Best Practices

Search Engine Optimization

Keyword Research

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What is keyword research?

Keyword research is an SEO practice of finding, analyzing and utilizing the phrases and words people use to search for information on the internet. In other words, it is about getting to know the language and mindset of your potential website visitors and using this knowledge to optimize your content and to increase your organic visits.

Why is keyword research so important for SEO?

As mentioned, your keyword research will give you a good sense of what topics people are specifically searching for and how popular those topics actually are amongst your specific audiences. By researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month as well as understanding the long-tail keywords and phrases in your domain, you can identify which direction you will take your with your content strategy and producing content for your various audiences according to their interests.

When conducting keyword research you have to take into consideration:

  1. Relevancy 
  2. Volume of Searches 
  3. Related Keywords 
  4. Cost Per Click
  5. Keyword Difficulty


You must take into consideration if the keywords you are using are relevant to search results. For example, if you are in the pet food business, are you using the word “dog” or “canine”? Do you know which of these words have the bigger volume of searches? Are people searching for “dogs” or are they using the word “canine”?

  • Volume is the amount of searches that particular keywords receive monthly. The higher the volume a particular keyword has, usually the more competitive the keyword is. 
  • Related keywords are words that relate to the target keyword. If the target keyword is “dog”, related keywords could be “puppies”. The related keywords tend to have lower competition but have higher search volumes. 
  • Cost-per-click (CPC) is the average price that advertisers pay for a click based on the particular keyword. 


Keyword difficulty is the difficulty level of how to outrank your competitors in the top 20 list for organic search for a specific keyword. The higher the number on the index (0 – 100) the more difficult it is.

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