly more suggestions for questions that contain the keyword than Ahrefs, for example.

The free version of the keyword tool gives you tons of pages of potential keywords, but you have to pay to see the volume and competition.

5.Ubersuggest
A simple keyword tool developed by Neil Patel.

Like the Keyword Tool, Ubersuggest extracts keywords from Google's autocomplete. Ubersuggest offers 1) search phrase suggestions that contain your specified keyword and 2) related keyword suggestions:

The tool is completely free and even gives you the estimated volume of searches per month, the cost per click on Google Ads and the competition in both paid advertising and organic search results.

One advantage is that you can easily export the result to a CSV file for Excel.

6.AnswerThePublic Gratuito
AnswerThePublic is a free tool that can be especially helpful when collecting keywords and content ideas. The tool will help you find "Questions", "Prepositions", "Comparisons", "Alphabetical" and "Related Searches":

Under "Questions" you get suggested questions that contain the keyword. Suppose you enter the keyword "shorts".

You'll get suggestions like "dog shorts" and "pole dancing shorts". In Prepositions, you get suggestions for search terms that contain prepositions, i.e. words like "to", "without", and "to":

Comparisons provide keywords that contain words like "and", "vs", "or" etc.

The last category, related, can be ignored as it appears to contain around 20 random search phrases containing the keyword (if you want to use a free tool to find related search phrases, tools like Ubersuggest are better).

7.Moz Keyword Explorer Starting at $99/month
Moz offers a very good tool for discovering new keywords. As with several other tools on the list, you enter a keyword and then you get suggested related search phrases:

Moz Keyword Explorer is better than many at finding unique search terms that aren't directly related to the keyword but could still be very relevant to your target audience.

Of course, the tool contains several functions, among other things you can see in the organic search result what percentage of search queries lead to a click.

It might also be worth looking at "priority" - Moz's own "overall score", which can give you an indication of whether the keyword is worth focusing on.

One downside to Moz Keyword Explorer is that, like Ahrefs, it comes in the full package, so it costs a little more.

8.WordStream Keyword Tool Ab 299$ / Monat
A tool that is somewhat similar to Keywordtool.io. WordStream provides a list of relevant keywords along with search volume, competition, cost per click and opportunity score.

The free version is significantly thinner than the Keyword Tool, providing only 10 keyword suggestions related to search volume.

As with Moz and Ahrefs, you need to purchase the full WordStream service to access the keyword tool.

9.Keywords everywhere for free
Keywords Everywhere is a plugin for Chrome and Firefox that delivers exactly what the name promises: keywords everywhere. Keywords appear on the right side of Google search results.

Here you can see the volume of related searches:

You'll also see estimated search volume, price per click, and competition just below the search box:

In other words, Keywords Everywhere is a great tool for you if you want to keep track of keywords and search volume every time you search on Google.

In addition to Google, Keywords Everywhere works on a number of other sites including YouTube, Amazon and eBay.

10.Free Google Keyword Planner

Google's keyword planner remains one of the easiest and most effective tools for finding new keywords. The tool is free, but remember that you must have a Google Ads account.

If you type a keyword into the field, you'll see a list of many related keyword suggestions:

If you have active Google Ads campaigns, you can see the exact average searches per month. Otherwise, you'll see a pretty wide range (0-100 searches/month, 100-1000 searches/month, 1000-10000 searches/month, etc.): If you don't know if a keyword has 100 searches/month or 950 searches/month , you will do a tough keyword analysis.

Therefore, I strongly recommend that you have active Google Ads campaigns if you want to use the keyword planner.

Keyword Planner also gives you an idea of ​​how competitive different Google Ads keywords are and what their average bid per click is.

It might also be worth checking Google Trends.

Which of the tools should you choose to find keywords?

It depends on your purpose and budget. If you can afford it, I would definitely recommend one of the payment tools.

I personally likeKWFinder (Mangoolen)EUbersuggest. You save time while providing more reliable data.

Remember – whatever tool you choose, it's important not to look blindly at keywords.

Do thorough keyword research and keep keywords in mind when planning your content (they end up telling you what your audience is looking for), but don't let them take complete control over what you write.