Keyword Research Best Practices

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ℹ️ What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the specific words and phrases people type into search engines like Google. It helps you understand what keywords are most popular and the search intent of your target audience. Including these valuable keywords strategically in your content helps it rank higher in search results. Keyword research helps you:

• Understand what your audience is searching for and what words they use.
• Choose the best keywords to target when optimizing existing pages or creating new content.
• Find topics to create new content about.
• Uncover competitor strategies and competitive gaps.

Here’s how you might use this…

A content marketing manager at a cybersecurity startup wants to attract more traffic to their blog. Before writing content, they conduct keyword research to identify trending search queries related to “zero-trust security” and “cyberattack prevention.” By strategically incorporating these keywords into their blog posts, they improve their chances of ranking higher in search results and reaching security-conscious IT professionals.

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💡 Best practices for researching keywords

To evaluate a keyword, you want to gather answers to these three questions and consider them together:

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1️⃣ Do a lot of people search for that keyword?

Also, does its popularity vary depending on the time of year? You can understand a keyword’s popularity and seasonality from its monthly search volume. Here’s how you might use this…

An SEO specialist at an online fashion retailer is considering creating content around “summer wedding guest outfits.” Before committing, they analyze the keyword’s monthly search volume and notice a sharp increase from April to August. This seasonal trend helps them plan their content calendar accordingly, ensuring their guide goes live when demand is highest.

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2️⃣ When people search for that keyword, what are they intending to find?

This is known as the person’s search intent. There are a few signals you should review to help you understand search intent. Here’s how you might use this…

A product marketing manager wants to optimize a landing page for their company’s workflow automation tool. They notice that “best task management software” has a high search volume, but upon further analysis, they find that users searching for this term are looking for list-style articles comparing multiple tools—not a product page. Instead, they create a “Top 10 Task Management Tools” blog post to better align with search intent and drive organic traffic.

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3️⃣ Does the keyword have relevance to your business?

Even if a keyword is popular and has a clear intent, it may just not be relevant to your business or audience. Here’s how you might use this…

A gym owner in Los Angeles sees that “best home workouts” is a highly searched keyword. However, since their business focuses on in-person training, ranking for this keyword wouldn’t drive relevant leads. Instead, they focus on keywords like “personal training in Los Angeles” and “best gyms near me” to attract local clients who are actively looking for a gym membership.

Considering all three of these factors as you look at keywords will help you determine which ones are good opportunities to target. Evaluating keywords is a strategic activity and not a science. For example, a keyword with very clear search intent highly relevant to your business may be a better opportunity than one with less clear search intent and less relevance to your business, regardless of its popularity. This is because you have a better chance of ranking highly when you can offer the content that people are looking for. Which brings us to one very important aspect of the keyword research process: assessing your website’s…

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🏅 “Right to Rank” 🏅

Can your website realistically rank well for the keywords you are choosing? It’s an important question, and one that can determine the difference between a fruitful content creation/optimization project and one that wastes precious time and resources. Keep in mind the graph below of head term vs long-tail keywords, which visualizes the value of targeting descriptive queries with more obvious search intent over vague, super-high search volume terms. So what should we consider when determining whether our website has the “right to rank” for a given keyword?

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1️⃣ Check the MSV and your website’s historical ranking

High MSV keywords aren’t inherently bad, but have you ever achieved a ranking (even within the top ~30 results) on that keyword? If you’ve never achieved a ranking on that keyword specifically or other similar keywords, it might be a sign to consider refining your target.

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2️⃣ Look at the SERP

Do the other top rankers look comparable to your website? Or are all the top rankers very high-authority sites (i.e. Healthline, Forbes, .gov sites, allrecipes.com)? This is a signal that ranking for that keyword may be extremely difficult to achieve.

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3️⃣ Check CPC

What is the cost-per-click for that keyword? While this data point is not always a perfect indicator (e.g. many brands won’t even bother going after a term as broad as “acne;” or, it may not be commercially relevant to bid on something like “best chocolate chip cookie recipe”), it can be a quick indicator of ranking difficulty.

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4️⃣ Secondary keywords can influence output

When using AI-powered tools like Writing Assistant and Content Guidance, each keyword you choose as a target shapes the insights, guidance and copy that’s generated. So, if you mix a very targeted term with a term that you will likely never rank for (or one that is irrelevant), it could heavily skew the output away from creating highly relevant, optimized content for the realistic targets you chose. So it’s best to include only carefully selected keywords with clear search intent, rather than diluting your prompt with “more topics for more topics” sake. Considering the factors outlined above helps you formulate a realistic assessment of your “right to rank,” ultimately guiding you toward achievable goals and preventing wasted effort on overly ambitious or irrelevant targets.

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How do I research keywords in Conductor?

Refer to our lesson: Research a topic with Explorer

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I want to learn more about keyword research!

Take the SEO enablement course: Keyword Research