How To Find Keywords: Tools, Tips, and Examples at a Glance

Knowing how to find keywords effectively is one of the main, and primarily, ongoing SEO practices every website needs.

Here’s why.

About 96.55% of web pages on Google get zero organic traffic, and 1.94% of these webpages receive only 1 to 10 visits, while 0.07% receive 1,001+ visits monthly.

Image via Ahrefs

Part of the reason most websites don’t attract organic traffic is that they fail to optimize their content for user intent.

One challenge most marketers face is not having an effective keyword strategy that can guide them on how to find keywords that target user intent in their specific industries. Luckily, this post focuses on learning how to find keywords effectively and strategically use them to optimize your content for search engines, drive organic traffic, and improve your website's visibility and ranking.

Before we discuss how to find keywords, here is a quick recap on what keywords are and the role they play in your website optimization.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases that best summarise the contents on your page. Users type in these words on search engines when they’re browsing the internet.

Understanding how to find keywords that align with your content and audience is important. These keywords help search engine crawlers match user queries to relevant results. When you use keywords effectively, you increase your website’s visibility and boost your rankings on SERPs.

What’s the Role of Keyword Research?

Search engines seek to provide users with the most relevant content to their search queries. For this, they find content with related keywords. Hence, learning how to find keywords is the foundation of SEO.

Keyword research helps you identify how users search for your brand or your services. Knowing how to find keywords lets you understand what to include on your pages to make them more visible to users and search engine crawlers.

This way, when Google indexes your page, they’ll find it relevant and rank it up.

But it doesn’t stop there. You’ll also need to know how to use these short tail and long tail keywords on your pages. You’ll need to optimize them, from your URL to your titles, headings, and content.

With proper keyword research, you can make your brand more visible to organic search, and give your company a competitive edge over other players in your niche.

However, it’s important to note that keyword optimization is just one of many factors that search engines consider when ranking your pages. Therefore, it’s crucial to work on other SEO practices, such as link building and website optimization, for wholesome results.

Now, how do you find keywords that are best for your website? Let’s find out.

How To Find Keywords: A Step-By-Step Guide

Here’s a simple guide on how to find keywords effectively.

1. Set Goals and List Important Topics

To understand how to find keywords for your content strategy, start by setting clear goals. You’ll need to establish:

• Your target audience
• The primary and secondary needs of your target audience
• Why your audience needs your products

Then, come up with a list of broad topics you want to rank for that apply to your business. This gives you a general sense of direction before narrowing each topic down later.

If you don’t understand how to find keywords, consider topics that frequently arise in your business activities. As you go, you’ll discover how important each topic is and prioritize accordingly.

2. Keyword Discovery

If you're unsure how to find keywords that would work best for your content, you can look at how to find new keyword ideas first.

Based on the topics you’ve outlined, search for new keyword ideas. An important step in knowing how to find keywords is identifying your seed keywords and building your keyword phrases around them.

A seed keyword is the part of your keyword that defines your niche, forming the basis for the rest of your keyword research. Essentially, they’re your starting point.

For instance, if you sell female clothing, your seed keywords can be

• Women clothes
• Summer dresses
• Cocktail dresses

One way to learn how to find keywords is to use these base keywords to find more meaningful phrases. The final keywords you find can either be:

• Short tail keywords: Short tail keywords are keywords that contain one to three words and typically cover a broad subject. Because they are generic, they have a large search volume and attract more traffic.

However, for the same reason, they’re highly competitive and have a higher keyword difficulty. This means that it’s harder to rank high for them.

They may also attract the wrong audience lowering your conversion rates and increasing your bounce rate.

• Long tail keywords: These are more descriptive keywords that explain the details of the content and have a clear search intent. They have a lower search volume as they cover a specific subject.

Long tail keywords are easier to rank for if done right as they’re less competitive. To optimize your content, you need to know how to find keywords that fit this category.

Since they’re more specific, the traffic you attract using long tail keywords is relevant and leads to higher conversions.

Here’s how you find these long-tail and short-tail keyword ideas.

Brainstorming

Knowing how to find keywords will be easy with this method. Simply think of ideas from your website content or topics from your niche and find keyword ideas.

Think of your brand and everything you offer, and try to find the right keywords from your customers’ standpoint.

You can then list these ideas in a Spreadsheet and build on them as you go.

Exploring Your Niche

Here, you research your industry and niche to find content writing gaps. This will help you understand the problems your customers face and the questions they ask.

You can look at niche social media forums on Quora and Reddit to find ideas or leverage social listening tools to find content gaps. You’ll then find more relevant keyword suggestions.

Use Keyword Tools

Keyword discovery tools are the easiest way to explore what your target audience is searching for. They are linked to Google search and other search engines and they analyze large chunks of data to provide you with insightful metrics.

To learn how to find keywords, start with simple keyword generation tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Google Autocomplete to find ideas.

Other SEO-specific tools, such as Ahrefs and Ubersuggest, have free keyword generation and discovery packages. These SEO tools provide a list of suggestions that help you find more keyword ideas.

You can use them to search for keywords and check how much traffic each keyword attracts, and how competitive they are.

The more elaborate SEO audit tools will help you research your competitors and find keywords for which they’re ranking. This way, you can monitor, analyze your competitors, identify gaps, and even learn from their practices.

In this post, we’ll discuss these best keyword research tools for finding keywords in detail.

Analyze Current Keywords

If you already have a keyword strategy, you’ll need to examine your current keywords to see their performance. Analyze which keywords already bring in traffic and why, and use that information to generate new ideas.

Then, you can improve the content that attracts less traffic. One way to go about it would be to resurrect or repurpose the content using a different set of keywords or optimizing the existing keywords on the same content.

Now that you have a rough idea of how to find keywords based on different topics, you’re ready for the next step.

3. Keyword Analysis

At this point, you have a long list of keyword ideas you’ve generated. You’re wondering how to find keywords that will have an impact on search results. How do you then narrow this list down?

You can use keyword research tools to:

Analyze Keyword Research Elements

Here, you’ll first analyze your organic keywords using these three key elements to establish their importance.

• Relevance: The keyword you choose to center your content around should provide value to your audience. That’s how search engines determine if they find your page relevant.

You should be able to stay on topic and respond to your user’s queries. Also, making sure your content is up to date contributes to its relevance.

• Search volume: This refers to the number of people who are searching for a specific keyword. You can rank highly for a keyword, but it wouldn’t matter much if there aren’t many people searching for it.

Your keyword tool will generate the search volume data like the one generated by Semrush below.

Image via Semrush

• Keyword Difficulty: Some keywords are more competitive than others and therefore more difficult to rank for.

A high keyword difficulty shows that they’re competitive while a low one shows that they’re either less competitive or do not attract any traffic.

Image via Moz

With that, you’ll narrow down your list and sort them in their order of significance.

Analyze Your Competitors

Competitor analysis helps you monitor which keywords other companies in your niche are ranking for. This way, you can reevaluate your list of competitors keywords and make changes.

If your competitors are ranking for keywords already on your list, you’ll have to improve your content using content writing tools to compete. If competitors aren’t optimizing for certain keywords with substantial search volume, you can fill that keyword gap on your list and capture more traffic.

Now, let’s discuss how to find keywords your competitors are ranking for.

Most SEO tools have competitor analysis software. For instance, Moz has a free keyword discovery tool that shows you which websites are ranking for your target keyword.

Image via Moz

Looking at the competitor pages from the example above, you can tell why they’re ranking higher. They have high domain authority, page authority, and many referring domains.

With this information, you’ll learn what else to improve in your SEO strategy besides your keywords.

Image via Moz

Know Your Audience’s Search Intent

User search intent is one of the most crucial factors to consider when prioritizing keywords. Knowing how to find keywords based on user intent helps you understand what people want when they type in search queries.

There are four types of search intent you should center your keywords around. These include:

• Informational: These are keywords that are meant to provide information. How to find keywords for informational search intent is to look for questions users ask. This search intent is mostly in the form of questions, for instance, “What are audiobooks?”

While they may not compel your audience to take any action, informational content helps you build your brand awareness.

By providing educational content, you’ll also establish your site as an authority in your niche.

• Commercial: Most searchers who use keywords with this intent are usually looking for products or services to make a purchase.

Knowing how to find keywords for commercial intent involves researching trending products or services and analyzing your competitors' content strategies.

You can target these keywords in product reviews, listicles, or product comparison articles. Commercial keywords are used to increase conversions.

• Transactional: These keywords target visitors who want to make a purchase. They’re used in purchase pages, ads, and product pages.

Site visitors use these keywords when they already have information about the product and want to buy it. They’re used by searchers at the bottom of the conversion funnel.

When coming up with keywords for transactional intent, you need to be specific with your product descriptions. For instance, “black breathable sport shoes for men” is a long-tail keyword that’s more likely to convert than “shoes for men”.

• Navigational: Searchers use navigational keywords to find a company or a brand they already know and are just trying to find their official site. Popular brands use these keywords to attract traffic to their websites.

Here’s how you can know the search intent behind your keywords. Type out your keyword on your Google search and look at the results.

These results will show you what searchers find when they type certain keywords. Study the results to get an idea of how to find keywords to use.

Another way to know how to find keywords that align with your audience's search intent, which is simpler and just as effective, is using keyword research tools.

For instance, for the earlier keyword example, “how to buy audible books?”, the search intent is informational on Semrush, as shown below.

Image via Semrush

4. Keyword Ranking

Check keyword ranking is an important step in mastering how to find keywords that drive traffic and conversions.

With a list and details such as keyword density and search volume, you can rank your keywords.

Here’s how.

First, group them into primary and secondary keywords for each topic. The ones at the top should be your primary keywords, i.e. the keywords you prioritize in your content.

Then your secondary keywords, which are variations of your main keywords, could be your next focus. You want to explore different versions of what your audience is searching for.

How do you determine which keywords are your primary or secondary keywords?

You’ll need to first determine their importance. The following factors help you know what keywords to prioritize.

• Whether or not you already have content on that keyword phrase. If you do, what would it take to make it rank higher?
• The potential traffic your keyword is likely to attract
• How competitive the keyword is. You’ll need to check your keyword difficulty for this.
• If the keyword attracts traffic, how much of it is likely to convert?

Have the keywords with high search volume and low keyword difficulty at the top of your list.

5. Final Keyword Choice

This is where you pick your final keywords. Here you’ll prioritize search intent, for instance, if your website is ‌commercial, you’ll pick the keywords with a commercial intent.

If your focus is producing blog posts, then you’ll prioritize how to find keywords with informational intent.

It is just as important to prioritize keywords that target customers at the top of the buyer’s journey. Your website needs to nurture leads.

Now back to how to find keywords for your final list.

You can also take another look at your competitor analysis when making your final choice. Check the domain authorities on the websites that are ranking for certain keywords. If they have low domain authority, those keywords can be added to your final list, etc.

You’ve picked out your keywords, now what? Understanding how to find keywords is only a step in the right direction.

You’ll need to use them correctly for optimal impact. In this next section, we’ll find out how.

Where To Use Your Keywords

Now that you’ve learnt how to find keywords for search engine optimization, your focus should be on how to incorporate the keyword in your content strategy.

Here’s where you should add your keywords to make your content relevant to search engines.

Meta Description

This is the part that shows up under your title on SERPs. It contains a summary of what your content is about.

Image via Google

Including your keywords in your meta description helps searchers know whether to click on your content. Search engines also use the keywords in your meta description to ascertain that your content is relevant to specific search queries.

Title Tag

This is the part of your HTML that describes the subject of your webpage. It’s an element of technical SEO that search engine crawlers index first on your page.

On SERPs, it appears as the clickable headline to your content and is the first thing searchers see.

Image via Google

H1 and Other Subheadings

Upon opening your content, your subheadings guide your readers through your content, helping them determine if your content is what they were looking for.

Therefore, using your keywords in a few of your subheadings boosts the relevance of your content.

Your subheadings may also appear on Google’s featured snippets and including relevant keywords increases these chances.

Image via Google

URL

Optimizing your URL is a great way to help search engines find keywords on your site. Avoid using characters on your URL; instead, use keywords.

If you have a long tail keyword, try to keep it short and include only parts of the keyword that best summarize the content on your webpage. Also, make it readable and easy to understand.

This way your users and search engines will know what’s on your page.

Throughout Your Content

This is where you optimize your keywords the most. However, you should be careful not to use irrelevant keywords or overuse keywords. You want to use your keywords naturally so search engines can find keywords scattered throughout your text.

Search engine crawlers interpret keyword stuffing as manipulation of their algorithm, which can drop your rankings. Using variations of your keywords helps make them more natural.

Images

Search engines index images on your page just like they do your written content. This gives you a chance to optimize your images. Whenever relevant, try to include your keywords:

• On your image file name on your device
• On your image title
• In your image alt text. This is the part of your image that your search engine crawlers scan. Use descriptive text instead of a short label when adding your image alt text. For example, if your topic is about how to find keywords, an image alt text like “Tips on how to find keywords for SEO” can improve your visibility in search results.

This next section discusses keyword tools that make the above process of how to find keywords easier.

Keyword Tools You Can Use

As discussed earlier, keyword research tools are an effective way to find keywords, compare and analyze them effectively. This section lists some tools you can use.

1. Google Autocomplete/ People Also Ask/Related Searches

These Google tools are free to use and the easiest way to find keyword ideas for your website. We’ll discuss them together as you can access them all in one go.

The autocomplete section is especially helpful when learning how to find keywords, as it shows keyword suggestions as soon as you type in your seed words in the Google search box. It can help you find long-tail keywords easily.

Image via Google

Once you’ve typed in your keywords and hit search, the “People Also Ask” section suggests relevant alternatives.

Image via Google

At the bottom of the page is the section with more keyword ideas.

Image via Google

Pros

• Easy to use
• It’s a free tool

Cons

• It’s not as effective as a specialized tool

2. Google Keyword Planner

Image via Google

You need a Google Ads account to access the Google Keyword Planner. It’s a free tool that helps you discover how to find keywords related to your business niche.

It shows you the monthly search statistics for your keyword ideas and helps you filter them by relevance.

Pros

• It’s a free tool

Cons

• It has limited keyword research features

3. Google Trends

It’s a generic tool that helps you know what the world is looking for on Google and what’s trending online. Using this tool, you can learn how to find keywords based on how often people search for a term relative to the total search volume.

Google Trends allows you to find keywords and compare with each other, like below.

Image via Google Trends

It also shows you keyword searches by country so you can know which locations to target with your keyword strategy.

Pros

• Free tool
• Provides historical data about changes in searcher interests over time
• Suitable for finding viral trends

Cons

• Not effective for in-depth keyword analysis

4. Ubersuggest

This tool has a lot more to offer than any of the above free tools as it’s more SEO specialized. Ubersuggest helps you generate keyword ideas and provides insights on how to find keywords by showing you the search volume, keyword difficulty, paid difficulty, and pay per click.

For instance, if you type “SEO strategies” into the keyword search box, you’ll find keyword ideas that involve a list of related searches ranked by search volume, like the one below.

Image via Ubersuggest

Besides this, the tool also generates content ideas, as shown below.

Image via Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest has a freemium version that is effective for keyword research and a paid version that is a more integrated content marketing tool. It’s easy to use overall and is affordable compared to other SEO marketing tools.

Pros

• Have an easy-to-use Chrome extension
• Affordable pricing
• A user-friendly tool
• Have a free version and a 7-day free trial for paid versions

Cons

• No mobile app

Pricing

• Individual: $12/month
• Business: $20/month
• Enterprise/Agency: $40/ month

5. Ahrefs

This is an integrated SEO tool with functions such as keyword research, backlink analysis, website audit, domain analysis, and rank tracker.

The Ahrefs free keyword generator helps you find keywords and compare variations of your search term, their search volume, and keyword difficulty.

Image via Ahrefs

Its backlink analysis tool is effective for competitor research.

Pros 

• Free keyword generator
• It’s easy to use
• SEO tools are comprehensive

Cons

• Paid packages are expensive
• No free trial on paid plans

Pricing

• Lite: $129 monthly
• Standard: $249 monthly
• Advanced: $499
• Enterprise: $14,990/year

6. Semrush

Just like Ahrefs, Semrush is a powerful SEO marketing tool, with a free keyword research tool that shows you how to find keywords that drive traffic. The keyword research tool helps you find:

• Monthly search volume
• Keyword difficulty
• The sites that are ranking for a keyword
• Keyword suggestions
• User intent

Here’s what that looks like

Image via Semrush

You can also conduct domain analysis, rank tracking, backlink analysis, broken link building, etc. Their domain analysis tool is particularly easy to use.

Pros

• Provides keyword intent data
• The user interface is well organized
• Detailed SEO reporting tool

Cons

• You can only create one account for all the Semrush plans
• The free trial requires you to add your card details

Pricing

• Free: $0
• Pro: $139.95monthly
• Guru: $249.95 monthly
• Business: $499.95 monthly

7. Moz

Moz is also an all-encompassing SEO tool that helps users understand how to find keywords effectively. This tool generates information such as:

• Keyword suggestions
• SERP analysis
• Monthly search volume
• Keyword difficulty
• Organic click-through rate
• Keyword priority

Image via Moz

Unlike other tools discussed above, the keyword research tool alone provides a lot of insight. The SERP analysis section lets you analyze websites ranking for a specific keyword and see their page and domain ratings.

You can find keywords and conduct competitor research from a single tool.

Pros

• Comprehensive keyword explorer tool
• Chrome extension is available

Cons

• Paid plans can be expensive

Pricing

• Starter: $49/month
• Standard: $99/month
• Medium: $179/month
• Large: $299/month

8. SpyFu

SpyFu is another powerful SEO marketing tool that offers a free keyword research tool. Its search feature allows you to find keywords across organic and paid search channels. The SpyFu keyword research tool helps you find:

• Monthly search volume
• The site ranking for the keyword
• Keyword difficulty
• Estimated clicks
• Mobile and desktop clicks
• Keyword suggestions

Here is an overview for a better understanding

Image via SpyFu

In addition to keyword research, you can also conduct competitor analysis, PPC research, and track keyword performance over time.

SpyFu’s competitor analysis tool helps you gain insights into your competition’s strategies and identify keywords they rank for.

Pros

• Provides detailed keyword research and SEO data
• Excellent competitor analysis features

Cons

• Limited functionality in the free version

Pricing

• Basic: $39/month
• Professional: $79/month

9. AnswerThePublic

This is a social listening tool that functions as a powerful and user-friendly keyword research tool. It can help you understand how to find keywords people are actively searching for on search engines.

AnswerThePublic listens to search engine suggestions and transforms them into a visual map of related phrases and questions.

It uses search query data from Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and others to visualize the most common search phrases related to a specific keyword.

Image via AnswerThePublic

Pros

• Offers a wide range of search query types, helping users uncover a variety of keyword opportunities

• It ability to generate data from Google, Bing, and many sources makes it useful for SEO strategies across multiple search engines

Cons

• It doesn’t provide in-depth keyword metrics like search volume or competition, which can be crucial for SEO professionals

Pricing

• Individual: $5/month
• Pro: $49/month
• Expert: $99/month

FAQ

Q1. How do I know what keywords to look for?

A. Here’s a simple procedure you can follow to know how to find keywords:

• Discover keywords and come up with a list of ideas
• Use keyword tools to analyze your keywords for relevance and user intent
• Use that information to narrow your list down
• Rank your keywords by order of importance
• Choose the best keywords from this rank

Q2. What are three ways to discover keyword ideas?

A. The easiest way to find keywords is through these three ways:

• Brainstorming for seed keywords
• Exploring your niche for new topics
• Using keyword tools to discover keyword ideas

Q3. What is the best free keyword research tool?

A. Here are some free keyword research tools you can use to learn how to find keywords:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Trends
• Ubersuggest
• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Moz
• SpyFu
• AnswerThePublic

Q4. What is a keyword strategy?

A. A keyword strategy is a plan for choosing the right words or phrases that people use to search for information online.

A good strategy includes:

• Keyword research: To know how to find keywords that will drive traffic, use SEO tools to find those with high search volume and low competition.

• Keyword placement: Using keywords in key parts of your content, like titles, headings, and descriptions.

• Content optimization: Creating content that answers the searcher’s intent and includes the chosen keywords naturally.

• Monitoring performance: Track your keywords' performance and adjust your strategy as needed.

Q5. Which keywords are best to target in SEO?

A. The best keywords to target are relevant, have a high search volume, and have a keyword difficulty level you can easily compete with.

When picking a keyword, you’ll also need to analyze other sites and check how to find keywords others have overlooked to fill the gap.

Q6. How to find keywords that bring in the most traffic?

A. To know how to find keywords with a high traffic potential, you’ll need to compare the keyword difficulty and the search volume to find a balance. Keywords with low difficulty and a high search volume have higher chances of attracting the most traffic.

Make Your Keyword Strategy More Effective

Now that you know how to find keywords and make them more effective, you can improve your overall SEO marketing strategy.

While keywords boost your rankings significantly, search engines consider many other factors before ranking you highly on SERPs.

While learning how to find keywords, check other aspects of your SEO strategy, such as your link-building strategy, website optimization, and content quality.

All the best for finding the best keywords for your website.