How To Do SEO Keyword Research (Step By Step Beginner Guide)
Ren Hao
Updated 15 October 2022

If today you do not do research for SEO keywords, what your site will happen? Let’s say you have high-quality backlinks because we keep hearing that backlinks are important, but if you just keep writing what you want to write without any prior SEO Keyword Research and content planning, it might convert your content rate becomes lower, and even affects traffic acquisition becomes difficult.
In the following content, our goal is want to help you quickly scale brand influence at a startup speed in Google and get much faster to make money online by having more traffic to our site and a higher conversion rate, Is not it?
We will talk about SEO keywords in this content and you can go to SEO Link Building Strategies and Resources (Complete Guide) to learn more about how to scale your online brand influence faster and combine it with your SEO keyword research section.
By having the keyword and content planning before starting to write your SEO Blog content, you will have clear planning and strategy to grow your SEO, I mean you will have the right user search intent keyword (I will talk more in the next part) with right target keyword instead of just select keyword and content to write by “Feeling”.
It is terrible if you don’t know what works, how do you know which content can help you bring much previous target audience and help you make money in the end, I mean to convert traffic into a lead? Isn’t it our end goal for doing SEO?
Here is a word, “If You Can’t Measure, You Can’t Grow.” Do you agree with me?
We Don’t HOPE It, We Make It HAPPEN.
1.0 What is SEO Keyword Research?
Let’s go to the point, keywords (sometimes known as “SEO keywords”) are words which users enter in search results. In simple words, It helps users get what they are looking for through key keywords.
So, as a Google SEO specialist or like you who is doing the SEO keyword search before writing content, we need to understand a word called user intent (we normally also call it to search intent). It can let you know why the user wants to search this keyword and what outcome you can expect from this keyword, I mean we can know what is the purpose we use this keyword for our content.
There are four types of search intent, we normally use two only which are informational and commercial investigation search intent, I will talk more details in the following part.
1.1 Why Keyword Research For SEO Is Important?
Here is an Ahrefs study to show us that 90.63% of pages get no traffic from Google. And one of the reason is the reason to causes of this issue happened is SEO keyword research. We can say that the correct keywords are important in attracting potential customers who are more inclined to visit your web pages. It not only can make our site has the right user come but also can increase our lead conversion rate. (Lead generation)
When you have the right target keywords, it can help our content planning much easy. Not only does it help our internal links can link to more relevant content to attract users to visit the page to get much traffic, but it also helps us rank for valuable keywords on our site.
Until now, do you understand how much SEO keyword research important is?
2.0 Before Keyword Research, Ask Questions (Know your target audience)
Do you have this experience before? Just know what the client goal is or you only know you want to rank on Google for some keyword phrases but you actually do not clearly know who is your target audience. Then, you cannot achieve the conversion rate expectation you set earlier (turn traffic to lead and clients).
So. I am going to talk about how we can know our target audience, and what questions we want to ask clients or ourselves to understand what keyword phrases we want to target.
Let us take an example here:
John has his own fitness centre company, which let the public come to their gym centre to do exercise. His goal is to let you help him to drive as much traffic to his website as possible. (that is all information you know)
First, we need to understand his client’s information before we start to do a list of keywords. So, We can ask the following question:
- What kind of people comes to your fitness centre to work out?
- Which exercise is the most popular in your fitness? (Gym/Yoga/Cardio/Pilates etc…)
- Why do people come to fitness? (Losing fat/gaining muscle/just for health/as a hobby, etc…)
- When are the most crowded times for people to exercise? (morning/afternoon/evening/evening/time? When…)
- How do people search for your fitness?
5.1 What words do they use?
5.2 What questions will they ask?
5.3 Are more searches performed on mobile devices? - Where are potential customers located? (local, national or international?) and tell me a more specific location.
3.0 Only Do "Keyword Research" Problem
As we know, we need to perform keyword research in SEO.
Here is a question, people will commonly think just understand the keyword difficulty scores, search volumes (International SEO might also see global search volumes), and cost per click click (CPC), which will be really enough to do the SEO, why do I want to hire a specialist to handle it again. But, if we just have these metrics, do it really enough for us to rank the keyword? Yes, it might, but it might not be enough.
We can also through to understand the Top 10 search engine results pages (SERP) for each site metrics like domain authority and backlink referring domain authority to decide whether it is a really low competitive advantage for us to rank our target keyword.
Our end goal is to get a conversion rate (Click Through Rate, CTR) from the Google search results, is not it? So, we need to know one more thing here, which is user search intent, why do users search this keyword? what is the intent of this keyword behind? does your business goal match this target keyword?
4.0 Understand Search Intent (We talk about 4 types)
1. Informational Intent
It is about a searcher searching for information. This blog you are reading now is a good example.
I will use fitness as an example in the following content. Let us look at the following example, it can be:
- How to lose fat?
- What food is high in protein?
- What exercise can lose fat?
- When is the best time to exercise?
- What is the healthiest way of eating?
2. Navigational Intent
It is about the searcher wanting to go particular of your site content, if your site is popular, no doubt many people will search your website directly on Google. Like the Facebook site and Instagram sites.
3. Commercial Investigation Intent
It is about a searcher doing the research before making a decision. They want to find the best one or do a comparison for their needs. In this part, you can pursue or help the searcher to make a decision now.
You will see review, comparison, and best, this kind of keyword phrase appears in the website title. I will give you some examples as follows:
- 30 best web hosting services of 2022
- Semrush vs Ahrefs, which one is the best?
- 20 best webinar platforms in 2022
- Is Ahrefs a free tool?
- 28 best SEO tools of 2022 (Honest Feedback)
4. Transactional Intent
It is about the searcher ready to make a purchase or take a valuable action. You will find the word like, buy, for sale, and discount on the website.
5.0 Only To Write 2 Types of Content
Before I start sharing that we only write two types of content, I want you to know that these two types of content are great for people who use blogging as a money-making model, I mean people who are making money by writing content that they pursue Or help searchers make purchasing decisions.
You can learn more about how to use Content Funnel Design to let your site bring more visitors to convert to be your lead and prospect. This will benefit the company website.
Here are two types of content you only need to write on your blogging site, which is informational intent, it is can be related to How-To Guide, and commercial investigation intent, which is about product review.
I will share with you one by one:
As a Blogger Keyword Type 1: How-To Guide
To build a real brand blog with raving fans, you need to have information content to solve your reader’s problems, you have to become a teacher who is willing to share information (I call it value) to answer questions to your audience to let them learn from you without paying a fee.
How we can do it? So, we write How-To Guide content.
Let us take an example here, we are searching a content called “How to do SEO”. This is good informational content that helps people who are just beginning to learn SEO and want to start their own Website SEO.

As a How-To Guide Content, you can do your lead generation at this site blog as Moz site do, they have the word “Try Moz Pro, Free” on the right side to let people click. This is good practice for the brand that is selling online courses, it will let them get a much more precise lead list at this part.

By the way, I also have a post about how to do SEO, You can go to A Step-By-Step SEO Guide To Do SEO (Ultimate Beginner Guide) to know more details about it.
Not only the above, but you can also convert traffic into profit this way:
- Write content in this How-To Guide post.
- Then, provide a solution to teach readers how to solve it, at the same time you provide the product as a solution (this will be in the next keyword type).
For example, You may see these kinds of words on the site:
- Choosing Bluehost for your hosting needs may be your answer.
- Get started with Bluehost.
- Are you ready to start your blog? Get started for just $2.95/month with my BlueHost link below
These are all about how we can put an affiliate link to convert traffic into profit in our How-To Guide post.
So, If you want to start a blog now, Go Bluehost and get 63% off your hosting plan ($2.95/month).
As a Blogger Keyword Type 2: Product Review
This part is focused on providing product information and is normally dominated by Affiliate links as an income source. Searches normally will look for product reviews and normally include the word “Best” in the title.
Here is an example, the best webinar platform, which is all about the affiliate link in each product to make their site make money.

You have to perform a product-related term in your industry niche before planning the content because all these words can help you earn extra income from other sources. I will share these in another blog content once I have planned it out.
Starting your SEO success is hard work.
To read more about SEO knowledge, check out my other guides:
Now, it’s your turn to start SEO Today.
Ren Hao
Ren Hao is a full-time Google SEO Specialist and Funnel Designer. Join Ren Hao’s SEO Community and read on renhaoseo.com to learn how to scale your influence at Google. Before becoming an SEO Specialist, Ren Hao is a Full Stack Web Developer, who helps companies develop their business website. Now, Ren Hao helps companies achieve sustainable traffic growth and reach the right target audience to get higher conversion rates with a strategic plan. He fully combines White Hat Google SEO & Content Funnel Design for sustainable traffic growth and conversions.