Keyword research, both in SEO and SEM, is such a determining factor that, if you do it right, it can lead you on the path to success. In this post, we help you carry out keyword research focused on choosing quality words for your digital marketing campaigns and actions.

Keywords for SEO and SEM?

The first thing to be clear about is that the keywords you choose to use in your SEO And of WITHOUT many times they will be totally different, since the user's search intention will also vary depending on the product, service or even page.

Sometimes the words to be promoted will be similar, or even the same, but everything will depend on the page you want to work on. For example, if you want to promote a page with a promotion for a particular product for Black Friday, the keywords of that landing should be different from those you will use on the page of your website where that product is being discussed. This is because, if you use the same keywords and both pages are indexed, the words will overlap and produce competition between them.

In the case of this post, we will focus on helping you: carry out specific keyword research to find the keywords of SEM campaigns, although most of what we will say here will help you to apply it to SEO as well.

What are the benefits of keyword research?

Doing keyword research will help you be sure that the words you'll use in your campaigns are really what people are looking for.

Not only is it important to be clear about your keywords when you're running your Google and Social Ads campaign, but it's just as important It is important that you include your main keywords on the landing page that you prepare. With this, the user will follow a match between the advertisement and the page they arrive at.

Since there are many keywords in the same topic, with a higher or lower search volume, the ones you select must be of quality and relevance so that when activated with a search they help you attract potential customers.

If the words you choose for your campaign don't have a high search volume, or have a very high level of competitiveness, it will be difficult for you to position yourself for that particular word, so it's important find the balance between the difficulty of that word and the volume of the search.

How to start keyword research?

If you already know the business well and have been managing it for a while, the starting point may be to make a list with all the words you would use if you had to search for it in search engines. Write down all the ways you can think of if you were looking for a product similar to yours. Think about what your customers need or what you think they might need and for your brand to meet their needs. This will help you position yourself and get a jump-start to dive into the tools we'll mention below.

On the other hand, if you don't know much about the business or it's a new product, it's often difficult to start keyword research, since we don't have as many notions of the topic to be researched.

To break the ice, we recommend that you take advantage of the functionality of Semrush What is it called Topic Research. There you must enter a generic word that represents your product or business, as appropriate to what you want to advertise, and it will give you ideas of topics that are related to the word you entered in the search engine.

Semrush: Topic Research - vision in flashcards

Although this functionality is very useful to know what you are looking for around the topic and to get ideas that may not have occurred to you, it is important to note that as a result of this information you should start expanding your search. Don't just stick to what appears there, as these are more generic terms from which you can start your search.

El Topic Research gives you a bird's-eye view of each sub-topic, giving you, depending on each idea, your search volume, difficulty, efficiency, titles of articles that have already been published, and questions. One of the most interesting sections are related searches where it suggests a series of keywords that can also help you expand your search.

Semrush - Topic Research: card detail

One of our essential tools for doing keyword research, and which is free, is Answer the Public. By entering the keyword or topic you want to search for, it gives you a 360º view of the way people search, giving you lots of ideas of where to focus.

You can have details of direct questions that are asked with that word, prepositions, comparisons (which is very useful for finding topics for content), related words and a list of words in alphabetical order.

Answer The Public

It is important to note that this tool only allows you to perform two free searches per day, so you should be clear about which words are of value for your research. Also, pay attention to the location and language, since by default it appears in English and the United Kingdom.

Another tool that is very similar to Answer the public, but that doesn't provide as much detailed information, is Also Asked. Its operation is quite similar, you must enter a keyword, choose the language and location that you are interested in analyzing, and then it asks you a series of related questions. The advantage of this tool is that it's totally free and you can use it as many times a day as you want.

Also Asked

How do I find the perfect keywords for my campaign?

Once you have a good research base on the topic and you know where to start, you can start to learn more about the search for words that are more specific and in line with your campaign.

Semrush, in addition to the Topic Research that we saw earlier, the SEO panel has a special section for carrying out keyword research with several features such as the keyword overview, keyword magic tool, keyword manager and organic traffic insights. But the one that you can make the most of for keyword research is Keyword Magic Tool.

Based on a word you are looking for, it gives you suggestions for broadly matched keywords, Of phrase, exact and Related. This will help you a lot to carry out your campaigns, since as we will explain later in this post, the shape and symbols you write in Google Ads will profoundly differentiate when your ads are activated or not.

Within this tool you will have lists of suggested keywords that will vary depending on your match type.

Semrush - Keyword Magic Tool

It is important that, when selecting the ones that interest you the most, you look at the average search volume and the level of difficulty of the keyword. There, we recommend that you choose those that have a level of difficulty that is not very high, but with a good search volume.

The words you choose in each matching list can be downloaded to an Excel file, where all the metrics that appear on the platform are indicated.

But how do we know if the keywords we choose are the right ones for the campaign? Well, much of it can be seen when you launch the campaign, however, with the Google Ads keyword planner you can make sure that the words you're choosing match the content of your landing page, website, or even previous campaigns.

Google Ads - Keyword Planner

Within the Google Ads Keyword Planner, in addition to including the words you've already researched, you can have ideas of words that Google recommends to you based on a specific web page, or entire website.

Types of keyword matches in SEM campaigns

When you have already done your keyword research and you feel that you are ready to configure your campaign in Google Ads, it is essential that you know that there are different types of symbols that apply to keywords and that differ according to their type of match.

The way in which you write the types of keywords is very important for the success of your campaign, since they will allow you to control with which searches and when you should or should not activate your ads.

Within the match types you will find:

• Extensive: The keyword goes without any symbols
• Modify from wide agreement: a + symbol is added to the beginning of the keyword, which means that the words in which that symbol is placed will be included.
• Phrase match: the keyword is in quotation marks, and will be displayed when a search is performed where words are added in front of or behind.
• Exact match: The word is in square brackets and the advertisement will be activated when the search for the exact term is performed.

As you move from broad to exact agreement, keywords become more relevant and, in most cases, their search volume decreases.

A very important point is Add keywords for which you don't want your ads to appear. This is very useful to differentiate services that you don't offer, for example, you have a shoe e-commerce, but you don't sell sports shoes, so you could assign as a negative keyword: (-sneakers, -sneakers).

Bonus: Google Trends to give you an overview

Seasonality is something that we must keep in mind when we must carry out a keyword research, especially since there are words that have a very specific increase at certain times of the year, such as boilers in winter, air conditioners in summer, champagne and confetti for the holidays at the end of the year.

Google Trends - Main Overview

In this sense Google Trends it can give you a look at how search trends have changed over time and the state of the last few months of the term or topic that interests you.

As we recommend in the Answer The Public tool section, you should pay attention to entering the language and location that interests you, at the time of searching (in this case there is no limit to daily searches).

Google Trends - Breakdown

In addition, if you already have a few words in mind, but you don't know which one to focus on, you can compare your search levels to see the evolution of each one and, thus, make the best decision. In this way, it gives you a vision of which city they are looking for this keyword the most, which can help, for example, to get an idea of where to focus your campaign.

It is important to note that Google Trends shows relative popularity over time, so depending on what topics you search for, it will not return results because they are very specific and low-volume searches.

On the other hand, this tool provides you with related searches that you can then delve into the other platforms mentioned above.

Now you know the basics of how to do keyword research. If you need help, contact us, we will be happy to support you to make your campaigns a success.

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