There is a huge confusion that occurs after the process of keyword research and competition analysis.
Which keywords to choose?
How to use the keyword?
How many times should it be included in the content?
It’s no use doing research for hours or days if we don’t know how to choose the best keywords and how to use them.
That’s what this guide covers.
This is the fourth chapter of the keyword research guide series.
1. Conduct a difficulty level analysis
First, we have to know the level of difficulty first.
We have discussed how to analyze keyword competition in the previous phone number database chapter, there are several ways starting from manual (with MozBar or SEOQuake) or automatic (with TermExplorer).
Let’s start by discussing the manual method.
Manual analysis stage 1 – Filter keywords with high volume
Because the number of keywords is very large, we must reduce it first. For that, we hide those with very low search volumes.
We are looking for one with a fairly high volume.
First, open your CSV file in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
(CSV file from Keyword Planner, already discussed here )
Block the following columns:
CSV from keyword planner
Then right click on the column header > Delete selected columns.
After that, block the remaining columns and click the filter button:
Filters in Google Sheets and Excel
(left: Google Sheets, right: Excel)
Click the arrow next to Avg. Monthly, then filter for anything greater than the number you want:
Filters over 1000
The volume is up to your liking.
This depends on each person, so I can’t give an exact number.
how to build a successful distributed software development team? In the example above, I removed keywords with search volumes less than 1000 per month.
Finally, click the arrow again then sort largest to smaller (sort ZA for Google Sheets).
Manual analysis stage 2 – Getting the difficulty value
Now we will analyze the remaining keywords.
Do a Google search with the remaining keywords:
Do a Google search with the remaining keywords.
Click the green “Get Keyword Difficulty” button.
(If not, install MozBar)
Wait a few seconds until the percentage number appears.
Manual keyword competition value
After that, create an additional column on the far right in the spreadsheet, titled “Difficulty”.
Enter the numbers:
Add difficulty column
That’s the manual way.
These 2 stages are just the practical version, if you want to do more accurate research, please reread the previous chapter .
For those of you who want to be more practical, there is an easier way to analyze thousands of keywords at once:
Automatic analysis – with TermExplorer
This one is much easier.
Click the Keyword Analyzer menu at the top, click ‘Start a Keyword Analyzer Project’.
Paste the keywords from the Excel file that you have saved.
Before pressing the ‘Start Project’ button change the country
Wait a few seconds/minutes.
Once finished, click the Download CSV button:
Save in CSV format
Then you can open this file in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Compared to the manual method, TermExplorer will produce a much more complete analysis.
You can see the Difficulty Score in the rightmost column:
Difficulty Score in TermExplorer
Finished!
In just one step we can find out the difficulty level of many keywords at once, this is much easier.
There is one more way, semi-automatic analysis using Long Tail Pro.
Semi-automatic analysis – with Long Tail Pro
The only downside of TermExplorer is that it is limited. If we want to analyze many keywords, we have to pay more.
If our keyword list is small, it doesn’t matter.
But if we have a lot of keywords, it will be expensive.
Therefore, the middle ground is Long Tail Pro.
With Long Tail Pro, we can easily filter, sort, and get the difficulty level.
The stages:
1. Click Find Keywords, then click ‘Add My Own Keywords’
Paste all your keywords, then click ‘Generate Keywords & Fetch Data’
Get keyword data from long tail pro
Wait until finished.
2. Click ‘Calculate’ to get the competition level.
Get keyword difficulty in long tail pro
Although it is slower than gambling data TermExplorer, you can do as much analysis as you want.
The process is also easier than manual.
2. Determine keyword priorities
The method is easy.
Something like this is the consideration:
Avoid keywords with low volume (Avg. Monthly Searches) but high difficulty
Prioritize keywords with high volume and low difficulty
Prioritize keywords with medium volume and high difficulty.
Prioritize keywords with low volume, low difficulty, but highly relevant to your target market.
Prioritize all highly relevant keywords, regardless of their difficulty.
Remove keywords that don’t make sense