If you have engaged yourself in SEO for a while, you would have heard SEO experts emphasizing over and over again the importance of “keywords”. However, I am certain that not many SEO marketers teach you how to find the right keywords. In this blog, I will introduce Keyword Competitive Analysis – a powerful tool to identify the right keywords for your website.
What is Competitive Keyword Analysis?
Competitive Keyword Analysis is a process of evaluating keywords used by customers and competitors on the Internet in order to select the most valuable keywords for your website goals.
How can you know if keywords are valuable or not? Following are some factors for you to consider:
- The appropriateness of keywords to your business goals
- The popularity of keywords
- The competitiveness of keywords
If your company is a start up building boats and yachts, you would definitely want to rank high for keywords such as “boat builders” or “boat manufacturers” instead of “boat rental” or “boat maintenance”. When you have a list of keywords, it is advisable to filter it down to a manageable amount by the popularity of keywords. In terms of the popularity, keywords are considered valuable if they have high search volume on search engines. However, the keywords you select are not always easy to rank for due to the high keyword competitiveness. One way to tackle this challenge is specifying those competitive keywords. For example, you could specify “boat builders” by adding qualitative adjectives (e.g. high-quality) and location (e.g. Finnish). As a result, you will have a new query “Finnish high-quality boat builders”, which is aligned with your business goals yet less competitive.
What Are The Benefits Of A Competitive Keyword Analysis?
A competitive keyword analysis can help you answer the following questions:
- What are your competitors doing with their content?
- Who are your true competitors when it comes to content?
- What valuable keywords should be used in your content?
How To Conduct A Competitive Keyword Analysis?
There are different ways you can conduct your own competitive keyword analysis. One way is to use SEO tools and softwares. For this particular purpose, I recommend Moz Ranking Keywords Analysis in Moz’s Keyword Explorer or Majestic SEO. This way enables you to get accurate results in a timely way. However, you have to pay (minimum $47/month) in order to get full and unlimited access to data. Another way is to conduct the analysis manually. This approach is free but much more time consuming. Last but not least, always remember to enable incognito browser anytime you want to analyse keyword rankings for an accurate result.
In the next blog, I will walk you through processes of performing a competitive keyword analysis manually. If you like this text, please subscribe.
PHUONG NGUYEN 