Creating Your List of Target Keywords
Summary
TLDRThis video script offers a comprehensive guide on keyword research for a hypothetical Shopify store selling natural organic dog food and toys. It demonstrates using SEMrush to spy on competitors like Chewy.com, identifying relevant keywords, assessing search volume, and estimating keyword difficulty. The tutorial covers filtering techniques, leveraging competitor analysis, and utilizing SEMrush's Keyword Magic tool to expand keyword lists. It also touches on the Keyword Gap tool for comparing keyword rankings against competitors, providing a strategic approach to SEO for new and established websites.
Takeaways
- π Start by spying on competitors to discover the keywords they rank for using tools like SEMrush's domain overview tool.
- π Analyze competitor's organic traffic, trends, and geographical distribution to understand their SEO strengths.
- π° Recognize the value of organic traffic by comparing it to the cost of paid advertising for the same keywords.
- π Filter out irrelevant and high-difficulty keywords to focus on those that are achievable and relevant for your niche.
- π Use advanced filters to include keywords related to your business, such as 'organic' and 'dog' for a natural pet food brand.
- π Look at the keyword difficulty score, search volume, and cost per click to assess the potential profitability of targeting a keyword.
- π Consider creating content around similar products or competitor brands to attract visitors who might be interested in your products.
- π Add relevant keywords to a list for future targeting in your SEO strategy.
- π Explore what other sites and pages ranking for the same keywords are doing, and identify additional keywords they rank for.
- π― Use SEMrush's Keyword Magic tool to generate a list of related keywords and filter them based on difficulty and relevance.
- π The Keyword Gap tool can show you keywords that competitors rank for which your site does not, highlighting areas for improvement.
Q & A
What is the primary purpose of the video script?
-The primary purpose of the video script is to demonstrate the process of keyword research for an online store, specifically for a hypothetical brand of all-natural organic dog food and toys, using various tools and strategies.
Why is it important to spy on competitors for keyword research?
-Spying on competitors helps identify the keywords they are currently ranking for, which can provide insights into potential keywords that could be relevant and valuable for your own business.
What information can be gleaned from using SEMrush's Domain Overview tool on a competitor's website?
-The Domain Overview tool provides information such as the number of organic search visits per month, the trend of organic traffic over time, the geographic distribution of traffic, and the number of keywords the competitor ranks for.
How can the Traffic Cost metric in SEMrush be beneficial for understanding the value of organic traffic?
-The Traffic Cost metric shows how much the competitor would have to pay for the same amount of traffic through Google search ads, giving an idea of the potential value of capturing even a small percentage of that traffic organically.
What is the significance of the Keyword Difficulty score in the context of keyword research?
-The Keyword Difficulty score indicates how challenging it would be to rank for a particular keyword, which is crucial for new and small websites to identify achievable targets for their SEO efforts.
How can filtering keywords by difficulty and relevance help in narrowing down the keyword list for an online store?
-Filtering by difficulty and relevance helps to focus on keywords that are more likely to be achievable for the website and directly related to the products or services being offered, increasing the likelihood of attracting targeted and relevant traffic.
What is the advantage of using SEMrush's Keyword Magic tool for keyword research?
-The Keyword Magic tool automatically generates a list of related keywords based on the initial keyword ideas, helping to discover additional potential keywords that might be relevant to the business.
How can analyzing individual web pages that rank for specific keywords be beneficial for keyword research?
-Analyzing individual web pages can reveal other closely related keywords that the page ranks for, which might not have been identified initially, thus expanding the list of potential keywords to target.
What is the purpose of the Keyword Gap tool in SEMrush, and how can it be used for SEO strategy?
-The Keyword Gap tool compares your website with competitors to identify keywords that they rank for which your site does not, helping to uncover opportunities for improving your site's SEO by targeting those missing keywords.
How can keyword research inform product development decisions for a business?
-Keyword research can reveal demand for certain products or product features, such as 'grain-free dog food', indicating potential areas for product development or emphasis in marketing strategies.
What is the next step suggested in the script after completing keyword research?
-The next step suggested is to show how to start ranking for the identified keywords and getting traffic to the website, which will be covered in a subsequent lesson or part of the video series.
Outlines
π Keyword Research for Organic Dog Products
The script introduces the concept of keyword research for a hypothetical Shopify store selling organic dog food and toys. It suggests spying on competitors like chewy.com using SEMrush's domain overview tool to identify high-traffic, low-competition keywords. The focus is on understanding organic traffic trends, geographical sources, and keyword difficulty. The example illustrates how capturing a fraction of a competitor's SEO traffic can be valuable, emphasizing the importance of targeting relevant keywords to drive sales.
π Filtering Relevant Keywords for SEO Success
This paragraph delves into the process of filtering keywords to find those relevant to the business and feasible to rank for. It demonstrates using SEMrush's advanced filters to target keywords containing 'organic' and 'dog', significantly narrowing down the list. The summary highlights the importance of considering search volume, keyword difficulty, and cost per click, using 'organic dog treats' as a case study. It also touches on the strategy of leveraging competitors' keywords and the potential of creating content around similar products to attract the same audience.
π Exploring Competitor Keyword Strategies
The script explains how to analyze specific web pages of competitors that rank for certain keywords, such as 'organic food for dogs'. It suggests identifying other keywords these pages rank for, which could be relevant and less competitive. The process involves using SEMrush's organic research report to find a list of keywords associated with a successful page, filtering them by difficulty, and adding them to a keyword list for potential targeting. This approach helps in discovering untapped opportunities that closely align with the business's niche.
π― Expanding Keyword Lists with SEMrush's Keyword Magic Tool
This section introduces SEMrush's Keyword Magic tool, which generates a plethora of keyword ideas based on a seed keyword. The example uses 'natural dog toys' to find related keywords, filters them by search intent, difficulty, and excludes irrelevant terms like 'UK' and 'Aussie'. The summary points out the value of this tool in expanding keyword lists and understanding market demand, which can inform product creation decisions.
π Analyzing Keyword Gaps with Competitors
The final paragraph discusses the Keyword Gap tool in SEMrush, which compares a website's keyword rankings with competitors. Using petco.com, chewy.com, and rover.com as examples, it shows how to identify keywords that competitors rank for but the user's site does not. The summary explains the different tabs in the tool, such as 'missing', 'weak', 'strong', and 'untapped', and how they can be used to identify areas for improvement in SEO strategy, especially for established websites.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Keyword Research
π‘Competitor Analysis
π‘Organic Search Traffic
π‘SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
π‘SEMrush
π‘Keyword Difficulty Score
π‘Cost Per Click (CPC)
π‘Relevance
π‘Keyword Lists
π‘Keyword Magic Tool
π‘Keyword Gap Tool
Highlights
Starting an all-natural organic dog food and toy brand with a Shopify website requires effective keyword research to attract customers.
Spying on competitors like chewy.com using SEMrush's domain overview tool reveals valuable keyword insights.
Chewy.com receives 10.7 million organic search visits per month, highlighting the potential traffic for competitors.
Understanding the traffic cost can indicate the value of organic traffic and potential advertising costs.
Capturing even a small percentage of a competitor's SEO traffic can be highly valuable for a new business.
Filtering keywords by difficulty and relevance is crucial for a new website to rank effectively.
SEMrush's organic research report provides detailed keyword data, including search volume and difficulty.
Using competitor analysis to find relevant keywords that are less competitive for a new business.
The keyword magic tool by SEMrush automatically generates related keywords to expand research.
Filtering keyword suggestions by search intent, keyword difficulty, and search volume refines the list for targeting.
Identifying keywords with low search volume can still be valuable for niche targeting.
Keyword research can reveal market demand, aiding in product creation decisions.
The keyword Gap tool compares your site to competitors, showing which keywords to target for better rankings.
Established websites can use the keyword Gap tool to find areas of improvement in their SEO strategy.
Keyword research is not only for new websites but also for enhancing the SEO of existing sites.
Utilizing multiple SEMrush tools in conjunction provides a comprehensive keyword research strategy.
The process of keyword research is iterative and requires continuous refinement to maximize SEO effectiveness.
Transcripts
foreign
[Music]
keywords it's time to do your keyword
research let's imagine we just started
our own brand of all natural organic dog
food and toys and we built a website on
Shopify to sell our products so we need
to find relevant keywords to bring in
visitors who will become our customers
there are lots of ways to do keyword
research but I'm going to show you a few
of my favorites
let's start by spying on what would be
one of our competitors to see the
keywords they are currently ranking for
in this case chewy.com would be a big
competitor so we can add chewie.com to
semrush's domain overview tool to see
what we can see
this gives us a lot of great information
for example we can see that Chewie gets
10.7 million organic search visits per
month
and we can see how their organic traffic
has trended upward over time
on the left we can also see that about
90 percent of their organic traffic is
coming in from the U.S
and we can see here that they rank for
about 1.3 million keywords in the US
right now
let's click on that button
clicking on that right there takes us to
the organic research report where we can
see even more details
first you can see it's using the US
database Google actually shows people
different search results in different
countries so Summers has over 120
different databases for different
countries that you can select from in
this case though let's just assume we're
still mostly targeting the US market so
we're going to leave it like this
the traffic cost here on the right is
also worth paying attention to
as you know you don't actually have to
pay for organic traffic so it may seem a
little bit strange to have this here
it's almost like what's the point of of
showing this when we know SEO drives
free traffic
but what's cool about this is that it
gives us an idea of how much the traffic
might be worth what it's basically doing
is it's pulling how much that traffic
would cost if Chewie was paying for it
in the form of Google search ads it's
based on the cost per click that
advertisers actually really are paying
in order to get traffic from the same
keywords that Chewie is currently
ranking for for free and it's a monthly
figure so Chewie's getting from SEO what
would have cost it over 15 million
dollars per month to buy with
advertising so again going back to our
hypothetical Shopify store if we could
capture even one percent of that traffic
for our new website that would be a
value of around a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars per month
and the actual Revenue that Tui gets
from that traffic is probably a lot
higher Chewie makes around 10 billion
dollars of Revenue per year and a decent
chunk of their traffic comes from SEO so
if our little store can get even 0.1
percent of Chewie's organic search
traffic will probably be in pretty good
shape but only if that traffic is
relevant to what we sell which remember
is natural and organic dog food and toys
so let's scroll down on this report to
see exactly what keywords Chewie's
ranking for
you can see at the top here are a couple
of branded keywords first is PetSmart
which is actually a competitor of
chewies and then there's the actual
chewy brand name to the right is the
search and tag column which shows n for
the chewy keyword because it's a
navigational keyword people are just
trying to navigate to the chewy website
when they type that in
then there's the SF column which shows
how many search features are on the
search engine results page for this
keyword
and the position column which shows
Chewie's rankings
so Chewie ranks number one for the
keyword Chewie no surprise
next is the difference column which
shows the recent change in position in
this case it's zero because Chewie's
been ranking number one for its own
brand name for a long time
then you have traffic percent which is
what percent of websites traffic comes
from this keyword and then you have the
keyword search volume for this
particular keyword you can see here this
keyword gives 3.4 million searches per
month and that's a lot but the next
column is keyword difficulty score which
is 99
very very hard so in other words with
our own little store we are never ever
going to rate for this keyword it's also
not super relevant to us because it's
Chewie's brand name so we just shouldn't
even bother trying to rank for Chewie
all the other keywords here actually are
super high difficulty also and for the
most part they're not super relevant to
us either
so what we can do here is filter this
list so that we can see all the keywords
that actually might be relevant to us
and also might be easier to rank for so
the first thing I might want to do we
can filter with these fields here at the
top the first thing we probably want to
do is keyword difficulty or KD
since we have a pretty new and small
website we're probably not going to rank
for anything above maybe possible so
let's say let's set a custom range from
0 to 49 and filter by it by that
okay so now you can see
it's it's a lot better in terms of
keyword difficulty but it's still a lot
of pretty irrelevant keywords uh
warehouse jobs near me and funny cat
videos those aren't really what we're
aiming for uh with our keyword research
right now so now let's go to the
advanced filters here and we'll tell it
to only include keywords that are more
relevant to our business which again is
selling natural and organic dog food
toys so let's try telling it to only
include keywords that include the word
organic
and dog
let's see how that goes
okay so you can see that this went from
over a million keywords down to this
much shorter list
and a lot of these keywords are actually
really relevant to our business so this
is great let's look at this first one as
an example organic dog treats so that's
definitely a product that we'd be
selling in our Shopify store
and you can see the same information
here that we saw before Chewie's ranking
number one for this uh it has been for a
while and we can see that it gets 1.3
000 searches per month in the US and as
a keyword difficulty score of 42. so uh
that means it's pretty much still not
super super easy to rank for but it will
be a lot more achievable than something
that's you know 99 and then we also have
the cost per click this is the average
again dollar amount that advertisers are
paying to get clicks from this keyword
when they pay Google search pads so it's
two dollars and 10 cents that they're
paying for each click from this keyword
and so that kind of gives us a decent
idea of how much profit we might make
for ourselves if we rank for this
keyword we might rank you know we might
make around two dollars and ten cents in
profit for each visitor we get from this
keyword that's um the the real profit
that we'll probably make would be
significantly higher or lower than that
but this is still a pretty good uh
starting estimate just to kind of gauge
it versus other keywords and then you
can also see the URL that Chewie is
actually ranking for for this keyword
you can click on that to see exactly
what the page is like and you can see a
snapshot of what the serp was like the
search engine results page when semrush
crawled this
as well as the date that it was updated
so overall with this keyword we're
looking at something that gets pretty
decent search volume and is highly
highly related to the products that we
sell and it's not super competitive so
it's definitely a good keyword that we
want to add to our list so in order to
do that we can come over here and click
on the little plus icon
and we don't have a list yet so it's
asking us to create one uh let's call it
organic dog just to keep um you know
track of what we filtered by there
okay now we can look for some other
keywords that might seem relevant these
full moon keywords might not be a brand
that we actually sell in our store if
we're making our own product but let's
say we have a similar product so we
might actually be able to rank for this
keyword by creating maybe like a review
article about this product and then
talking about our own product in the
same article that way we could get
people to come visit us who are are
searching for this keyword but then
still get them to actually buy our
product in the end so this would still
be relevant to us because the people
shopping for this product are also
likely buyers of our similar products so
we can add this to our list also Again
by clicking the little plus icon next to
it and it's just going to default add to
that same list by the way it's shown
twice because Chewie is ranking for it
with two different pages on their
website
and then for some of these other
keywords let's go through and use check
boxes to select more than one at the
same time
there we go
so we can do that and then uh hit
add to keyword list and we'll use that
one
by the way you could use this same
process if you already had an
established website you could use do the
same thing here to see what keywords
you're already ranking for but not very
well and then you could work on ranking
better for those keywords often it's
actually easier to improve your rankings
for existing keywords than to start
ranking for brand new ones so just keep
that in mind also
so to look at the keywords that we have
in our list so far we can scroll up here
and click on the keyword manager item in
the left hand nav so there we go we can
click into our list here
and we can see all the keywords that
we've saved
so now we have kind of a small handful
of keywords that we can get started with
it's honestly not a ton but it's just
from looking at one competitors website
and actually we could have found
probably a lot more if we just continue
to scroll and maybe tried some other
filters like natural and dog instead of
just organic and dog but you know I just
wanted to give you an idea of how to do
that so let's actually take this list to
the next level though by looking at what
other sites and pages are ranking for
the same keywords and then we can look
at what other keywords those sites and
pages are ranking for
so let's start for example let's check
out organic food for dogs
so this takes us to the keyword overview
tool with information about this
specific keyword
scroll down to see which websites are
ranking for this keyword
and you can see dog foodadvisor.com is
ranking number one
so something we can do here is we could
repeat this entire process that we just
went through with the entire dog
foodadvisor.com website that's not a
terrible idea let's just skip that for
now since you already know how to do it
and instead we'll do something a little
bit different we're going to look at
what other keywords this individual web
page is ranking for
see a given web page can rank for lots
of different keywords at the same time
and usually they're pretty closely
related so a page like this that ranks
for organic food for dogs might also
rank for a lot of similar keywords that
we haven't identified yet
in the columns over to the right here we
can see this individual URLs search
traffic and we can also see how many
keywords it ranks for so this one page
ranked for 420 keywords let's click on
this number
now we're back in the organic research
report again which is the same tool that
we use to look at chewy.com before
only now at the top it shows we're
looking at the exact URL this one URL on
the dog food advisor website so
everything here is just the data for
this one page and not the entire website
anymore
scrolling down a little we can see the
keywords the search traffic and the over
here the traffic cost or value again and
just like before these are monthly
numbers in the US scrolling down some
more here are all the keywords that this
specific page breaks for
and you can see there are some pretty
good relevant keywords in here in terms
of what we're working on for our own
website
and also a lot of them are under our
keyword difficulty cutoff of 50 this
might actually be a gold mine for our
little business
we can save a little time here by
filtering by keyword difficulty again so
that way we can get rid of these ones
that are a little bit too high
so I'll pull this open
and have a set of maximum of 49 again
okay
going back to this list now
to me this list looks so good that I
think will probably end up uh selecting
most of these
so to save a little time I'll actually
click the top left check check box to
select everything and then we'll just
deselect some of them
again like fruit food brands in general
this might not be that great either
we could keep going and probably filter
out some more of these but uh I think
you get the idea so let's just go ahead
and click the add to keyword list button
again and use it to go add it to this
there we go
and we can scroll up to check out our
list again with the keyword manager
there we go so
we've got 99 keywords now that we might
want to Target not a bad start
but let me show you another way to find
additional keyword ideas and this one
will work even if you don't have any
competitors to steal ideas from
let's hop over to some Rush's keyword
magic tool
this is probably the SEO industry's
single favorite keyword research tool I
used it long before I ever worked at
semrush because it's really awesome it
basically takes any keyword ideas you
have and automatically finds lots of
related keywords that you might also
want to Target so let's try it with the
keyword natural dog toys
okay so yeah boom just from that one
idea now I have 157 new keywords that we
might be able to Target and just like
the other tools we can filter it by
search intent keyword difficulty and
more
scrolling down we can see most of these
are already below our keyword difficulty
cutoff of 50 or 49
but a lot of them also have
um monthly search volume
that is pretty low down here we're
getting to the zeros pretty fast
there are also some keywords I'm seeing
that um
have things like UK in them where it's
probably not
something that's super relevant to us if
we're targeting mostly the the US
so let's filter out the keywords with
those things in them Aussie also might
be another one
let's filter out Aussie and UK which
won't really be relevant to us so we can
go to
this
and write Posse
and also UK and hit apply
we can also filter out all those
keywords that have zero search volume
sometimes those are actually worth
targeting because just because a tool
like this says zero search volume
doesn't mean truly no one searches for
it but in this case just to show you how
it works I will filter that out and I'll
say custom range from one up
so that knocks us down to 27 keyword
ideas
like before we can select all of them
with the top left checkbox and then add
them to our list by hitting the blue
button and selecting our list
now that we've done that we can use the
keyword magic tool again just by going
back up to the search field we could
change it for example from natural dog
toys to natural dog food
hit enter there and we'll get a
different list of ideas
and what's cool about this is our
filters stay the same so we're still
filtering out anything that includes
Aussie or UK and we're only showing
keywords that have search volume of at
least one
and this time I see where we've got a
fair number of keywords that are harder
to rank for so let's also filter up to
49 keyword difficulty so we can take a
lot of those out also
and I want to show you one other cool
feature on this page and the left pane
here it shows us different groups of
keywords from this list based on the
words that they have in common
for example you can see there are a
couple hundred keywords that have
diamond in them and uh almost a couple
hundred more that have balance in them
those are both parts of popular dog food
brands a little bit lower we can see
things like review
dry
rice wet
potato
let's see what what we get when we look
at
what would be an interesting one
maybe review
Natural Balance dog food reviews
Nature's Recipe so this would be really
helpful if we wanted to do what I
mentioned earlier basically Target
competing brand names by writing a
review about them and then kind of
name-dropping our own brand
uh you can also look at things like free
what might that include
okay so like grain free
potato free maybe that's supposed to
mean
grain free again seen a lot of grain
free here so that's interesting actually
um
if that's a product that we actually
offer already then some of these
keywords might be really great for us to
add but what's cool about this also this
this highlights that um keyword research
can also be really valuable to figure
out how much demand there is in a market
for a product which can help you decide
whether to create the product in the
first place so in this case you can see
a fair number of you know 110 people per
month search for this specific brand of
grain-free dog food and they it's worth
spending over a dollar per click on it
probably if we were to search for just
grain free dog food as its own keyword
without any brands on it it would get
significantly more search volume and
still have a pretty decent cost per
click which might tell us it's worth
creating that product if we don't
already have it
so that's a pretty cool thing that you
can also use keyword research for
uh now let me really quickly show you
one more keyword research Tool uh this
one's called the keyword Gap tool and
you can access it from the left-hand nav
over here also
what's cool about this tool is that you
can take your site and compare it to
another one and and it will show you
which keywords that they're ranking for
that you aren't and you can actually put
in multiple competitors if you want so
you can see which keywords they're all
ranking for and you aren't so since we
don't actually own our own little
Shopify store like we've been talking
about Let's Pretend instead this time
that we own petco.com which is a big
competitor
and then we can add chewy.com and if we
want let's add one more let's do
rover.com
and then we can hit compare
so we get a nice little Venn diagram
here of all the keywords that each site
rakes for and how much they overlapped
Petco you can see is ranking for almost
a million keywords
so it's actually a lot bigger than the
imaginary business we were talking about
before and uh same with Chewie and Rover
maybe one day it will get to be as the
biggest step but not yet
uh let's scroll down and we can click on
the
missing Tab and this will show us all
the keywords that both of our
competitors are ranked for but we are
not ranking for we meeting Petco right
and you can see here
um there are a lot of different dog
breed names they all have really high
search volumes but they also have a
really high keyword difficulty scores uh
of course PATCO is a pretty large and
Powerful site so unlike our tiny
imaginary Shopify store that could
actually probably could rank for along
these keywords if they created good
pages to Target them so if we worked for
Petco instead of our own little business
we might want to add all these keywords
to our list and then create a bunch of
pages around individual dog breeds to
Target them
uh you can also see some other tabs that
might be interesting and useful in your
research
the week tab
shows all the keywords that all three
websites rank for but which our website
ranks the worst for
the strong tab is just the opposite
and untapped shows the keywords that our
website isn't ranking for and at least
one of the other websites ranked for so
this is different from the missing tab
because the missing tab requires both of
the other websites to rank for it
so anyway you can see how this is a
great tool also for more established
websites it's not quite as useful in our
case if we're trying to do SEO for a new
website that we just launched but for an
existing website that's been around a
while it can be really really cool
now we could we keep working with all of
these tools and more for hours and hours
and you know spying on different
competitors websites seeing what they're
ranking for entering more ideas into the
keyword magic tool and so on but at this
point you know how to do all those
things so I think we can stop this
lesson here next up I'm going to show
you how to actually start ranking for
some of these keywords and getting
traffic for them
[Music]
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