You should learn how to choose keywords and use them wisely because they are the most important element in SEO.

Keyword research forms the foundation of successful SEO campaigns by guiding content creation, optimization, and overall strategy to ensure maximum visibility.

In this article, we will discuss the following:

• Why should you do keyword research?
• How to choose keywords and use them wisely?
• What are some free keyword research tools for blog owners?

Let’s get started!

Why Should You Do Keyword Research?

If you don’t target the right keywords, the article will appear on the wrong search results pages. You don’t want that.

For example, if you have a video marketing agency, aim to appear on video-related search queries because your ideal customers and clients are there.

To make that happen, the first step is to conduct keyword research.

List down the topic ideas you have, and then generate keywords based on those with the help of SEO tools.

Say you want articles that help businesses understand the importance of videos in marketing. Here are some topic and keyword ideas:

• what is video marketing
• how video marketing works
• how much does video marketing cost
• different kinds of videos for social media marketing

The keywords above can be in one pillar (or cornerstone) post, perhaps a comprehensive guide to video marketing.

And then go deeper into each topic; write an in-depth explanation about each in separate posts and utilize internal linking.

However, keyword research is not as simple as thinking of topic ideas and titles that are considered SEO-friendly.

It is called keyword “research” for a reason. Let us talk about how to choose keywords and use them wisely below!

How to Choose Keywords and Use Them Wisely

Keyword research is basically checking whether a keyword is competitive, how many searches for it, and whether it is trending, among others.

You can use Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, and the list goes on to help you with it.

Ideally, you should target low-competition, high-volume relevant keywords. Why?

It will not be challenging to be on the first page because you need to rise above only thousands of posts, many of which are low quality.

And many people search for it. If you write high-quality content (sometimes, even decent will do), it may generate lots of traffic to your blog.

Let us analyze the video marketing keywords above.

I use Google Keyword Planner, which is for Google Ads but can be for blog posts, so the data below is from that tool:

• what is video marketing (low competition, 10-100 monthly searches)
• how video marketing works (unknown competition, 10-100 monthly searches)
• how much does video marketing cost (low competition, 10-100 monthly searches)
• different kinds of videos for social media marketing (unknown competition, unknown monthly searches)

The “different kinds of videos for social media marketing” may be wordy and specific that is why no data is available. In this case, you can change that to:

• videos for social media (low competition, 10-100 monthly searches)
• types of videos for social media (low competition, 10-100 monthly searches)

If you use a different keyword research tool, it may generate different data.

But they do the same thing: It will tell you how competitive a keyword is and the estimated number of people who search for it, and many more.

5 Free Keyword Research Tools for Blog Owners

I am a heavy user of Google Keyword Planner, so I recommend you use that if you have a Google Ads account set up. The account doesn’t need to be active for you to be able to use the Keyword Planner.

But that tool is not for articles. The keyword data is for paid search marketing. If you see it as a drawback, then I have used other good keyword research tools:

• Semrush
• Ahrefs
• Moz
• Ubersuggest
• The search engine itself

You might be expecting the first 4 SEO tools, but the last one might be a surprise.

Actually, before I used Google Keyword Planner, I was typing topic ideas in the Google search bar and writing my titles based on the top results.

The keywords are in the titles. If you know SEO, looking at the titles is enough.

The “related searches” or “people also search for” section is helpful, too. You can base the article’s sections or the keywords for your next articles on that.

Conclusion

Knowing how to choose keywords ensures that your content reaches the audience interested in your products, services, or information.

This improves the quality of traffic to your website.

Without proper keyword research, your articles may appear on the first page but not in front of your target audience. Unfortunately.

You invested time and maybe money for an article only to be disappointed!

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