How 2019 Has Changed Keyword Research For SEO Marketing in Australia And How To Do It Correctly

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How 2019 Has Changed Keyword Research For SEO
Marketing In Australia And How To Do It Correctly
WWW.NEWPATHWEB.COM.AU
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• The way we conduct keyword research when it comes
  to SEO marketing in Australia is always changing.
  Whether its the Penguin update in 2012 to target
  manipulative link building or the Maccabees (also
  known as Fred) update in 2017 to improve the
  relevancy of search queries, Google is always
  changing and improving its algorithms. Google
  also loves to be incredibly tight-lipped when it
  comes to revealing information around their
  updates and making it harder to access keyword
  data from programs such as Google Keyword
  Planner. This means that businesses need to be at
  the forefront when it comes to keyword research
  and SEO marketing in Australia in 2019.
• Most of the keyword research processes that
  businesses use are identical. They mostly involve
  using Google Keyword Planner, using various tools
  to generate a competitiveness score and sorting
  by volume. It can be a very uniform approach,
  meaning that if you are following the crowd when
  it comes to keyword research you will always be
  needing to adapt to a new Google update. So,
  whats the solution? Changing how you are
  prioritising and selecting your keywords. Simple,
  right?

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• The method for creating a unique and effective
  process for keyword research in 2019 involves
  common sense and is rather straight-forward. This
  method is broken down below into the following
  basic factors which will then will be explained
  in more detail
• Start your research by selecting relevant
  keywords using the correct data to then confirm
  your choices
• Using relevant websites to create your index of
  targeted keywords
• Using modifiers to drive a higher search volume
• Expanding the index of seed keywords so they
  include relevant themes
• Collecting all related economic and search volume
  data
• Sorting and filtering your keyword index
• Gaining an advantage over your competitors by
  using GA and collecting competitive data
• Creating ranking timelines, selecting high-value
  keywords and identifying easy victories by
  building multi-layer filters

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Beginning The Keyword Research

• This is where common sense first comes into play.
  When thinking of and selecting keywords that best
  describe and relate to the topic of what you are
  targeting, for example SEO marketing in
  Australia or organic animal food, be sure to
  choose more than just one word. Choosing a phrase
  or a long-tailed keyword is going to yield much
  better results than just targeting a single word.
  Basically it is easier to rank higher for a
  keyword with 3 or 4 words such as SEO marketing
  in Australia, rather than just SEO.

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Using Data To Confirm Your Keywords

• Once you have your list of keywords ready, its
  now time to validate those keywords with some
  analytic data. SEMRush is ideal and does require
  a paid account, but you can still have access to
  basic search functions with a free account,
  meaning that you can dip your toes in the water
  before opening up your wallet. There are many
  tutorials online on how to use SEMRush, but to
  get started, simply type your head keyword (the
  main keyword that best describes your targeted
  topic) into the search bar at the top of SEMRush.
• Next, look at the left-hand side at the bottom of
  the dashboard for a blue coloured button titled
  view full report. Once clicked, you will then
  be brought to the phase match report screen
  (NOTE using a free account will only allow
  access to the first 10 results). Now, look to the
  right-hand corner at the top of the page and
  click the export button on your desired keyword
  terms.
• You will then be presented with the export file
  choices of Excel, CSV and CSV Semicolon. After
  choosing your desired export file type (Excel
  being the preferred file type), click on related
  keywords from the left-hand side of the menu and
  export the keyword data from there also. Once all
  the required data has been exported, create one
  sheet that combines all the exported data to
  create your keyword index.

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Fine-Tuning Your Keyword Index

• Now begins the fun task of cleaning up and
  clearing out the data which isnt going to serve
  much purpose to you. In your sheet you should see
  two columns labelled trends and number of
  results you can delete these columns. Its now
  time to introduce some filters into your keyword
  index. To do this, select the first row and then
  click on the data and filter tab from the top
  menu.
• You will then need to sort column B, which should
  be labelled search volume, from largest to
  smallest. Then simply filter column D, which
  should be labelled CPC (Cost Per Click), and
  untick any boxes that have a lower value than
  1.00. This essentially clears out the lower-end
  keywords that dont justify the cost of a 1.00
  or under click price.

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Adding Modifiers To Drive A Higher Search Volume

• Your keyword index should now have all the
  important data such as monthly search volumes,
  the suggested CPC price, AdWords competition data
  and your keyword list. Now you will need to
  reduce this list even further down so it shows
  all the root keywords. These are considered the
  foundation keywords that arent changed by
  modifiers. For example if the search term is
  again SEO marketing in Australia, then the root
  keyword is SEO marketing.
• You can then begin adding your modifiers.
  Modifiers are phrases that are attached to the
  beginning or end of a root keyword. For example
  if the root keyword is travel, then a modifier
  would be Australia, trends in 2019, where
  to and so on.

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Expanding Your Keyword Index

• There are many tools and websites such as SERPs
  Keyword Research Database which can provide
  numerous keyword suggestions that relate to your
  root keyword. They do this by scraping
  (collecting) data from the variety of platforms
  that people use to search such as YouTube and
  Google. Once this has all been completed, you can
  then begin the fun task of compiling all the
  competitive and search volume metrics for each
  keyword.

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Sorting And Filtering Your Keyword Index

• Unfortunately, its not as easy as simply
  selecting the keywords that have the lowest
  competition or the highest search volume. Because
  Google is always improving their search
  algorithms and users have different search
  patterns, sorting and filtering your keyword
  index requires a tactical approach. A great way
  to do this is by labelling your modifiers into
  their own individual pillars corresponding to the
  purpose of each keyword, as according to the
  popular marketing model AIDA (Attention,
  Interest, Desire Action).
• Separate your modifiers into four pillars
  labelled Informational, Navigational, Commercial
  Investigation and Transactional. The overall idea
  is to create a conversion funnel so as each
  keyword gains a modifier from a particular
  pillar, it will indicate which stage the user is
  at in their search journey.

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Here is a quick example of the types of modifiers
you would have in each pillar

• Informational
• Who
• When
• Why
• How
• What
• Specific words such as shirts, hats, bags, pants
  and so on
• Navigational
• Names of services and products
• Brand names
• A particular company name or website

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• Commercial Investigation
• Location words such as Melbourne, Australia,
  Sydney and so on
• Best
• Top
• Words relating to sizes such as large, small,
  medium and so on
• Words relating to colours such as blue, red,
  yellow, green, black and so on
• Words relating to age or gender such as girls,
  boys, womens, mens, childrens, kids and so on
• Transactional
• Cost
• Cheap
• Price
• Sale
• Discount
• Buy
• Pricing

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Taking Advantage of GA

• When it comes to keyword research for SEO
  marketing in Australia, data is king. This means
  collecting every piece of data possible regarding
  your website, so its best to start with the
  keywords you are already ranking for. This is
  best done through GA (Google Analytics) after
  youve verified your website with GSC (Google
  Search Console). GA is ideal for locating and
  exporting all your important and relevant data
  into Google Sheets, TSV, CSV and Excel.
• To get started, simply sort descending by
  clicks, then sort results to the highest
  number possible and click export and select
  your desired file type.

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Collecting Competitive Data

• Once you have compiled all your data, you now
  need to collect your competitive data with the
  help of various tools. TermExplorer is one of the
  most popular tools available for finding and
  gathering competitive data. It doesnt provide
  the search volume data but does provide important
  data such as the number of links to the domain
  and page, the age of the domain, the word count
  on each page, the difficulty, link strength and
  relevancy score and the keyword use on each page,
  domain, page title and URL.
• To get started, create a bulk keyword run by
  starting a new job and enter your main root
  keyword, the list of seed keywords (keywords that
  have modifiers) and set the result size. While
  its performing the search, go back to SEMRush as
  you will need to obtain the search volume data on
  your keywords. As soon as TermExplorer has
  finished collecting all the competitive data,
  look to the bottom of the screen and ensure you
  have set all where it says display records.
  If you dont, it will only show what is currently
  displayed on the screen.

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Creating Accurate Search Volume Data

• Because you are using Google Sheets, you can
  utilise SEMRush API (Application Programming
  Interface). In Google Sheets, delete the data
  that is in column C which should be titled
  average monthly searches. Then insert a new
  column at the left of column C and call the new
  column something you can easily reference, such
  as API call. Now, head over to SEMRush API.
• To import the data into Google Sheet, you will
  need a business plan account with a SEMRush API
  key and the following syntax snippet
  slugsemrush-api-google-sheets langvbscript.
  The first step is to paste the script syntax into
  cell C2 which is below the header that you
  named API call. It will display loading for
  a couple of seconds and then will pull back all
  search volume data and will fill in column D.

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Selecting High-Value Keywords

• Here is where you will now prioritise each
  keyword from the list and begin selecting
  high-value keywords to finalise a list of target
  keywords. This begins by making a new column with
  the title search intent. You can then begin
  mapping search intent with a keyword intelligence
  tool such as Keyword Tool, which is also free to
  use. Once you have integrated the search intent
  to your keywords and keyword file, you can now
  use some extra filters to identify more
  opportunities.

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Identifying Easy Victories With Multi-Layer
Filters

• To get started, select row 1, then click
  data, then filter and switch on column
  filtering. You will now need to filter the page
  links in order from lowest to highest. Now,
  remove all checkboxes under informational and
  navigational by using the filter in the column
  labelled search intent. You should now see a
  filtered list that displays the least number of
  links that are required in order to break through
  and start ranking highly.
• Column A, which should be called position,
  will display the rank potential that you can
  focus on for any of your keywords based on
  achieving the process in that particular row. You
  can also search for pages that are ranking for
  keywords where the targeted keyword isnt being
  implemented in the title, domain, meta
  attributes, the on-page content or the URL. All
  you need to do is stand up a basic page and
  target the keyword that contains the page title.

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