What Is Keyword Research?

If you do blogging, then you must have heard how important keyword research is when it comes to growing your following. It lies at the core of Search Engine Optimization.

But keyword research goes far beyond just blogging. It is used throughout the whole of the internet all the time. And if your website is linked in any way to your business, then following the best practices of keyword research is simply a must.

So what is keyword research and how exactly does it work? Can we not write blog posts without really thinking about keywords and still be visible through Google? Well, the answer is yes, but only if you already have an audience, a big audience. So as long as you are not Angelina Jolie or Donald Trump, you will need to be strategic about what you publish.

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Search engines

Search engines, such as Google or Bing, allow us to find the right information in a very efficient way. Whatever question you have, with the help of search engines, you can find the answer to it in a matter of seconds. This has completely revolutionized how information is consumed. Libraries and books are no longer as important as they used to be. Why go somewhere to read a book when you can get the exact information you need right from your smartphone’s screen right that minute?

The process of using a search engine is quite simple. You go online to the preferred search engine, and you type in the exact question that you have in mind, such as: “what is keyword research?”.

After hitting enter, you will get pages of results (SERP) with the most appropriate sources to answer your question. Search engines get to decide what you see and what you don’t, and they are pretty good at doing this. Hopefully, this time, they decided that you need to see this blog post.

Many different factors are taken into account when making the decision on what to show you in the results page, such as the length of the article, the year it was published in, how old and popular the website that holds the article is, etc. The criteria are constantly updated and improved. However, arguably, the most important factor that is looked at when giving you the results is the use of keywords in the text.

So if you type in “what is keyword research”, the search engines will provide you with results regarding only those sources that also include the phrase “what is keyword research?” (and its synonyms). That is the only way to really link your search query to the needed results.

Doing keyword research

If you are writing a blog post, then there are really two main ways to apply keyword research.

Autocomplete

If you are not sure what to write about next, you can use google and various keyword research tools to get some new ideas. So for example, if your website is about cooking, then you could go to google.com, and start typing “best recipes”.

After typing “best recipes”, google will give you a number of other similar keywords which are often used when searching. These are the keywords that you can research further and eventually use in your blog posts.

Keyword research tools

The other, more sophisticated approach is to use a keyword research tool, such as SEMrush.

A keyword research tool is a place to which you take your saved keywords to find out how well they are doing in terms of popularity. So if you go to SEMrush and type in “best recipes”, you will see a number of results as well as some other very interesting information. For example, below you can see that the key phrase “best banana bread recipe” has 33.100 searches every month, and that its keyword difficulty (KD) is 74.96 out of 100% (100 being the most difficult to rank for). In addition, the trendiness of the keyword looks very high and stable, which is good.

With this information at hand, you can now make a sophisticated decision about whether you want to write about a best banana bread recipe or something else. Also, after seeing the results, you may also decide not to write about something you initially wanted to, such as “best sugar cookie recipe”.

So as you can see, keyword research can a lot about one or the other topic. They help to make an educated decision about whether a topic is worth pursuing or not. Of course, you can do keyword research for free using tools like Google Trends or the Chrome extension called Keyword Surfer. However, no free tool will ever provide the amount of information a paid tool will. That is just a fact.

Applying keywords

As already mentioned, whether you have a blog about healthy diets or an online store at Amazon, you want to be found through search engines. In practice, this means you must include the chosen keyword/key phrase in the text of your blog post/product page.

Start by having your keywords in the title (h1 element) as well as in the URL link of the page you trying to get ranked. Then, every once in a while, try to mention the keywords again in the body text. But keep in mind that you don’t need to repeat the same keyword over and over 100 times. This will not add any additional benefit and will damage the quality of your message.

Example:

Keyword: best keto diet
Title: Find Out What Is the Best Keto Diet of 2025
Url: www.example.com/best-keto-diet

Back in the days, people would do what is called “keyword stuffing”. They used as many keywords in their blog posts as possible, just so that the search engines could rank them higher. Well, it did work for a while, but not any longer. Today search engines are smart enough to understand that you are just trying to trick them into thinking that your content is more relevant than others. As a matter of fact, if today you do keyword stuffing, you will get ranked down/penalized for it, making it even harder to have a presence on the internet.

So how many keywords are ok then to use in a blog post without stuffing? The answer is that every once in a while is ok. Please don’t focus on it too much. As long as you are using keywords in a way that sounds natural, you will not have any problems and the search engines will still be able to pick up your text. As an example, take the key phrase “what is keyword research” and see how many times I used it in this article.

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Conclusion

While knowing how to use keywords is essential, you must understand that there is no one magic bullet way to rank quickly above everyone else. It takes time and effort and involves many other factors. However, using keywords correctly in your content maximizes your chances of ranking high in the Google search engine results. The higher you rank, the more people will find you.

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Of course, not all of your keywords will be able to rank high, but every once in a while you will hit the right spot when you least expect it. That is when you will experience noticeable growth.

To conclude, it is important to understand that cheating the system does not work, nor should you ever make an attempt to do so if you are planning to take your website/business seriously. It will be picked up and your blog will get penalized, putting your wonderful hobby and/or business at risk. People use “black hat” techniques all the time in the hope of getting their websites more popular, but at the of the day, only those that have been genuine, creative in their content and consistent are the ones to make it. Let’s hope you will be one of them.

Thank you for stopping by and good luck!

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Why Is Keyword Research Important and How to Grow Your Blog Fast