How to research keywords - SEMrush

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In this article we will see how to search for keywords with SEMrush. You will learn how to optimize your content with the keyword search engine.

After reading this guide, you will know the basics of a keyword research effective. This will help your website grow dramatically by creating the right kind of content.

Let's start!

Keyword research

Learning how to do keyword research is a fundamental SEO task of identifying popular words and phrases that people type into search engines.

If you prefer to learn with audiovisual material, here is a video on keyword research perfect for beginners ...

When you know what people are looking for, you can focus your content on those topics. Keyword research gives you a better understanding of how high the demand is for certain keywords and how difficult it would be to compete for those terms in organic search results.

Keyword research isn't just about checking the number of hits for a particular keyword, but also exploring the different ways people use language to search for a topic.

As such, popular keyword research isn't just a big part of it. search engine optimization (SEO), it is also an important element search engine marketing (SEM) and content marketing in its together.

Why is it important to understand the keyword research process?

Because it can help you come up with ideas for your next blog post, learn more about your audience's needs, and keep up with the jargon of the ever-changing search landscape.

Ultimately, by researching the words people type in search engines and using that research to create targeted content, you can drive the right traffic to your site - more likely traffic to convert.

Keyword research can be a daunting and confusing process if you've just started your own website or blog. You need to create traction with the content you post, and in order to do that, you need to do the right kind of keyword research.

SEMrush keyword research

There are many ways to research keywords. Probably the place where everyone starts is the Google Keyword Planner.

I recommend you to use this free tool from Google and always take it into consideration. Especially if you are a newbie to all of this as this will help you do your first keyword research.

However, with Google Planner, you will not get as much relevant information compared to more advanced tools for SEO. And that's where SEMrush comes in ...

What is SEMrush?

SEMrush is one of the most popular and effective SEO tools out there. This company counts today more than 6 million users. It can help you in all areas of your marketing strategy. digital marketing.

One of the most popular features of the SEO toolkit is the section of keyword research. This consists of four unique keyword research elements:

• # 1: Presentation of keywords.
• # 2: Keyword Magic Tool.
• # 3: Keyword manager.
• # 4: Organic traffic statistics.

These SEMrush keyword research features allow you to find the most effective keywords and phrases for your website or blog.

Let's look at more near each of 4 keyword research elements included in the SEMrush SEO Toolkit…

# 1: Introducing Keywords

The Keyword Insight tool allows you to perform a large-scale analysis of the keyword you have in mind to create content and shows you the relevant competition behind it.

Within the platform, just enter a keyword in the search bar and let the keyword synthesis tool do its magic ...

Then some pretty interesting information and statistics about the keyword will be presented to you.

For this example, we'll be using the keyword digital marketing (as shown in the screenshot above).

Ideally, it is good to always review this type of information before creating any type of content ...

Below in this second screenshot, you can see a lot of valuable data on the keyword 'digital marketing' that the SEMrush tool provided us with.

Key word presentation data

From the overview that has been completed on the keyword, we can see the following information broken down:

Monthly search volume

This is the monthly search volume that the keyword receives.

Keyword difficulty

The difficulty of the keywords is rated from 1 to 100%, with 100 being the highest difficulty level. This gives you a measure of how difficult it is to rank organically for that keyword.

Global search volume

Here you will see the overall search volume received for the keyword from all relevant countries. In our example, we select that the tool provides us with data from Spain (you can select different countries to receive more accurate statistics, according to your needs).

Results in SERP

This represents the number of URLs displayed in organic search results for keywords.

Trendy

Trend refers to the interest of analyzed web searches for the keyword over the past 12 months. This can show you how interest in your keyword has fluctuated in the past.

Why is this data relevant?

This data is important because you can see the traffic statistics behind the keyword as well as the difficulty in ranking it.

Knowing this information will help you determine if it is worth try to participate in SERPs for this.

Variations of keywords, questions and related words

In the next section, we can see some interesting ways to search for the keyword. At this point, you can start to compile a list of different phrases in which the keyword is mentioned so that we can approach it from a less competitive angle.

Less competition = higher likelihood of ranking.

Keyword variations

Keyword variations will show you different uses of your main keyword in other phrases that exist in the search. This is a great way to identify other keywords to target that may be easier to rank for.

Questions

This is a list of questions that contain our target keyword. These recommendations are great for seeing what people are looking for and how they are looking for it, so that you can properly compile a list of questions to create content for your keyword.

Related Keywords

Related Keywords are different keywords that are searched online that have a similarity to your main target keyword. They tend to have less traffic and are much easier to rank for because of the way they are structured.

Why is all this information relevant?

Variations in keywords, questions, and related keywords can be extremely effective in building your content structure. They can help you create all the relevant topics to cover the content you plan to produce.

You can also see how competitive each of these keywords is to improve your SEO positioning and so quickly capture organic traffic.

SERP Analysis

Finally, we have the SERP analysis for our keyword. SERP analysis presents you the list of high ranking websites for the keyword along with their pages.

This is extremely valuable data that you can take advantage of to see what your competition is doing to achieve high positions in Google.

Besides being able to see the top ranking pages for your target keyword, you have a ton of other valuable data that can give you more insight into what it takes to rank for your target keyword.

AS page (authority score) - AS page

This is the authority score for the page. This is a benchmark metric score of 1 in 100, with 100 being the highest, representing an individual page's ability to rank high in search engines.

Referring domains

Represents the total number of unique referral domains for your keyword or target phrase.

Backlinks

This is the total number of backlinks that lead to the URL that your target keyword presents.

Search traffic

This metric represents the estimated monthly organic traffic to the page that features your target keyword.

URL Keywords

URL keywords represent the number of unique keywords that the specific page ranks for.

I think it's more than obvious why having this data at your fingertips is invaluable for any website or business. With these, you can make the logical and informed decision of whether or not you should compete for a certain keyword or phrase.

# 2: keyword magic tool

Next on our list of components for the keyword research section in SEMrush is the Magical Keyword Tool (Keyword Magic ).

SEMrush's Keyword Magic tool gives you a deeper insight into a keyword's competition density, difficulty, and other very important targeting factors.

Keyword Magic allows you to have a large overview of different keywords and their relevant metrics in a central panel. From the dashboard, you have a ton of different options for finding the most effective keyword to use in your content creation strategy.

How to find keywords with little competition?

You can quickly sort by the KD% ("Keyword Difficulty") tab and find the most competitive keywords and the least competitive keywords that feature your primary target keyword.

In the screenshot above, we can see that the keyword with the highest competition in the search is “classroom cm master digital marketing”. The keyword has a difficulty rate of 89,08% and a low search volume (40 searches per month).

This tells you that it is very competitive to create content on that specific keyword. Also, this particular keyword has a pretty low volume, so it wouldn't be worth spending the time on it.

Percentage of competition and search volume

It is advisable to target your content on keywords that have a competitive percentage of less than 60%. Once we make the adjustment in the keyword magic tool using the filters, we can see the keyword that has a competition density of less than 39% or 59%.

We also need to make sure that the keyword has sufficient search volume. Recommended search volume should be between 100 and 1000 per month. For this, you can also apply a specific filter:

Creation of keyword lists

At this point you should start compiling a list of possible keywords to create content ...

After applying some filters in the SEMrush Keyword Magic tool, we have compiled the following keywords below which have sufficient search interest and less competition around our keyword “digital marketing”.

Then we just add the qualifying keywords we need to our keyword management tool which makes it easy to create keyword lists for search.

Content validation

Next, we take a look at the SERP analysis and see what other businesses are creating with their Page Authority scores, referring domains, backlinks, and more.

What is the SERP?

A SERP is a search engine results page. In SEO, the SERP is identified by your keyword that generated the results. The content of a SERP can consist of organic results, paid results, and SERP features.

A SERP is a search engine results page. In SEO, the SERP is identified by your "keyword" which generated the results. The content of a SERP can consist of organic results, paid results, and SERP features.

The following shows a results page (SERP) in Google for a search using the keyword: digital marketing industry...

Get a SERP Keyword Breakdown Analysis

With this feature, you can get up-to-date data on your top 100 competitors, their backlinks, and organic metrics of their SERP positions.

This will give you an idea of how your competition is performing over time on the exact content they have posted. It's golden information that shows you what you need to do to compete with them.