Finding the keywords to rank your blog or website is not easy when 1.97 billion websites are present on the Internet – and growing! It is a gruelling task to discover low competition and high volume keywords to rank your Affiliate Marketing website. So to help you out, my team and I have created a guide on keyword research after hours of research and experimentation. Read on to know more.
What Are Keywords?
In simple words, keywords are terms or phrases you enter on Google to search for something.
A more elaborate definition of keywords is, “Keywords are the words or phrases that people type into a search engine when looking for information on a subject. They are often the words or phrases that appear on the website, in an article or webpage. Keywords are also known as search terms and key terms.”
The more specific the keyword, the more relevant the content is to the searcher’s needs. Keywords are important because they help search engines match the content on your website with the search queries entered by your target audience.
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of finding search terms or phrases that people type in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine and including them in your content so that your website or blog appears on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
The primary focus of keyword research is to find keywords with low competition and high volume, i.e., when you do keyword research, you should find keywords that are easy to rank and many people search for.
Once you know which terms people are searching for, you can create content that targets those terms and rank higher in search results.
Keyword research is a process that you must perform before you start writing your blog posts, creating videos, creating landing pages and more. It involves choosing the right keywords and making sure they are used in your content.
If you want your affiliate content to get more eyeballs, keyword research is a significant practice.
Why Is Keyword Research Important?
Keyword research helps you to identify the most popular and profitable keywords and phrases that you should use in your content and on your website. You can do keyword research manually, with the help of tools, or a combination of both.
Keyword research allows you to get information about potential new customers, helps you to identify related keywords, and gives you an insight into your future customers’ behaviour.
Keyword research is an inescapable part of any Affiliate Marketing campaign. It is a critical process that allows you to understand the needs and interests of your audience. It also helps to find out what they are looking for online.
The better you know your audience, the better your marketing efforts will be. You need to know what your audience is searching for and keyword research is the first step in getting your website ranked on Google’s first page.
Keywords help you to optimise your site and create a content creation and marketing plan. You will be able to see what your audience is looking for and what they are not. If you are not getting the amount of traffic you desire, then you may need to take a look at your keywords.
Keyword research also helps you to determine what your competition is doing. This, in turn, helps you to determine your current strategy and how you can improve.
There are many benefits of keyword research. For instance, it allows you to determine your business’ best keywords and discover new markets to enter and new opportunities to seize. It also helps you find great content ideas.
Keyword research is an activity that is done before any other part of the affiliate marketing process. Before you start promoting products you will have to find the right keywords. Before you start writing, you must know what you’re writing about.
Affiliate Disclosure
I, Shubhamjeet Kumar, participate in various affiliate programs, and I will earn a commission on qualifying purchases made through the links on this page at no extra cost to you. I have worked hard to put together items that are high-end and helpful.
How To Do Keyword Research For Affiliate Marketing?
Keyword research is not as easy as it seems. Many people, especially beginners, are under the impression that all you have to do is put in a keyword and – voila! – you get a list of keywords you can use to create content for your Affiliate Marketing content.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The keyword research process is far more extensive and takes a lot of effort.
How can I do keyword research, Shubhamjeet? I want to rank my blog or website, too.
Well, I have got you covered! To help you out, we have embedded a video below that will walk you through the keyword research process using the Google Keyword Planner.
Why Google Keyword Planner?
Google knows everything about what people are searching for online. And if you’re trying to find out what people want, this is the best place to start.
The Keyword Planner will give you a good idea of the volume of searches that are being done on Google each month for a specific keyword. You can even get similar keyword suggestions to help expand your search.
When we do keyword research for our Affiliate Marketing content, we break down the process into 3 simple steps. I will walk you through each one of them below.
Step 1: Identify Your Target Audience
Identifying your target audience is crucial because only when you know your target audience and their desires, could you find keywords they search for on Google or any other search engine.
Once you identify your target audience, you can discover their doubts, queries, and so on. So how do you identify your target audience?
A simple exercise for finding your target audience’s desires and queries is to go to your competitors’ websites and observe what type of content they publish. Secondly, you could go to social media and ask questions to your audience or conduct polls.
The responses of your followers or audience will give you an idea of their challenges, desires, and doubts. When you know what they are going through, you can create content addressing their questions, and this will help you generate more traffic because they are looking exactly for that.
Step 2: Brainstorm Keyword Ideas
After you have identified your target audience, you have to brainstorm the keywords that your target audience could search on Google.
For example, if you promote health-related products, you should brainstorm the keywords your target audience might search. They could search for:
- How to lose fat?
- How to increase weight?
- How to get six-pack abs?
- How to develop leg muscles?
- 6 exercises for bigger biceps
- Etc.
So, in this step, you need to get into the shoes of your target audience and make a list of all the keywords they could search on Google.
Step 3: Analyse Keywords On Google Keyword Planner
After you have made the list of all the potential keywords your target audience could search, you should analyse all of them – one by one – in a keyword research tool.
Why? Because when you analyse keywords in a keyword research tool, you will find the competition and search volumes for each one of them. Not all the keywords that you came up with will have a high volume and low competition.
You might also discover that some of the keywords in your list may have very high competition, making it difficult to rank, and some could have a negligible search volume. So, through analysing the keywords in Google Keyword Planner, you will find the perfect blend of low-competition, high-volume keywords, okay?
Free Tools For Keyword Research
If you are looking for other free keyword research tools, you could watch the below video for the seven free keyword tools to help you find the ideal keywords for content creation:
Keyword Research Tips
Tip1: Utilise Negative Search Terms
Involving negative search terms or phrases during the keyword research process is one of the most important keyword-research tips you can use to take your Affiliate Marketing content to the next level.
Negative search terms are the words or phrases you will not consider while researching and creating content. For instance, suppose you want to create content for a paid webinar tool like WebinarKit. In this case, when you do keyword research for the term “webinar tool”, you should add “free” as a negative search term, okay?
When you add “free” in the negative term list, keywords with “free” will not appear in the list.
Tip 2: Zero In On The Keywords By Location
One of the most powerful keyword research tips is to generate a list of keywords based on a particular location. Suppose you are promoting an affiliate product that targets plumbers. So you could explore keywords related to plumbers in your city. For example:
- “Plumbers near me”
- “Plumbers in Mumbai”
- “Plumbers in Matunga”
Location-specific keywords will help you target people or potential customers in your district, town, or city. Although this tip sounds counterintuitive, it will help you target people who are more likely to buy the product or service.
You should also note that in addition to the above keywords, there will be variations in how your audience will search for the products and services. For example, taking the above example, your audience could search:
- Matunga plumbers
- Best plumbers in Matunga
- etc.
Include all the possible keyword variations in your content and don’t hesitate from adding long-tail keywords to your keyword list. An example of a long-tail keyword will be “Plumbers in Matunga with sewer repair service.”
Tip 3: Do Not Forget Your Audience’s Questions, Doubts & Feedback
If you interact with your audience, they will have questions, doubts, and challenges to which they need a solution. If you create content answering their questions and problems, you will build trust, and this one thing will increase your rankings on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).
You can find questions and doubts your audience has by asking them directly through emails and social media posts. You can also ask about their biggest challenges, problems, obstacles, and pain. You could conduct surveys and collect information.
If you do not have an audience, you could go to platforms like “Answer The Public” to find the frequently asked questions by your target audience.
If you have never used Answer The Public, please watch the below video:
Tip 4: Spy On Your Competitors’ Keywords
If you are a beginner and want to create content that gets hundreds of visitors, you should look at what keywords your competitors are targeting for a particular product.
Finding keywords that your competitors are targeting can help you to reach people who search for such keywords.
Using Google Keyword Planner, you can find keywords that your competitors target. The below video will help you with this:
Tip 5: Use Google Auto-Suggest
Since Google is the most popular search engine, you will find the related and relevant keywords your audience is searching for.
When you type anything in Google, you would observe that it provides a list of related search terms, isn’t it? You can utilise those related keywords to research keywords.
You can begin by typing the keyword in Google, and it will return a list of related search terms below the search box. The reason I am suggesting this technique is that Google lets you access the related terms that people commonly ask with the main keyword.
Google provides the related search terms to provide accurate results to the people. If you do not get the search term you want to target, you could scroll down to the bottom of the search results and find related terms in the “related searches” section to discover more potential keywords about the product or service you are promoting.
You can watch the below video to see Google Auto-Suggest in action:
Conclusion
Keyword research is the process of finding search terms or phrases that people type in Google, Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine and including them in your content so that your website or blog appears on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
The primary focus of keyword research is to find keywords with low competition and high volume, i.e., when you do keyword research, you should find keywords that are easy to rank and many people search for.
Keyword research helps you identify the most popular and profitable keywords and phrases that you should use in your content and your website.
Keyword research allows you to get information about potential new customers, helps you to identify related keywords, and gives you an insight into your future customers’ behaviour.
Keyword research is not as easy as it seems. Many people, especially beginners, are under the impression that all you have to do is put in a keyword and – voila! – you get a list of keywords you can use to create content for your Affiliate Marketing content.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. The keyword research process is far more extensive and takes a lot of effort.
To help you out, we have embedded a video below that will walk you through the keyword research process using the Google Keyword Planner.
