The Most Effective Method Of Doing Keyword Research 2024
(Step by Step)
Welcome to my most effective keyword research strategy that I’ve created to find some of the best keywords that you can rank with content writing and SEO.
The best part of this strategy is that it finds keyword gaps with low competition, this means you won’t need to do a whole lot of link building to get your content ranking.
I’m going to be laying this one down step by step and sharing my insider secrets that I’ve been keeping to myself for a while now.
You can follow this process with each step and do your keyword research alongside this blog to get the most accurate results with this strategy.
For me personally, I’ve been using this keyword research strategy for a few years now and it still remains the best and most effective way for me to find high traffic, low competition keywords.
Let’s not waste any more time, let’s get started doing your keyword research.
PLEASE NOTE*
To successfully do this keyword research method, you will be required to have access to the following tools:
Write Down Some Broad Topics Related Your Business
Use my Google Sheet Template here to help.
To get started you need to do an exercise to find broad topics related to business where you can find keywords from.
Think about what product or service your business or shop provides. Then start to work from there.
It’s important to make these as broad as possible. Even if some of these topics wouldn’t be what your customer directly searches for, think about what interest they might have that could be related to your niche?
Write down around 3-5 broad topics to find your hidden gem keywords.
You can use chat GPT to help prompt some keywords for you.
Create 3-5 broad pillar topics
For example, when I am doing keyword research for my niche in digital marketing I will write down the pillar topics my business can cover.
SEO
Link Building
Keyword Research
Content Writing
Video Editing
Facebook Ads
Google Ads
Google My Business
Try and keep these fairly broad as well, because we are going to use a tool to filter out our hidden gem keywords. The broader, the better results you are going to get.
If you are struggling to find broad keywords, I’ll show you a technique you can do to work out from niche keywords to find broader keywords and topics to then find hidden gem keywords from.
Log Into Ahrefs
Next, log in to Ahrefs and go over to the ‘keyword explorer’.
Type In One Of Your Broad Topic Keywords
Type in your keyword and press search.
Only use 1 keyword here. You want your keyword to be above 50-60 keyword difficulty (the higher the better) and have a decent amount of monthly search volume. I aim for around 1000+ search volume for my parent keywords.
If you are struggling to find broad keywords, type in your niche keyword here.
Type in your niche keyword and press search.
At the overview, look at the parent topics
Check out the parent topics for this keyword and see if anything is relevant to your keyword so you can build out your pillar parent topics.
You can keep clicking the parent topic of the parent keyword to find broader topics
If your keyword is still too niche, just keep clicking the parent topic a few times until you’ve found a keyword with above 60 keyword difficulty and a large search volume each month.
Click Over To ‘Matching Terms’
Once you’ve got your broad keyword and it has enough volume and KD, head over to the ‘matching terms’ tab to find a long list of relevant matching keywords.
These are a list of all relevant keywords that match the same terms that your broad keyword has. At the top are going to be the keywords that have high competition and high traffic.
To be honest, these ones are very hard to rank without having a significant amount of domain authority and website traffic. We want to look for some easier ones that are quick wins.
Filter by questions for niche keywords
You also have the options at the top to filter by questions.
Filter By Keyword Difficulty To Find Hidden Gems
At the top, create the option to filter by keyword difficulty. This makes it easy to find the SEO keywords that are worth it.
Here, put in the max KD to be 20. You can play with this depending on your niche, you may have to increase your KD based on your niche to find better topics and keywords.
Now you can start extracting some of these keywords that you think will work for your business and you are happy to start creating content around.
Cross Reference With Google Ads Keyword Planner
Next, and importantly is to cross reference this with the Google ads keyword planner. You don’t need to do this but I find it helps filtering out any low traffic keywords or setting the importance of these keywords.
For example, Ahrefs might show a keyword as 500 monthly searches, whereas Google ads shows 1000 monthly searches. Then you can prioritise this as a hot, upcoming keyword.
If you need too, you can cross reference with other keyword tools like SEM rush but I find this way to be the most effective without killing too much time cross referencing.
Export These Over To Your Keyword Research Spreadsheet
Export this list or copy and paste the keywords over to your keyword research spreadsheet.
Separate Your Keywords Into Your Pillar Topics
You can start copy and pasting them over into the pillar parent topic categories that we created at the start of the blog.
This way not only are you finding hidden gems, but you’re also building out a topical map and content planner for your SEO keywords.
Start Creating Content On Your High Volume, Low Comp Keywords
Now you have a structured keyword list and a topical map for your SEO. The next step is to start writing content. I’ve written a guide on how you can get started with this here.
