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No other factor determines the success of your SEO strategy quite like keyword research.
Do it wrong, and you’ll wind up targeting the same industry keywords that everyone else does.
Why is this bad?
It is because you’ll deal with steep competition from sites with impossibly high domain authority scores (we’re talking the 80 – 100 range). As a result, it’ll become extremely difficult to crack the top 3 in the search rankings, which isn’t what you want.
Do your keyword research right, however, and you’ll uncover keywords that others aren’t privy to yet, enabling you to carve out a space for your content in your niche (even if it’s extremely crowded).
By utilizing things like long-tail and zero search volume keywords, you can dominate the SERPs from position #1 without having to spend millions of dollars (and hours at the office).
In this article, we’re going to teach you some advanced keyword research tactics so that you can take your SEO to the next level.
So, if you’re tired of using basic techniques like entering basic seed terms into Google autocomplete, this is the article for you.
If you’re a total beginner to the topic, our Learning Hub chapter on keyword research will get you completely up to speed!
For everyone else, stay tuned to learn some advanced techniques that’ll help you broaden your keyword strategies.
What are Advanced Keyword Research Tactics, and Are They Worth It?
At face value, the concept of keyword research is pretty simple.
All you have to do is look up popular keywords related to your products and services, so what’s so hard about that?
The complications appear when you consider other factors like:
- The intent behind each keyword (do they want to learn something, or are they going to make a purchase?)
- The keyword’s current search trend (is it gaining or losing popularity?)
- The amount of competition from other websites (how many other businesses are producing content for the keyword?)
As you can see, the concept’s simplicity fades quickly once reality sets in, and these are by no means all the factors that go into keyword research.
We’re also not saying that you can’t find success with simple keyword research techniques, either.
Tools like our free keyword planner are extremely effective for finding viable keywords for virtually every industry that you can use for:
- Content ideas
- Landing pages
- Product pages
- URLs
- Video scripts
However, the need for more advanced techniques arises whenever you run into issues with your SEO strategy.
For instance, you may notice that you can’t seem to penetrate the top 3 (or even the top 10) for a particular keyword, despite flawless content and on-page SEO factors.
If you’re having a hard time meeting your ranking goals, it could be a sign that you’re targeting the wrong keywords.
Why it’s not worth targeting certain keywords
Let’s consider a quick example to show why some keywords are best avoided.
Imagine that you operate a small business that manufactures and sells hand-made guitars.
After doing some quick digging, you find the keyword ‘best guitars’ and its common variations have lots of search volume on Google:
Just look at the search volume and the results!
These keywords should be perfect for your tiny mom-and-pop guitar store, right?
A quick Google search for ‘best guitars’ exemplifies why you should avoid certain keywords:
As you can see, the top 3 results are occupied by behemoth websites like Amazon and Billboard, and outranking them will be next to impossible.
As proof, here’s a glimpse at Amazon’s Domain Rating on Ahrefs:
Yep, it’s almost 100. For context, a website’s Domain Rating or Domain Authority score gauges its ranking power on search engines, with 100 being the highest.
Legacy websites like Wikipedia and Amazon dominate the 80 – 100 score range, and smaller businesses tend to hover around the 20 – 60 range, so competing with them is not feasible.
If, instead, you’re smart with your keyword research and avoid keywords with steep competition, ranking in the top 3 becomes much easier.
That’s why it never hurts to learn more advanced keyword research tactics, as they help you stay one step ahead of competitors.
The Top 5 Advanced Keyword Research Techniques
Now, let’s dive into some advanced tactics that you can start using today.
In particular, we’re going to cover the following 5 tactics:
- Zero search volume keywords
- Long-tail keywords
- Advanced competitor analysis
- Finding new pages generating lots of traffic
- Using more unique seed keywords
Here’s a closer look at each of these 5 tactics.
Advanced tactic #1: Targeting zero search volume keywords
First, targeting keywords that have zero search volume can actually yield great results despite how asinine it sounds.
After all, why would you want to target a keyword if no one is searching for it?
Well, consider the fact that 16 – 20% of all keyword searches on Google are brand new, meaning they won’t have accumulated any search volume yet.
Therefore, if you’re able to produce content for these types of keywords before they take off, your content will be the first your audience sees, which is an extremely advantageous position to hold.
In other words, targeting zero search volume keywords is the embodiment of the phrase ‘the early bird gets the worm.’
However, not every keyword that has zero search volume is a candidate, as some will simply be dead keywords that no one will use.
Here are some tips for finding success with zero search volume keywords:
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- Keep an eye on news in your industry. If there’s a big development or news story related to your niche, you can bet that keywords surrounding it will start taking off. Keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry is the best way to find zero search volume keywords that are about to explode in popularity.
- Use social media and Google Trends. This tip is in line with the first. You can use social media and tools like Google Trends and Hootsuite to stay up to date with your audience’s interests. This will make it easier to identify potential keywords about to take off.
- Stick with commercial and transactional keywords. Since zero search volume keywords are a bit of a gamble, you should only target keywords with commercial or transactional intent. This is because these types of intent mean the user is about to make a purchase, so it’ll be easier to generate more leads and sales from them.
- Add LSI-supporting keywords for added impact. Besides targeting the zero search volume keyword, you should also include latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords. These are keywords directly related to the primary keyword. For example, if your primary keyword is ‘cat,’ then you could use LSI keywords like ‘litter’ and ‘tabby.’ This is advantageous because while the original keyword may have no search volume, it’s likely that its related keywords have at least some.
Advanced tactic #2: Don’t forget about long-tail keywords
Similar to zero search volume keywords, long-tail keywords have low search volume, which sounds like it would be a deal breaker.
However, long-tail keywords are extremely valuable due to how targeted they are.
This is because long-tail keywords tend to (but not always) string several words or phrases together.
An example would be ‘affordable guitar equipment near me.’
This keyword, while long, is extremely targeted in nature. From a single glance, we know that they want to purchase guitar equipment in their town (as hinted at by the words ‘affordable’ and ‘near me’).
Compare that to a short-tail keyword like ‘guitar equipment.’
The search intent is far less clear now.
It could be that they want to purchase guitar equipment, but they could also want to find information about equipment for educational purposes.
This exemplifies why long-tail keywords are valuable; it’s easier to identify their search intent.
As a result, long-tail keywords have much higher conversion rates than other types of keywords. Research shows that the average long-tail keyword converts at a whopping 36%, while the strongest landing pages only convert 11% of the time.
Here are some ways to find long-tail keywords to use in your content:
- Find common questions related to your products and services on platforms like Reddit and Quora.
- Use Google Analytics 4 to find long-tail keywords that are already driving traffic to your site (Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic).
- Use keyword planners in combination with Google Trends to find relevant long-tail queries.
Advanced tactic #3: Advanced competitor analysis (indirect competitors)
Analyzing your competitor’s keywords is a staple of most SEO strategies, but they often only focus on direct competitors.
These are competitors who sell similar products and services as you do, so it makes sense to try and copy their keywords (especially the ones they rank for and you don’t).
However, this strategy will always place you in a dogfight with other similar websites, as it won’t take long for them to realize they’ve been dethroned, and you can expect they’ll want to reclaim their spot.
This is why your competitor analysis should also include indirect competitors, which are websites that share your target audience but don’t sell the same products or services.
Going with the guitar store example from before, a direct competitor would be any other website that sells guitars and accessories.
Indirect competitors, on the other hand, would be audience adjacent websites like guitar forums and music news sites.
The best part about indirect competitors is you can target the same keywords but you won’t fight for the same customers. So, by analyzing your indirect competitor’s keywords, you can A) better understand the needs of your target audience and B) find some amazing keyword opportunities free from direct competition.
Regardless of your industry, find websites that share your audience but don’t sell the same products or services. One of the best ways to do this is to focus on community forums and news websites related to your niche.
From there, you can use our free keyword extraction tool to filter out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. In other words, this tool will let you know which SEO keywords the site uses, which is extremely useful.
Enter any URL and hit View Keyword Extraction Report to see a breakdown of their SEO keywords.
Advanced tactic #4: Find new pages generating lots of traffic (and copy their keywords)
This next technique will require a paid subscription to Ahrefs in order to gain access to its Content Explorer tool.
While it’s certainly possible to find new pages generating lots of traffic using other methods, we’re going to use Ahrefs since we believe it’s the quickest and easiest way.
This tactic involves finding newly published pages from other sites in your industry that are generating lots of traffic. Since they’re exploding in popularity, it’s clear that they’re targeting the right keywords.
Here’s how to do it.
Log in to your Ahrefs account and select the Content Explorer tool from the navigation bar at the top of the page.
Enter a broad topic into the search bar and switch the search mode to ‘In title.’
After that, you’ll need to filter the results for pages published within the last 90 days to ensure the posts are relatively new.
Next, we want to make sure the pages we analyze are generating lots of traffic, so filter the results for web traffic levels from 500 and beyond:
Once that’s done, apply all the changes to reveal a list of pages published within the last 90 days that are generating lots of traffic.
Clicking on any one of these pages will reveal more details. From there, select Organic keywords:
This will provide a list of all the keywords the page targeted, so take notes!
If you were going to create content for guitars, providing a guitar mastery guide would clearly generate a lot of interest.
Advanced tactic #5: Using more unique seed keywords
The final advanced technique we’ll explore today involves broadening the seed keywords that you use.
A seed keyword is a broad industry keyword, kind of like ‘guitars’ for the guitar industry.
You see, most digital marketers will start their keyword research by entering a broad seed keyword into a tool and then branch out from there.
However, this is constricting because it only limits you to keywords that are directly related to your seed keyword.
As a result, most businesses will chase the same keywords since they used similar seed keywords to begin their research.
You can break this habit by thinking outside the box and targeting more unique seed keywords.
One way to do this is to simply use your brain to think up variations of common keywords.
For ‘guitars’, we could use:
- Guitarists
- 6-string
- Guitars for sale
- Guitar store
- Guitar brands
Besides brainstorming, the People Also Ask section on Google is great for expanding on seed keywords.
In fact, it works well in combination with brainstorming. Here’s what the PAA section looks like for the keyword ‘guitar brands.’
Boom, there are some uncommon seed keywords that you can use.
Let’s insert the first keyword into our keyword planner and see what the metrics look like:
Not bad.
It has commercial intent, an okay search volume, and is generating lots of search results. While it’s currently on a downward trend, it did recently peak in popularity.
We were able to find a decent seed keyword using brainstorming and the PAA section on Google in about 5 minutes, so it’s definitely a technique that works!
Take Your Keyword Research to the Next Level
That’s a lot to take in, so let’s quickly recap what we’ve covered so far:
- Keyword research is arguably the most important factor that impacts your SEO strategy.
- Advanced keyword research tactics will help you avoid targeting the same keywords as legacy websites and direct competitors.
- Zero search volume and long-tail keywords are both great ways to capitalize on high-converting keywords with low competition.
- Finding newly published pages that are rolling in traffic is a great way to find golden keyword opportunities.
- Using uncommon seed keywords will help you find keywords that your competitors aren’t targeting.
Do you need help conducting winning keyword research for your business?
HOTH X, our fully managed SEO service, is the answer to all your SEO-related problems. Our expert team will conduct advanced keyword research for you while you focus on more important things, all while enjoying incredible results, so don’t wait to get in touch!
