Keyword Research Software – Why, When & How To Choose One
Once you have chosen the right niche to blog on, it is time to start writing your blog posts. And that is where a keyword research software comes in.
SEO
If you don’t care about SEO, it is time you start focusing on it. SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is the process that leads to your blog posts getting ranked in search engines like Google and Yahoo, for queries that people search for. Even though SEO is pretty difficult nowadays, when mastered, it can bring in a lot of free traffic to your blog.
SEO can be divided into On-Site SEO and Off-Site SEO.
On-Site SEO
On-Site SEO is about tuning your blog posts to increase their visibility in the eyes of search engines. In the recent years, it is also about making your blog posts easier for people to read.
Off-Site SEO
Off-Site SEO is about getting your blog posts out there in front of people, which means building backlinks from other blogs. The higher the quality (Domain Authority) of the blogs that link back to you, the better your Off-Site SEO gets.
Importance of choosing the right keyword
The one deciding factor, that influences both your On- and Off-Site SEO, is the selection of the proper keyword.
To improve your On-Site SEO, you have to optimize your blog posts for the chosen keyword.
To improve your Off-Site SEO, you have to get other websites to link back to you using the chosen keyword as the anchor text.
What is an anchor text?
You are about to click on an anchor text now.
Anchor text is the text in the link, which takes the visitors to the target webpage when clicked on. The anchor text should be relevant to the page it is linking to.
So, long story short, if you want free traffic from the search engines right now, or somewhere in the future, you need to find the proper keywords to rank your blog posts for.
The most important factor that decides your success in SEO was, is and will always be choosing the right keyword. - Maddy Click To TweetSo, now that you understand the importance of choosing the right keyword for SEO, it’s time to find out how to choose the right one.
What to do before buying a Keyword research software?
Before you can buy a Keyword research software, you have to come up with a list of topics you can write blog posts on, in your chosen niche. You can use several methods to do this:
1. Create a series
This one is my favorite.
Step 1) You choose a niche. You then divide it into a handful of sub-/micro-niches.
Step 2) Now, inside each sub-niche, you create a series of blog posts, which read in a particular order will help your audience master that sub-niche.
Step 3) At the end of each blog post, you link to the next relevant blog post.
Example:
If you choose the ‘Baby’ niche, your sub-niches could be pregnancy, baby clothing, baby health, disciplining your toddler, etc. Now, inside the ‘Pregnancy’ sub-niche, the blog posts could be written in the following order:
i) Trying to get pregnant, but not successful? Try these tips.
ii) What to eat when you are pregnant?
iii) What not to eat when you are pregnant?
iv) Can you smoke when you are pregnant?
v) What to do in each trisemester?
vi) How to ease labor pain?
vii) Your due date is coming soon? These are the things you should know.
viii) Legalities to be taken care of, after your baby is born.
ix) What to do in the first week after delivery.
As you can see, this not only makes writing blog posts easy for you, because you know what blog post you will be writing next, it also decreases your bounce rates, because, each of your blog posts leads to the next blog post in a logical sequence.
2. Create a 10 x 10 matrix
You can read my blog post on how to overcome writer’s block, where I explain how to create a 10 x 10 matrix (Refer to tip number 1).
Choosing the right Keyword research software
There are a lot of Keyword research software available online. While there are free software, they don’t offer the sophistication and ease that comes with paid Keyword research software.
1. Queries/day
This is the number of keywords you can search for, in a day.
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Normally, if you are a blogger, this shouldn’t matter so much to you. However, if you are an agency or a freelancer managing multiple websites for your clients, this can be a deciding factor.
2. Rows/report
This is the number of results that can be displayed for any keyword. For example, You search for the keyword ‘food’, and there are 1000 search phrases containing the term ‘food’ in them. However, if your Rows/report allowance is 100, only the first 100 search phrases will be displayed.
This can be a deciding factor if you are a blogger who wants to do some thorough research to find long-tail keywords related to your keyword.
3. Keyword difficulty
This is the competition you will have for the chosen keyword. This is not calculated by every Keyword research software in the same way. However, you can interpret this variable in the same way, regardless of which Keyword research software you use – The lower this value, the easier it is to rank in the search engines.
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This is an important metric. Most Keyword research software offer this. Even then, it is worthwhile to check it before purchasing. Make sure a numerical value is displayed rather than just the categories ‘low’, ‘medium’ and ‘high’. This makes it easier to compare different keyword phrases.
4. Related keywords & search queries/questions
Does the Keyword research software display only search phrases containing the chosen keyword or does it also display search phrases that doesn’t contain the keyword, but is closely related to the keyword?
Does it also display the questions that people ask, which contain the keyword you entered?
5. Competitor analysis
This one is very important. Does the Keyword research software lets you analyze your competitors to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for?
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Extra points if it also shows how many backlinks you would need to get, to beat your competitors, and who have linked to your competitor.
6. Rank tracking
For which keywords does your website already rank within the top 200 search results?
How has this changed over the course of time?
Does your Software let you find these things?
7. Website audit
Can it perform a website audit, to find out if your website has any errors like broken links, 404 pages, etc? Even though this falls under the category of a SEO tool, it is nice to have it.
8. Cost
This is one of the biggest deciding factors when purchasing any product. So, how much money you can afford to spend on the tool every month makes a huge difference in which tool you can buy.
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9. Ease of use
Is the Keyword research software easy to use?
Does it demand a strong learning curve for you to understand how to use it?
Is it easy for beginners to understand how to use it without reading a lot of help instructions or remembering a lot of stuff?
These can be important if you are a beginner and want to get started immediately.
10. Multi-user support
Does the Keyword research software let multiple users handle an account?
This can be important for agencies or even for freelancers who manage multiple clients, whose clients want to look into the tool now and then.
These are the 10 important factors you should look for, in a Keyword research software before buying one. Now that you understand how to find out if the Keyword research software is right for you, it is time to actually find one.
Read my next blog post to find the best keyword tool that suits your needs.
