In this post, you’re going to learn about how to use UberSuggest to research keywords that will drive more traffic to your website.
And the good part about UberSuggest is that it’s FREE!!
Keyword research is an essential part of content marketing.
Keyword research gives you an idea of what people are interested in…
…and what you should be targeting.
Before we jump into UberSuggest lets discuss keyword research.
What are the key considerations for selecting keywords
What is the intent of the person searching
Search is typically broken down in the following 4 categories:
- Informational – When a user is looking for information on a topic. For example, they perform a search on how to do something. The search results are usually informational ‘how to’ articles, videos, etc.
- Commercial – When a user indicates with the keywords they are typing in the search box that they want to make a purchase. For example ‘book Hotel’, ‘buy iPhone.’
- Transactional – A user is looking for information but you can see there’s a potential commercial intent. For example, if someone looks for a review of a product it means it’s likely they will buy but they may not be ready to buy immediately.
- Navigational – A searcher knows exactly what they want and are just navigating to the relevant page. For example, they type in the name of the company and their product.
How much traffic is generated with this keyword
I know you want traffic!
It may be a great keyword but very few people are searching for it….
…and it’s unlikely to be highly searched in the future.
There are various tools, including UberSuggest, that will estimate the search volume.
You typically estimate the search volume for one particular country and then look at global search volume.
Whatever this figure is you should double it because if you rank for this keyword you’ll probably rank for related keywords.
How difficult is it to rank for this keyword
You may have a great keyword that’s relevant to your business but it’s a very competitive keyword so difficult to rank.
If you know your site doesn’t have a high authority compared to the other websites ranking you may not want to target these keywords.
What is the keyword length
The length of the keyword i.e. number of words in a phrase is an important factor when selecting your keywords.
Most SEO folks categorize keywords into head, body and the (long) tail.
Head keywords are short, single-word phrases that are highly competitive and have really high search volume which usually means lower conversion.
Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that also get high search volume but are a bit more specific than head keywords and convert better, while long tail keywords capture users with a very specific intent.
This means low search volume but potentially much higher conversion.
How relevant are the keywords to your business
Every piece of content on your website should drive value to your business.
It could:
- Generate a sale or contribute to one
- Attract a relevant audience that will share your content
- Help build your authority on a relevant topic
So…
You need to make sure your content is targeting keywords that are relevant to both your audience and your business.
And more importantly, you need to do everything you can to rank for those keywords!
Is it proven to deliver value?
With so much competition in search, it can be extremely difficult to rank well for every term you want to rank for but…
…what about the terms with a lot of potential traffic that are also very competitive?
You know they’ll require a lot of work to rank but you don’t want to leave them out and miss out on all the traffic they could potentially bring.
So instead of writing the content you can create an ad targeting this keyword and then see how beneficial the traffic is.
What does UberSuggest provide?
Ubersuggest will give you some very useful keyword ideas based on the seed keyword you entered as well as the overview of the most important SEO metrics related to that keyword
…Including search volume, SEO difficulty, CPC and Paid Difficulty.
You can also see the top ranking articles for each of the suggested keywords along with your chances for ranking in the top 20 search results.
This is extremely valuable for making informed content marketing decisions.
Now let’s take a closer look at the available features.
What features are provided
1.Keyword Overview. When you enter in your seed keyword, the first screen you’ll land on after UberSuggest finishes running the analysis of the keyword is the Overview screen. Here you’ll have an ‘at a glance view’ of all the information the tool delivered based on your main keyword, including the SEO metrics, keyword ideas, and SERP analysis.
2. Keyword ideas. This is the main feature of the tool and it gives you great keyword suggestions as well as the related keywords which may or may not be useful depending on your SEO goals. Here you’ll see the key SEO metrics for each of the keywords listed, and when you click on a particular keyword, you’ll get the list of the top 100 websites that rank for it.
3. SERP Analysis. Ubersuggest shows top 100 SERP results for the seed keyword you entered with some valuable metrics for each of the URL’s, including it’s ranking position, estimated traffic they get for that specific keyword, the number of social shares on the article, as well as the Domain Score.
Stepping through a practical example
I had an idea to create a piece of content on ‘marketing tactics’ that businesses could easily implement, so I entered this phrase into Ubersuggest.
Although I would like to rank for this term globally, my focus market is the US so I selected the US.
Here are the results I got:
Want an explanation of each term:
Search volume – The estimated number of searches per month for this keyword in the US.
SEO Difficulty – This is the rating system created by Neil Patel’s team that works out how difficult/easy it is to rank for a particular keyword. One of the major factors will be the authority of the websites already ranking for these search terms and the number of links to each listing. A word of warning!!! This does not take into account the authority of your website!
Paid difficulty and Cost per click – Not relevant for organic search ranking. However, if you’re researching keywords for ad campaigns on Google, then you’ll look at these metrics.
Next, Ubersuggest shows me a list of keyword ideas, all with the SEO metrics we just mentioned above. Adding some of these keywords to my article can be useful as long as the search volume is good and the competition is not too high. This way I increase my chances of ranking for those related keywords in addition to ‘marketing tactics.’
I was surprised to see that ‘marketing tactics’ is relatively easy to rank for and that the search volume is decent. This means that if I create long-form, valuable content around this keyword, optimize and promote it, I have a good chance of ranking!
But…I’ll first need to look at who I’m competing with in search so I can create better content than anything I see in the top 20 results. And this is where Ubersuggest really helps with its SERP Analysis.
The top result is an article from CoSchedule, a marketing calendar tool, which is a high-authority website in the marketing space.
If I want to beat them in search or come close, I have to write something better, something with more substance and offer more value to the readers.
But, what Ubersuggest tells me is that ‘marketing tactics’ is not all that competitive and that there’s more than a good chance for me to rank for that phrase. This is all the info I need to start working on that new content piece!
Conclusion
There are so many keyword research tools out there, but Ubersuggest is worth a try simply because it offers free of charge most of the features you’ll find in paid alternatives such as KWFinder.
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