There is a lot of competition in the jungle of search engine optimization—keywords, backlinks, and the top Google results. Ingenuity alone will not cut it.
To find the best, most valuable opportunities, you have to cut your way through the keyword jungle and blaze new trails.
Even if it’s not quite as thrilling as it sounds, you get the point.
To be a market pioneer, you can’t rely on a standard compass (or a keyword research approach).
Here’s how to find the best keywords with seven less-known paths.
#1. Explore the internal site search
By looking at your competitors through their audience’s eyes, you can gain valuable insight into keyword research.
Using your competitor’s website as a research tool makes sense since your audience overlaps with theirs.
Here’s how: Visit your competitors’ websites and explore their content, put yourself in their shoes, and begin using their search bar.
You need to understand the search habits of your audience to do effective SEO keyword research.
Some websites may suggest search terms when you type, depending on how they are set up.
Here, shell.com has “top searches” listed.
Insight into what their visitors want can be gained from this.
Using these terms, you can decide what keywords to use. Research tools can help you find out how popular the keywords are.
Analyze how your brand ranks for these terms to determine if there is any SEO opportunity.
Tip: To find out what question queries are relevant to your audience, repeat this process on your competitors’ Q&A pages.
Ask yourself these questions as you navigate the rest of the website:
- Who are the site’s target audiences?
- What keywords keep appearing?
- From where does the website funnel you? Why do the keywords matter?
#2. Hunt backlinks and anchor texts
Often, the anchor text will consist of duplications and noise like “click here,” but it can also be an indicator of what people are linking to.
When you examine the URL slug and linked text closely, you can see that they have some pre-researched keywords in them.
Look for these two keywords in the URL below:
<a href=”https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a37755426/squid-game-costume/”>Squid Game Jumpsuit</a>
Could you find them?
Take a look. They’re shown below.
- <a href=”https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a37755426/squid-game-costume/”>Squid Game Jumpsuit</a>
- <a href=”https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a37755426/squid-game-costume/”>Squid Game Jumpsuit</a>
Suppose your e-commerce site sells “Squid Game” themed clothing. You’d want to include in your target keyword list the terms “Squid Game costume” and “Squid Game jumpsuit”.
Tip: You can use the terms you find this way in your keyword research as well. Your research might lead to other relevant variations of terms you hadn’t thought of. Humans are unpredictable in their search patterns.
#3. Identify Keywords By Industry
Depending on your industry, high-value keywords are affected by several factors, including events, trends, time of year, holidays, and news stories.
Keeping an eye on what’s going on in your industry can help you conduct keyword research.
A fresh and accurate digital data set will help you identify the most popular keywords in your field and locate the strongest terms before your competition.
By filtering Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence by the last 28 days, you can find the most recent keyword trends or select the trending terms to discover which terms drove traffic last month.
You can sort the results by descending traffic or percent changes to see who the top movers in your industry are.
Moreover, you can view new trending search terms.
Tip: Use the “newly discovered” filter to discover search terms that didn’t appear the previous month but are now driving traffic – a goldmine of keywords.
#4. Venture Beyond Google’s Data
Searchers use different search engines for different purposes.
When conducting keyword research, don’t overlook Amazon’s or YouTube’s vast influence.
You can identify more opportunities to reach your target audience by uncovering search engine-specific keywords and search intent information.
Here’s how: To better understand your audience’s requirements and intent, search for potential keywords on Google, Amazon, and YouTube.
With Similarweb, you can access massive amounts of data from three of the world’s largest search engines, including amazon.com. youtube.com, and google.com.
Taking things one step further, let’s look at YouTube and Amazon for “PS5” related keywords.
There is a trending keyword for “ps5 unboxing” on YouTube.
There are terms such as “iPhone 11 unboxing” and “Nintendo switch unboxing.”
Most of the information about “unboxing” and opening a product is gathered from these terms. This includes videos, vlogs, and reviews.
“Ps5” is a phrase match keyword on Amazon.com along with “ps5” controller, “ps5” games, and “ps5” headset.
This indicates a high degree of transaction intent. The majority of searches are for related products.
It’s helpful to analyze the related keywords on amazon.com to determine what other topics and products your potential customers are interested in so that you can include them in your strategy.
You can click on a specific keyword on Similarweb for both platforms to see search volume, clicks, organic vs. paid metrics, and more.
#5. Autocomplete Unearth Terms
Have you ever noticed that when you type a query into Google, it suggests other searches?
For example, if you start typing “running shoes,” Google may suggest searching for “running shoes for men” and “running shoes for flat feet,” among other related queries.
These suggestions are made by Google because they are related queries that are of interest to a lot of searchers.
What does that mean?
These autocomplete words and phrases provide insight into how people search for these keywords.
As a result, you are able to communicate with your keyword audience in the same language.
If you do this, you may discover long-tail keywords that you hadn’t considered before and guide your long-tail keyword strategy.
Here’s how: Just type in a search term and see how Google’s Autocomplete assistant completes the phrase.
However, you should only use keywords that are relevant to your target audience and your website. Irrelevant keywords can lead you in the wrong direction.
#6. Navigate Google’s SERP Features
YES, that’s right. The fact that Google appears twice on this list is not a mistake. It is also useful for SEO strategies to use Google’s featured data.
To find related searches, check out the “people also ask” and “related search” features offered by Google before you leave the popular search engine.
You can get different ideas from both sources than Google’s Autocomplete, so don’t skip this step.
Your topic and related searches are displayed here, so you can see what questions people ask surrounding your topic.
Using this tool, you can better understand your target audience’s interests and search intent.
According to our previous “running shoe” example, we see two very different search intentions in the “people also ask” section.
- First, there is a search with informational intent and it appears the searcher is seeking information on running with flat feet.
- The second type of intent is for purchase – the searcher is looking for the best shoe to purchase.
Both of these long-tail keywords may be suitable for creating content around in order to reach different audiences.
Looking at “related searches,” we see that many searchers are specifically searching for Nike running shoes.
As a result, you might want to investigate Nike’s keyword strategy in more depth to understand how they are reaching their audience and inform your research.
#7. Examine competitor metadata
It is one of the most effective keyword research methods.
The program is particularly useful for analyzing small, niche websites, but it can also be applied to large websites. It’s extremely user-friendly.
Here’s how: Check out your competitors’ sites and see what keywords they use in their titles.
The language your competitors use will reveal how they position themselves.
Consider this example.
How does the page navigation look on tui.co.uk?
According to tui.co.uk’s homepage, their focus is on holidays, flights, and cruises.
There are multiple times where TUI highlights these offerings and each comes with its own dropdown menu, making them content-heavy topics on its website.
This insight would be helpful if you were in competition with TUI for organic traffic. It would guide the type of long-tail keywords you should target to gain more market share.
Keep track of your progress
Using tried-and-true methods, you can find great keywords. However, all SEO professionals follow those paths.
To create an effective keyword strategy, you must use the latest techniques, the most current data, and accurate insights to be able to stay ahead of your competition.
