Advanced Keyword Research: Strategies To Supercharge Your SEO

Google alone processes more than 40,000 keyword searches every single second. 

That’s a staggering 3.5 billion searches in a single day and 1.2 trillion per year.

This article will cover some of the most up-to-date advanced keyword strategies, providing simple tutorials for each keyword analysis tactic.  

Whether you’re looking to improve your on-page SEO or optimize your PPC campaigns, these advanced keyword research strategies will surely lead you down the road to success. 

Ready to learn? Let’s go!

What is Advanced Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms.

However, advanced keyword analysis can help you explore more in-depth ways to reach your SEO goals. 

Using an advanced keyword analysis strategy is one of the most important elements of advanced SEO because sometimes basic SEO keyword research just doesn’t provide the results you’re looking for.  

We will cover some of these terms and strategies more extensively later, but for now, let’s get reacquainted with some of the basics:

• Search volume: the number of times that the word or phrase is searched for in a specific period of time
• Competition: measures how many site pages are targeting a specific keyword
• Difficulty: this tells you how many other pieces of content you are going to be competing with
• Keyword gap: measures the difference between you and your competitor’s keyword performance
• Audience search intent: the process of understanding the context of a user’s search

Additionally, here are a few advanced keyword phrases you may not be familiar with:

• Traffic-generating potential: is a metric that is essential to advanced keyword success and generating more organic traffic from your focus keyword
• Organic click-rate: a metric that displays how many users click on pages in organic search results for your target keyword
• Google’s “people also ask” keywords: a section in Google’s search results that displays questions related to your search term

Now that we’ve explored some basic and advanced keyword terms and phrases, let’s move on to advanced keyword types: 

Different Types of Advanced Keyword Research

When crafting SEO content that targets a specific search, you will also want to cover a range of related search queries and relevant keywords that are related to it.

They encompass spelling and wording variations of your focus term, common synonyms, or alternative searches striving for the same end goal.

Here is a list of important advanced keyword research phrases: 

• Long-tail keywords
• Branded keywords
• Question keywords
• Shoulder keywords
• Trending or seasonal keywords

Long-tail keywords are longer search queries made up of several words with a lower search volume but a higher conversion rate.  

50% of search queries contain 4 or more words, so long-tail keywords will be necessary for your strategy.

Branded keywords are searches that include a brand name or company. 

These types of keywords will be entered when a searcher is looking for a service or product from a specific business 

Additionally, question keywords are search queries that are in the form of questions. 

These question keywords cover your main topic and target keyword. 

If you need a little help discovering some question keywords for your content, AnswerThePublic is a great place to start.

Shoulder keywords are what your target customers are actively searching for but may not be directly relevant to your product.

They allow you to increase your brand awareness and get more potential customers to the top of your sales funnel.

Lastly, trending or seasonal keywords are popular phrases that are being searched for currently or during a certain time of year, this can be helpful when targeting content for holidays or trending news stories. 

Advanced SEO Keyword Research Strategies

Keyword research is one of the foundation pieces for SEO. It plays a vital part in understanding what your target audience is actively searching for and the type of content that is in high demand. 

Advanced keyword research helps shape your business’ effective and reliable SEO strategy.

With that said, let’s explore some advanced keyword research strategies you can use right now: 

Use low competition keywords

For many businesses, low competition keywords are your key to search engine visibility and attract more traffic to your business. 

Low competition keywords are the searches that may not have an incredibly high keyword search volume, but high-authority sites do not currently dominate them.

Many people assume they can locate low-competition keyword ideas by entering their keyword into a research tool and looking at the keyword difficulty bar. 

You should then manually check the competition for each phrase by doing a Google search.

If there are less than 500 results for a keyword, you can consider it a low competition.

Here are a few tips for finding low-competition keywords:

• Use a basic target keyword
• Find related or phrase match keyword ideas
• Filter through and look for low-competition keywords
• Add filter words such as “buy” or “near me” 

Advanced keyword research strategies using content gaps

Competitor analysis should be at the core of any advanced keyword research process, as it provides insight into the keywords and backlinks that are working for your top competitors. 

You can then reverse engineer what is working for them in order to make gains for your business.

This is important as it allows you to root out all the target terms that should be prioritized in your keyword strategy.

These keywords should be a priority target because the fact that several of your competitors rank for them means that you can feasibly rank for them too.

Once you have identified these prime keyword gaps, you can look closely at how your competitors have managed to rank for them. 

With this information about content and backlinks, you can follow a similar strategy to begin ranking for these terms. 

Additionally, you can use tools such as Google Search Console to help you discover ranking opportunities. 

Here are some helpful suggestions for finding content gaps:

• Consider your audience’s buyer’s journey
• Conduct heavy market research
• Analyze your pre-existing content for gaps
• Analyze any competitors’ content for gaps
• Run a content audit 

Expand your first-page real estate

This strategy is all about taking up as much of the first page on SERPs as possible.

Even the best keyword doesn’t always lead to a #1 ranking. Sometimes you just can’t seem to shift past second, third, or fourth place. 

You might have achieved the first page, but that doesn’t mean you should give up now.

That’s where this SERPs domination tactic comes in!

If your hard work on your own site has led you to rank on the first page for one of your keywords, it’s time to publish optimized content for that keyword across other authority sites.

High authority sites like YouTube, Medium, and LinkedIn can all be used to take up extra spots on the ever-vital first page of Google.

For instance, if you already have a ranking guide on your site for “Keyword Research Strategies”. 

You can then produce a YouTube video optimized for the same key term to get that ranking on the first page too. 

And remember, for help finding keyword data for sites like YouTube, you can use a multi-channel tool like Soovle. 

Explore audience search intent

Earlier in this article, we discussed the meaning of keyword intent and how you can decipher intent into 4 groups: 

• Navigational
• Informational
• Commercial
• Transactional

This strategy analyzes keywords to find out the searcher’s intent, then uses the results to filter your long list of keywords into the ones that really matter and the ones that are likely a waste of resources.

For instance, a navigational keyword (when a searcher is looking for a specific page, brand, or product) may have a high search volume, but ranking for that term isn’t likely to return many clicks.

This is an advanced optimization of your keyword strategy, as it goes beyond striving to rank for high volume search terms, instead focusing on the searches that will return the most clicks and warm leads to your business.

Generally, navigational search terms are probably not worth your time. 

Whereas informational search terms (when a searcher is looking for more information on a topic) provide the perfect opportunity for you to craft an optimized piece of authority content.

Understanding latent semantic indexing (LSI)

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a process Google uses to better understand the core topic of a webpage and its context. This ensures that it can provide accurate results to match a searcher’s query.

For instance, LSI helps Google understand whether a webpage targeting the keyword “mermaids” is a page about the mythical creature mermaids or a page about the 1990 comedy drama Mermaids.

Of course, it’s all of the related keywords, synonyms, and phrases you also use on your web page that will help them understand the context.

In fact, when you search for something on Google, they will also highlight any related words and phrases in bold for each result. 

You can use Google’s LSI process to locate accurate related keywords to enhance your content. This also helps reduce keyword stuffing, providing you with plenty more SEO-relevant phrases to focus on.

All you have to do is enter your main keyword into Google and browse the bold words that appear in the snippets of the results. 

If you notice bold terms that can easily be included in your own content, you know Google will see your page as a good match for that search.

Keyword Research Tools

You will need a few SEO tools to use our advanced keyword research strategies. 

We’ll quickly run you through our recommendations, including free keyword research, planning, and competitor analysis tools.

Google Keyword Planner 

Want to rank #1 on Google? 

Go right to the source and find out search volumes and Google trends straight from the horse’s mouth.

This is a free tool, but you must create a Google Ads account to access it. 

The discovery option is designed to help you locate new keywords relevant to your site, business, and products. 

Whereas the search volume option will provide you with data for a list of keywords you already have.

This tool targets Adwords customers who want to run CPC ads, so it offers data on Ad costs and keyword bidding. 

However, you can still use these tools to locate the right SEO keywords for you.

The HOTH FREE Keyword Planner Tool 

This isn’t just a shameless plug, our keyword research tool is an excellent alternative to setting up a Google Ads account and campaign.

Fuelled by SEMrush, this user-friendly planner tool makes it easy for anyone to locate high-volume terms related to your focus keyword.

It’s as simple as typing in your main keyword and hitting “view keyword research.”

Moz Keyword Explorer 

Moz’s handy tool makes it really easy to find a whole bunch of key terms related to your target query.

Every keyword research tool will offer a list of terms that are related to your specific keyword search. 

Moz’s tool is special because it goes that extra length to offer lateral terms that you won’t see suggested anywhere else. 

This is great for locating those high-converting long-tail phrases and questions.

They also offer a “priority score” for each keyword, combining search volume and difficulty data to help you choose which specific terms and phrases to target.

Ahrefs Keyword Generator 

If you’re looking for a tool that makes it simple to differentiate between the easy and hard keywords to rank for, Ahrefs tool uses a traffic light system that is super self-explanatory.

The free version of the tool also allows you to differentiate between question keywords and regular keywords, which is great for generating SEO blog content ideas.

Their premium research tool is also one of the most insightful out there, providing specific information on how many backlinks you will need to rank first page for a certain term.

The HOTH Keyword & Content Gap Analysis Tool 

Take your keyword strategy to the next level and ensure you are beating your competitors with this gap analysis tool.

You can enter your domain name and up to 3 competitors to compare the keywords you are targeting and ranking for. 

This is great for offering a fresh insight into searches you might have missed or should be shifting your focus to.

Soovle

If you’re looking for keywords beyond leading search engines like Google and Bing, Soovle is your one-stop shop for scraping keywords from across the internet.

If your focus is eCommerce or you have a multi-channel content marketing strategy, this is a smart way to find out about keywords that could have escaped your competitor’s clutches.

SECockpit 

SECockpit is a tool that works just like many other research tools on this list – you enter a keyword, and it reveals a long list of suggestions and their relevant insights. 

However, SECockpit’s insights take data from Google’s Keyword Planner and go more in-depth than any other tool on this list. 

Although the data will be useful for beginners, it will be SEO pros who can truly understand what it means.

You can click on any keyword to reveal competition metrics for the term’s top 10 results, including their backlink profiles and a breakdown of daily traffic.

Our favorite feature would have to be the “niche” indicator, which lets you know the keywords that are worth targeting. 

Takeaways

As we wrap up this article, we’ll remind you of some of the top keyword research tips we have suggested.

If you have any questions or need help with your keyword strategy, why not book a discovery call with one of our experts? 

We’re here to help!