Part 2: How to generate keyword ideas using keyword research tools
There are quite a few awesome tools that help you study what people are searching for in Google.
Let me cover a few of the most popular keyword research tools and explain how they work.
So there's this tool called Answerthepublic which is quite popular among SEOs
and content marketers.
Probably because of this highly charismatic dude on their homepage.
No, I'm just kidding, that's a really neat free tool, seriously.
Give it any word or phrase and it will return a list of relevant questions that people put
into Google.
For example, if I type "cats" into the search bar,
It will give me almost 200 questions that contain the word "cats:"
"can cats eat dog food," "where cats like to be pet," "which cats sheds the least," etc.
You're probably wondering, how does this tool know what people are searching for?
Well, the source of their data is very simple - it's Google's Autosuggest feature.
If you start typing your question like "can cats," it will immediately show you some
popular searches.
And it you start typing the next letter, it will give you suggestions based off this letter.
That's where this little free tool gets their search queries.
As stated on their homepage, they use Autosuggest feature in Google and Bing
to give you keyword suggestions.
Here's another similar tool that is based on Google Autosuggest feature.
It's called Ubersuggest.
The difference between the two is that Ubersuggest doesn't focus on questions.
And all their keyword suggestions will start from your seed keyword, as you can see here.
Everything starts with the word "cats."
Both of these tools don't show you the monthly search volume of the search queries they suggest,
but you already know where to get it, right?
Now, onto the next keyword research tool.
Which you probably know already.
It's called Google Keyword Planner, and it's a part of AdWords - Google's advertising platform.
This tool used to be the single best source for keyword ideas back in the days, but in
recent years Google was taking more and more data away from SEO professionals.
So today Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for advertisers, that want to pay for traffic
from Google, but not so much for SEO professionals, who want to get free traffic from Google.
And yet, you can still get great keyword ideas from Google Keyword Planner.
If I enter the word "cats," I'll get a few hundred cool keyword ideas, and the tool can even sort
them into groups, which is rather handy and useful.
The main downside is that you don't see monthly search volume of these keywords.
You only see ranges, which are not super helpful.
And if you want to see the actual numbers, you'll have to start an advertising campaign
and put some money into it.
But in any case, Google's own keyword research tool should not be ignored, even though they
limit the data that you get for free.
And finally, let's look at the keyword research tool that we have in Ahrefs.
It's called Keywords Explorer and it runs on a monstrous database of 4.6 billion search queries.
We use multiple sources of data to collect a database of this size.
But the main one is clickstream.
In short, clickstream data comes from a large group of mostly free apps that you install
on your computer and give them permission to collect your browsing data, anonymize it
and aggregate into a huge clickstream database.
From this database digital marketers can then learn what people search for online and which
websites they visit.
But there's no personal information on any of these people.
Clickstream data is literally a rescue to the SEO community as many amazing tools and features
can be built on top of it.
So back to Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.
If I enter the same word "cats," I'll get a list of almost a million search queries
that contain the word "cats" in them.
I guess when you compare this number of keyword suggestions to the number of keyword ideas in Google
Keyword Planner you'll see why SEO professionals are so mad at Google, right?
But what do you do with a list of almost a million search queries?
Well, remember the previous lesson where we talked about Keyword Difficuly?
I said it's a great way to narrow down a huge list of keyword ideas to those where you don't
need any backlinks to rank.
So let's put 0 in KD filter and see what we'll get:
"when do cats stop growing," "can cats eat bread," "do male cats have nipples."
These search queries could easily be answered with awesome blog articles.
If I open the search results for "can cats eat bread" search query I'll see that most
of the top-ranking articles get a few hundred monthly visits from search with almost no backlinks.
Which looks like a great opportunity to me.
And that was a quick overview of how to use keyword research tools to get a ton of great
keyword ideas to target on your blog.
Just feed these tools with words and phrases related to your niche and examine the output.
And don't forget what we've learned in lesson #3.
Always look at the total search traffic potential of the top-ranking pages and how many backlinks
they have.
And please take action before you move to the next strategy.
Go play with the tools that I've just mentioned and see how many awesome article ideas you'll
be able to find.