- In this video, I'm
gonna show you my proven five step keyword research blueprint. This is the same blueprint I've used to help grow my site to over
a hundred fifty thousand unique visitors per month. I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko the place where marketers
turn for higher rankings and more traffic. And today you're gonna learn exactly how to find the best
keywords for your business. Keep watching. When I first got started with SEO my approach to keyword
research was a total mess. Back then, I'll fire up
the latest and greatest keyword research tool and start typing in a
bunch of random keywords. So, what's wrong with this approach? My competitors were doing
the exact same thing. No wonder most of the keywords I found were insanely competitive. Now over the years I developed
a keyword research blueprint that works really well. Specifically, this blueprint will help you uncover keywords that your competition doesn't know about. So let's dive right in with
step number one of this process which is to identify
your customer persona. This is a step that most people skip and it hurts them. (zapp)
Aww. What was that? So what is identifying your
customer persona actually mean? Let me explain with an example. My site sells SEO Training products to small and medium size businesses. Most people in my position would open up a keyword research tool and type in things like;
SEO training and SEO courses into the tool. What's the problem with this approach? First off like I mentioned before your competition is doing
the exact same thing. Which means you're gonna run into the exact same set of
keywords as your competitors. But more important than that this approach ignores
a very important fact about your customer and that fact is this: your customer spends 99.9
percent of their time online not searching for what you sell. In other words, if you
only target your customer when they search for
the exact thing you sell you're missing out on hundreds
of other opportunities to get in front of them. For example in my case I noticed that most of my
customers were SEO agencies. So I went to forums and online communities where SEO agency owners
tended to hang out. That way I could see what my
target customer search for when he wasn't searching for SEO training. And I discovered that there
are dozens of keywords that my target customer typed into Google that were related to my
products but had nothing to do with SEO training. Keywords like on-page SEO list building how to get more traffic and SEO tools. And because I target these keywords I get my business in front of thousands of my target
customers every single day. And when my target customers ready to buy I'm the first person that comes to mind. That's the power of doing keyword research based on your customer persona. And all you need to do for this step is say my customer is X. For example, if you run
an online flower shop you might say; my customer is a bride getting ready for her upcoming wedding. That was easy, right? Now that you've identified
your customer persona it's time to find topics
that your customer is interested in. Which leads us to the next step in my keyword research blueprint which is to find topics that
your customers care about. So how do you find these topics? Its simple. Go to where your target
customer hangs out online. Then look for topics that
they tend to discuss. Seriously, that's it. For example in my case, my
customers tend to hang out at marketing-focused communities like inbound.org and growthhackers.com In your case your target customer may
hang out in places like Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube,
industry blogs and niche forums. Once you've identified where
your target customer hangs out it's time to keep an eye out for topics that are important to them. For example in my case, I
noticed that link building was one of the most popular
topics in the online communities that my audience spent time on. So I wrote down link building as a topic. And I kept digging until I
found at least five topics that my target customers talked about in online communities. Now that you have at least five topics it's time to drill down
into finding keywords. Here, my four favorite tactics
for finding on-tap keywords that your competition doesn't know about. First we have Google Suggest. To use this strategy,
just head over to Google and type your topic into the search field. But don't press Enter. Instead, take a look at the keywords that Google suggests for you. These are usually awesome,
long tail keywords that you can go after. As a quick pro tip, try
putting a few spaces before your keyword. This will show you a
completely different set of keyword ideas. Next up, we have quora.com. Quora is a massive
community of people that ask and answer questions on
every topic under the sun. All you need to do is search
for your topic in Quora and see which keywords tend to show up. Our next tactic for finding
keywords is to use Reddit. Like Quora, Reddit is a
massive community of people that discuss every topic under the sun from pets to politics. To use Reddit for keyword research simply head over to Reddit
and search for your topic. When you find a thread on your topic keep an eye out for words and
phrases that tend to come up again and again. These make awesome keyword ideas. Next up we have Google's
Searches Related To feature. To use this feature, simply
type your topic into Google. Then scroll to the bottom of the results. Google then show you other searches that are related to the
keyword you just put in. These are usually excellent
long tail keywords that you can target with your content. Finally we have Wikipedia. What other site had in-depth
articles for topics like mall walking The Lingerie Football League henlias, the five-second rule. To use Wikipedia for keyword research just head over to Wikipedia
and type in your topic. Then take a look at the other entries that that article links to. These are usually closely-related topics and even potential keywords themselves. Also, make sure to check
out the table of contents for the entry. Again, these are usually keywords that are closely tied to your topic. Now that you have a list
of potential keywords it's time to choose the
best from your list. How? By analyzing each
keyword's commercial intent. One of the first websites I ever built shot to the top of Google
for my target keyword. And because that keyword
got a ton of search volume that single ranking
helped that site generate over 60,000 unique visitors per month. All good right? Wrong. Even thought that keyword
got a ton of searches the people that searched for that keyword were flat broke. Which made monetizing
that traffic impossible. Sorry dude, I'm broke. That's why today I pay very
close attention to a keyword's commercial intent. Commercial intent simply means how likely someone searching
for a given keyword is to buy from you. Here's how to find out if your keyword has a high commercial intent or not. First, head over to the
Google Keyword Planner and type in one of your
potential keywords. Then take a look at the
Suggested bid column. This shows you how much
advertisers are spending in AdWords for a single click from this keyword. Obviously, the higher the suggested bid the more valuable that keyword is. Another simple way to
size up commercial intent is to see how many AdWords ads appear when you search for
your keyword in Google. If you search for your keyword
and see lots of AdWords ads it means that people
are chobbing at the bit to bring those searchers to their site. Okay, now it's time for our last step which is to look at each
keywords search volume. Back in the day, Google would show you exact search volume numbers
in the Google Keyword Planner. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. Today, unless you're running
active AdWords campaigns they show you an extremely
unhelpful search volume range. So how can you see how
many people searched for your keyword? There are two freemium
tools that get the job done. The first is semrush.com. To find a keyword search volume simply type the keyword into SEMrush and they'll show you how many
searches that keyword gets every month. Simple. You can also use kwfinder.com. Again, just pop your keyword into the tool and you'll see the
exact amount of searches that it gets every month. Now before you decide in a keyword I recommend one last bonus step. Now this step is completely optional. But in my experience it
helps you find the absolute best keywords for your business. And that step is to look
at your keyword's growth in Google Trends. For example, let's say
that you found two keywords that have similar search
volume and commercial intent and you don't know which one to pick. But when you look at Google Trends you notice that one keyword
is growing in popularity and the other is dropping like a stone. Obviously you'd wanna go with
the keyword that's growing. A couple of years ago,
this step saved my butt. I was debating whether to
target one of two keywords. Google Keyword Tool or Google Keyword Planner? You see, Google has recently
renamed the Google Keyword Tool the Google Keyword Planner. But the keyword Google
Keyword Tool still got 20 times more searches than
Google Keyword Planner. So I almost pulled the trigger
on Google Keyword Tool. That is until I looked at Google Trends. That's when I noticed that searches for the
Google Keyword Planner were skyrocketing while searched for the Google Keyword Tool were steadily dropping. So I decided to go with
the Google Keyword Planner and it was a good move. I now rank in the top
five for that keyword and it's a keyword that's
growing in popularity everyday. Okay, so that's all
there is to my five step keyword research blueprint. If you follow the blueprint
you should have a handful of excellent keywords that you can use. And once you have those it's a matter of creating
landing pages and content optimized around those terms. If you liked this video,
make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now. It's easy. Just click on the
Subscribe button right here. Also, if you want exclusive SEO techniques that I only share with subscribers head over to backlinko.com and sign up for the newsletter. It's free. Now I want to turn it over to you. Which step from this video was new to you? Or maybe you tried them all already. If so, you probably have
a favorite technique that works well for you. Either way, let me know by leaving a quick comment right now. Okay, let's do it. I just ssshshh do that if... Oh man, I can't this is a tough one. Good? Aight. Ahh, gotta move around more. Ah-haa-eh. In depth, pfft, pfft... okay. Donesky.
