There are hundreds of factors to consider when starting to create a business website.

While SEO experts often argue about the most important ranking factor or the most profitable marketing strategy, I think it's safe to say that we can all agree on the importance of keywords.

You can certainly choose to omit keyword research and keyword optimization as a step in your digital marketing strategy, but doing so will cost you many opportunities to rank better, attract a more interested audience, or outperform your competitors.

To help you embark on the difficult but rewarding journey of keyword research, let's explore how to know which keywords are best for your business.

How to find keywords

Let's start by reviewing some basic steps that are applicable to any keyword research process:

1. Brainstorming Keywords

The first step you should take is to get out a pen and paper (it can be digital) and write down all the keywords related to your business. Don't think about search engines and online customers at this point. Just think of all the services or products you have and write down all the keywords that come to mind.

If you've already identified a set of pages you want to create (for example, if you offer five different types of services and want each service to have its own page), you can start there, brainstorming keywords for each page.

On the other hand, you can go the other way around by writing down all the keywords you can think of, then grouping them based on similarity and creating a page for them.

Consider what words people might use to describe what you offer and what information they might want to know about your product or service. The more you can come up with at this point, the better, as you can later check these ideas against various keyword research tools.

Of course, you don't have to use all of these - but the more you use at first, the more you'll find later.

2. See what others are doing in the same space

The next step you should take is to look at What your competitors are doing.

I use the term "competitor" loosely here because it doesn't have to be a company that does exactly what you do - it could be a company that focuses on just one of the products or services that you offer yourself, or a company that does a lot more than you do, but does overlap to some degree.

You can do this manually by reading the pages of your competitors, but it will take a long time and you may easily miss some obvious keywords.

The best way to do this is to use a tool such as Ahrefs, Moz or SEMRush, which list all the keywords for which the site ranks. From there, you can export these keyword lists and add the ones you think might work to your own. More about what works below.

3. Check Google which rankings are better

Once you have identified a specific set of keywords, be sure to check the Google Internet company has been ranked for it: only the Google Internet company Search for your keywords in the search box and see what sites appear.

It's true that all the tools listed above will provide you with their own version of what's at the top of the keyword rankings, but make sure you check the actual search engines as well.

Add the top-ranking pages to your keyword list (top five or top ten, depending on how thorough you want to be), and when you start writing your page, make sure you also analyze the top-ranking pages: how long they are, how they use keywords, what they're saying, and so on. This will help you create a page that has a better chance of ranking well.

4. Check your thoughts against the keyword research tool

Finally, you should always rely on a keyword research tool to select keywords. Your own ideas are a good starting point, but you need a lot of data to make the right decision.

Moz, Ahrefs and SEMRush all work well. If you're spending some money on pay-per-click ads, you can also use a keyword planner, butTools like Ubersuggest.It can also provide you with a lot of ideas.

I personally use Ahrefs, so I will use the terms in that tool, but all of them have some similar terms and work in a similar way.

The information you want to view is below:

• Keyword Difficulty
• search volume
• Top Keyword Pages
• Backlinks for top-ranking keywords

Keyword Difficultyis a way for Ahrefs to tell you how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. The lower the number, the easier the next task will be.

search volumeIndicate how many people are looking for the keyword in a month - keep in mind that this is not always accurate and you can get more traffic than expected. You want to target keywords with the right search volume - for starters, I'd say anything above 100.

Top pages for keywordsVery important, because you don't want to accept the keywords that Forbes, the New York Times and Medium are vying for the top spot - you just can't top them.

Backlinks to these pagesIt will tell you how many links you need to build to rank well - the fewer links these top ranking pages have, the easier it will be for you to outrank them.

In short, you're targeting keywords that have considerable monthly traffic but low competition (especially in terms of backlinks).

Finding them will take some time - but if you're persistent and also consider the tips I'll delve into below, then you should have no problem finding the right keywords for your business.

How to find effective keywords

Now that we've covered the basics, let's talk about some more specific facts you should remember:

Blog Page and Services Page

You will always need to distinguish between blog pages and service pages.

Not much wiggle room when it comes to service or product pages: you can't (and shouldn't try!) Use completely meaningless keywords. Use every keyword variant you think you need for your page, but always remember that these are usually more competitive than the ones you use on your blog.

This is your real chance to get good rankings.

Focus on finding keywords with high search volume but very low competition (few or no backlinks, outdated content, etc.). These are usually long tail variations of a keyword.

Write a blog post around the keyword and aim to rank it at the top (which means you need to create a link to it). Make sure you link to your product or service page from this top ranked post in order to convey SEO value.

Of course, you shouldn't neglect keyword research for your product or service page - you may find some keywords in your niche that you can rank well for.

You'll be ranking a lot of keywords

There is one very important fact you need to keep in mind: you will never rank for one keyword alone. In fact, modern search engine optimization is no longer about overstuffing a page with a single keyword in order to rank.

Even if you never mention some of these keywords in your writing, every page will naturally and automatically rank for multiple keywords. That's how search engines work - they're getting smarter, and the best way to optimize a page for a specific set of keywords is to write an in-depth article about the topic at hand.

Below is an example of Ahrefs:

The page ranks 502 keywords, although it certainly does not mention all 502 keywords. However, it is well-written and is therefore considered by search engines to be a valuable resource for a variety of similar queries that use different words to describe the content of this page.

Combined efforts across multiple keywords

Another very important fact to keep in mind with our list above is that you can easily combine several different keywords on one page when looking for the best keywords.

Let me give you another example from Ahrefs:

This is a page that ranks at the bottom of the first page of Google for a variety of similar keywords. Although this page does not rank in one of the top 3 for any of the main keywords, it is likely to get quite a lot of traffic per month (Ahrefs estimated at over 1,000 per month). This is because the page ranks highly for many long-tail variations of the main keywords.

When writing your page, make sure that you don't ignore a keyword simply because it has a low search volume - try to find similar keywords (most keyword research tools give you the option to do this) and calculate their combined value rather than looking at each of them individually.

You can also view the keywords of the top-ranking pages that are similar to the page you're writing about, taking into account their total and potential traffic.

Don't forget to search for images

Search intent is a very powerful aspect of SEO, but it can be difficult to pin down.

For example, when someone types "SEO" into a search engine, you don't really know what they are looking for - whether they want to hire an SEO organization, whether they want to learn more about the term, etc.

However, when someone is looking for "Red Sneakers Under $50", they will most likely want to shop.

Make sure you consider the search intent when creating your page. If you want to rank well for long-tail keywords (these are often the best keywords for measuring search intent), make sure you've considered what the person is looking for: guides, comparisons, recommendations, services. That way, you can steal their next step and deliver exactly what they're looking for.

Committed to your local business

Don't forget that even if you work globally, you need to rank for local keywords. This will help you stand out in your community and be found by locals.

You will need to do some With local keyword research, you may even find that local competition for certain high-traffic and high-value keywords on a global scale is so low that you can easily beat them.

To improve your local search engine optimization, make sure you are also referenced in local directories, create some local links, and use local anchor text when linking to your site.

Don't forget your brand name

Finally, don't forget that you also need to rank well for your brand name, and it is also likely to appear in various variants.

Another example of Ahrefs:

The pageRanks highest among the various variants of its brand name and most of them have very significant traffic.

This doesn't mean you should use different variants for your brand on your page - unification always works best, but you should remember that you will be ranking based on the variant and remember to build some branded links to your page.

You can also do some Unlinked mentions research and get some branded links in this way, which will improve the ranking of your brand name.

final thoughts

Take a look back: the best way to find the right keywords for your business is to start with specialized keywords and work from there. Look for keywords that are relevant and provide value to your business, and remember to consider search intent when writing your pages.

When you establish relevance, you will also be able to deal with more difficult keywords. But for beginners, look for something with as high a search volume as possible, but which has a competitor you can easily beat.