SEO

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 So now that you know the different types of keywords and how to think about Intent let
me show you three awesome ways to find keyword opportunities

1. your Existing keyword profile so the first place you should find keyword inspiration
is from what you're already ranking for and these keywords are the best because

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 Google is already signaling that you're doing something right to show up, Now go
into Semrush and enter your domain into the search go to Organic Research and
click on Positions now you'll have access to all the keywords your website is
ranking for within the top 100. and I like to categorize Existing keywords into three
different buckets

First Low-hanging fruits which are keywords ranking from Positions 2 to 15. and
these are the keywords you should attack right away just click on the Positions drop
down and go to the custom range enter 2 and 15 to see all of your Low-hanging
fruits

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 And to take it a step further Filter this set of keywords based on KD percentage
start with 0 to 14 in the Very easy range to find the lowest competition opportunities.

Now keep in mind you'll need to prioritize keywords based on Intent and
relevance as well more on this in a second.

The next type of keywords are from Position 16 to 50 which I label as Existing they
are also good targets but they should be second on the priority list after Low-hanging
fruits.
and the final category of keywords are from Positions number 51 to 100 which I
personally call Clustering opportunities if a page isn't ranking in the top 50 then
there's a good chance that the page isn't targeted enough

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 Look at this keyword that Semrush is ranking number 52 for which targeting
option is best for achieving brand awareness

Notice that the page is about YouTube Targeting Options

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 This page isn't targeted enough to rank for this Long-Tail Keyword Phrase, This is a
perfect Clustering opportunity because you can create a dedicated page for this
particular keyword phrase and it will rank much better.

Just remember

So with that said these Clustering opportunities are an awesome way to capture more
organic search traffic and build more topical relevance which will improve the
performance of all pages in that cluster take advantage of it.

The next method for finding keyword opportunities is to use Semrush's Keyword
Magic tool so while in Semrush go to the keyword research section and click on
Keyword Magic tool now there's no right or wrong way to begin your search but
the key is to leverage the filters

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 So let's use SEO for example this Head Keyword is extremely competitive
and should be avoided pretty much at all costs however we can use it as a
seed to find better opportunities

So let's use the filters to get started. I like to Start with the lowest KD and then work my
way up, so what you'll notice right away in this case is that there's a ton of irrelevant
keywords and you can combat this in two ways first set the language filter to only
show the target language and next use the exclude filter to eliminate more irrelevant
keywords and then at this point you should be left with a nice pool of perspective
keywords add each relevant keyword to your keyword list and then repeat this process
going further up the KD ladder and once you've tapped out all keywords specific to the
broad topic of SEO or whatever your broad topic is you should go to Wikipedia and
look for relevant subtopics within the larger vertical

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 In the case of SEO I found

And the list goes on and on, Use these as seed phrases to find even more
untapped ideas in Semrush.

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 So the two methods I just showed you are more than enough to build a large
keyword database

However to take it to the next level I recommend taking advantage of google's

people also asks section

Bringing me to point number three which is use alsoasked.com this tool is incredible
for finding all phrases from google's people also ask section and these Long-Tail
Keyword Phrases are a powerful way to build topical relevance and attack
keywords that no one else is paying attention to. So how do I know that well
because most of these phrases won't have search volume in the traditional keyword
research tools however you can conclude that these are real searches occurring on
google because google wouldn't show them as options in the first place.
In short the people also ask section is giving you real-time keyword validation

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 The first tier of ideas might be competitive but you'll strike gold in the second tier
and so on because it gets more granular as you go.

All right so now you should have a nice database of keyword opportunities but
how do you decide what keywords are best to target?
Well that's when Keyword Qualification comes into play.

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 But before you can Qualify Keywords I need to cover one very important point you
need to select a Primary Keyword

So let's say you have a page that's ranking for st louis personal injury lawyer

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 personal injury lawyer st louis

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 st louis injury attorney

These are all variations of the same Primary Keyword and therefore they should be
targeted on the same page.

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 Now the key is to select whichever variation has the most search volume but let's say
you also want to rank for st louis car accident lawyer

Well this keyword has a totally different intent and therefore deserves its own
dedicated page.
So as you go through the following process just remember

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 So with that said there are several key factors that should help you
filter through your list of keywords
1. Your current Position

So if you have Existing Keywords that are ranking well these should be
prioritized

2. Minimum Search Volume

I recommend a minimum of 100 searches per month for most industries

however if it's local you may want to adjust this downward

3. Keyword Difficulty

So focus on Low Competition Keywords first and then work your way up as
your site builds more topical authority and acquires more backlinks

4. Intent

Focus on keywords with Transactional Intent first and then work your way up
the funnel to broader targets

5. Relevance

Always prioritize Keywords that are Hyper-Relevant to your core offerings

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 If I sell SEO Training, keywords like SEO training Boston are super
important however a keyword like SEO tools isn't as important
because it isn't directly relevant to my core offer. yes it's broadly
relevant but it should not be high on the priority list

6. Trend

If you're struggling to pick a keyword then pick the one that's trending the best
you can find trending data using Semrush's keyword research tool on the
overview tab

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 7. CTR potential

and this is the final consideration for qualifying keywords which is The potential
organic click-through rate

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 If there are many SERP features and ads then your CTR will be
lower. so with Semrush you can easily see at a glance how many
SERP features are present by looking under the SERP features
column

So use these seven factors to find the best keyword opportunities.

But once you've selected a nice pool of 50 to 100 keywords then you need to decide
which ones are best to target in priority order and that's when Keyword Prioritization
comes into play

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 There are a few factors you can use to prioritize your keyword set and it largely has to
do with resources and that said you'll want to prioritize keywords based on Content and
Backlinks

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 For Content you'll need to gather word count targets for each individual keyword. so go
into Semrush go to the ON PAGE & TECH SEO section and click on On Page SEO
Checker
Now you'll need to run each Primary Keyword through this tool and collect the target
word count and then go to the Top 10 Benchmarking tab and look under Content
Length

Semrush will show you the average for the Top 10 and this should be your target and
the goal is by identifying the ideal length it's going to help us estimate what our budget
will be.

The second part of prioritization is based on Backlinks go to the Keyword Tool and
find the Primary Keyword in this case i'll use used cars douglas ga scroll down to
SERP Analysis and look under ref domains which stands for referring domains this is
the total number of unique domains linking to each ranking page

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 I recommend getting the overall average of these top 10 ranking pages repeat this
process for every Primary keyword.
And let's just say it costs $300 to acquire a Backlink based on time and resources

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 You can now estimate based on Content Length and the total number of Backlinks
how much it will cost to rank for this keyword and then from there you can prioritize
keywords that have the lowest investment or in other words which will be the most
profitable to rank for.
So that is how you do keyword research like an SEO PRO

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