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Top 4 Best Keyword Tools for SEO 

Top 4 Best Keyword Tools for SEO 

When running your own business, using keyword tools for SEO can save you lots of precious time and they are often free or inexpensive. 

Do you know what an SEO keyword is? If not, click here to find out. 

As a small business owner, your time is valuable, and time spent finding keywords for your SEO and blogging can feel like it is taking you away from other responsibilities. We understand this and have created a comprehensive list of our top 4 keyword tools for SEO to help streamline and improve your SEO.   

Learn from the experts, this is what we do! 

Ubersuggest 

Ubersuggest is a free to use keyword tool which assists in keyword idea generation and aids in search engine optimisation (SEO). You can also pay for it which unlocks more useful analytics and allows you to search for keywords without a limit. 

When used to search for keywords, you can see search volume, keyword suggestions, how difficult it will be to rank for the keyword and even more.  

You can use Ubersuggest to analyse your competitors and see what keywords they rank for. This allows you to see what is working for them so that you can adopt your strategy accordingly.  

As well as seeing related keywords, you can also see a table of 100 Google search results for that keyword. It included estimated visits, a domain score, backlink numbers and how often that page is shared on social media. 

A useful feature of Ubersuggest is the ability to analyse your websites SEO as it can tell you any SEO issues which need fixing such as headings and meta descriptions. 

AnswerThePublic 

Do you ever want to create a blog post but need help knowing what people are searching for? Or not know what questions people REALLY want the answers to?  

AnswerThePublic is a free online keyword tool where you input a keyword and it will tell you the most common questions searched in relation to this keyword.  The information can be viewed in a list or as a visualised infographic such as in the image below. 

This is a useful tool as the keyword suggestions are based on Google and Bing’s auto-suggest feature. The free version of AnswerThePublic is great but you can also pay to be able to complete more searches per day. 

SEMrush 

SEMrush is an SEO tool used to perform keyword research. Using the keyword overview tool, you can find out everything that you need to know about your selected keyword such as how many people are searching for it per month, how its trend is changing and all sorts of other useful information. 

You can also use it to find out similar keywords to use alongside your keyword and it also shows a list of organic search results for competitor research. 

Using the topic research tool can give you an extensive set of related topics to your keyword which can guide you with your content and blogs to improve SEO. 

Google Trends 

You can use Google Trends in two ways to perform keyword research, let’s look at the first. 

The first way is to enter a specific keyword and then take a look at the “related queries” section to find out what other people have been searching for regarding this keyword. This can help you find more keywords, questions that people need answering and what everyone is searching for. 

The second thing you can do is view whether your keyword is growing or declining in popularity. Take the image below as an example… 

In blue is the term “digital marketing” and in red is “content marketing”. You can see that digital marketing has been growing and staying at a steady search rate whereas content marketing has plateaued and is no longer gaining momentum to improve.  

Now, this doesn’t mean that content marketing is a bad keyword, it is searched less which means you will have more chance at ranking highly for it whereas for digital marketing you may struggle to make a dent. 

Keeping track of keyword trends allows you to switch up keywords if suddenly another keyword has a rise in searches. 

All of these keyword tools for SEO are brilliant but you may wish, and we would also recommend, using multiple tools as they all serve an individual purpose. AnswerThePublic does not show the amount each keyword gets searched whereas a tool such as Ubersuggest does show keyword traffic. 

If you need help with your SEO keywords and want our marketing agency to work on your keywords then get in touch now. 

What is an SEO Keyword?

What is an SEO Keyword?

SEO keywords are ideas and topics that explain what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, you may also hear these called “search queries.”  

If you boil everything on your page down — all the images, video, copy, etc then your SEO keywords are what will get you FOUND. 

Why are keywords important?  

When you optimise your content around words and phrases that people are searching for, your website can rank higher for those terms.  

Also, ranking higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs) can help drive more targeted traffic to your website. Therefore, finding keywords people are searching for is step #1 of any successful SEO campaign. 

What makes a good SEO keyword? 

Your target keywords need to meet four criteria — significant search volume, high relevance, strong conversion value, and reasonable competition. If any of these are missing, your SEO is likely to fizzle out and not make a BANG! 

When choosing your SEO keywords, focus on keywords which have a high search volume and a low SEO difficulty. Keywords with low search volumes and high competition are not good choices for SEO keywords. 

What are examples of keywords? 

Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for. For example, if you were looking to buy a new jacket, you might type something like “men’s leather jacket” or “black leather jacket” into Google.  

Even though these phrases consist of more than one word, they are still SEO keywords. 

How many keywords should I use for SEO? 

We recommend that you focus on one main SEO keyword per page while also including two or three SEO keyword variations.  

Each of your pages should be focused on a single topic with the most important keywords for SEO purposes being included. This means that each page can rank for its individual topics by using different keywords.  

You should pick one to three keywords centred on your topic for each page. For example, if you are writing content about beds, you will struggle to rank for such a broad keyword. However, you may want to use “storage bed”, “ottoman bed” or “lift up beds” as your 3 keywords. 

How do I add SEO keywords to my website? 

First, use your main keyword in the first couple of sentences of your content, or at least within the first paragraph.  

Next, use that keyword and variations of it throughout the rest of your content. The best practice is to include latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords rather than the exact keyword every time. 

How do I find SEO keywords? 

  1. Study your niche: Once you decide on your niche, you need to study it. Find out exactly WHAT you are looking to rank for. 
  1. Define your goals: Decide what you want from your SEO keywords, do you want to rank higher or rank for more keywords or something else?  
  1. Make a list of relevant topics: What are topics related to your niche? Make a list of all of them. 
  1. Create a list of keywords: Form a list of keywords that you would like to include. For example, if you run a cooking blog, you may want to include “quick recipes”, “vegetarian recipes” and “one-pot recipes”. 
  1. Use good keyword research tools: Use research tools like Ubersuggest and Answer The Public (more on that later) to research your keywords. 
  1. Study the search intent: What are people searching for? When are they searching? Are your keywords dependant on seasons? 
  1. Identify long tail keywords: Long tail keywords are more specific than normal keywords, these are usually less competitive and are closer in relation to how people make search queries. 
  1. Find out about your competitors. Do you know your competitors? I’m sure everyone knows a few other businesses in their niche who could be a competitor. Look into them and find out what they do. 

Now you know how to find your keywords, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Here are some common mistakes that people make when starting out with SEO keywords: 

  • Only doing keyword research once. Where’s that going to get you?!?   
  • Targeting keywords that are too competitive. Don’t make it so difficult for your pages to rank! Target keywords that have a high search volume but low competition.  
  • Forgetting to update and expand your keyword list. We suggest performing keyword research weekly/monthly. ALWAYS update your keyword list.  

Once you have found your keywords, you need to know where to use them:  

  • Title  
  • URL  
  • Throughout the page text  
  • Image alt text 

If you want to read up more on where to use keywords and other amazing website SEO tips, click here.  

SEO Keywords Best Practices  

Google Suggest 

A lot of people struggle with SEO because they target keywords that are WAY too competitive. If you’re just starting out with SEO, we recommend focusing on long tail keywords. These keywords are far less competitive and easier to rank for.  

For example, let’s say you have a Pizza Oven business. It’s going to be super hard to rank for keywords as such as: ‘pizza’ or even ‘pizza oven’. Whereas ‘Garden Pizza Oven’, or ‘Outdoor Pizza Oven’ are not going to be too difficult to rank for.  

Finding long tail keywords has never been easier too with Google Suggest. When you hop on Google and you start typing in the search box, what appears below? Suggested keywords. Generally, you will see 3 – 5 suggestions, sometimes however 10 suggestions are displayed.  

A user that is performing the search can click on any keyword from the Google autofill list and immediately see the search results page. This experience is both fast, convenient and a method we use to perform keyword research daily. 

Answer The Public  

Do you ever want to create a blog post but don’t know what to write about? Or what questions people REALLY want the answers to?  

Answer The Public is a free online keyword research tool where you input a keyword and it will tell you the most common questions searched in relation to this keyword.  

This is useful to understand your audience and create content that will appeal to them. No one wants to waste time creating a blog that no one is going to read.  Click here to check out more of our top marketing tools for business. 

Are keywords still important for SEO? 

In 2022, keywords are still important and useful in SEO, but they aren’t the most important factor. This is because SEO is far more complex than putting SEO keywords on a page.  

Keywords are still important for SEO however there is much more to it than that. To optimise your SEO, keywords cannot be your only focus. 

If you want to optimise your SEO but do not know how to start, get in touch now! It’s what we’re good at! 

How to Check Your SEO Ranking

How to Check Your SEO Ranking

You can, theoretically, rank for ANYTHING! If people are searching for it, you can rank for it (people can Google some out-of-the-box things). For example, have you ever Googled yourself? I’m sure we’ve all done it, but if you haven’t, I’d strongly recommend doing it after you read this just for a giggle.  

If you haven’t started optimising your SEO ranking and want to start, click here to learn HOW to optimise your SEO for your business. If you’re in the process of optimising your SEO, and you’re interested in finding out how to check your SEO ranking, read on! 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the way in which you can help customers to find your site through search engines such as Google. By improving and optimising your SEO you can drive more traffic to your website and therefore generate more sales. 

How to Check Where You Rank on Google  

How many have you done this? When you want to see where you rank on Google, you type your website into the search bar and then scroll and scroll, hoping your website pops up in the first few results.  

DON’T DO THIS.  

Do you know there are websites that do this for you? We’ll touch more on this in a second.  

Did you know that web pages rank and not websites? Each of your web pages has the potential to rank, this includes blogs and articles if you write them (which you should, click here to find out why!) 

What is a website’s ‘SEO Ranking Position’ on Google? 

Google ranking systems are designed to sort through hundreds of billions of webpages in their Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for. 

In simple terms, to generate an ‘organic’ search result, Google matches every word or phrase you type in the search box to its index of web pages to find matches. What YOU want to do, is get your website to SHOW UP for your keywords and phrases. You do want to be found, right?! 

Google displays these matches as search results which are simply lists of web pages in order of relevance. So, the first organic result is the web page Google believes to be the most relevant to your search, and so on.  

The Problem with Searching for Your Keywords 

If you do show up on the first page of Google when you search your site, this may be wrong. When you sit down at your own computer or pull out your phone and search for yourself, you may not actually be seeing accurate results. Why is this? Well… 


This could be down to:  

  • Your Physical Location: When searching, Google takes the searcher’s location into account to tailor the search results to show businesses near them. 
  • Your Browsing History: To get you the most helpful results, Google prioritises sites you’ve visited before in your search results. It will show those sites higher in the search results in case you’re looking for them again. If you visit your site often, then it will automatically show higher. 

 
So, How Can You Truly See Your Accurate SEO Ranking?   

There are a variety of websites which can be used to check your website’s SEO ranking and your websites ranking for specific keywords. 

UberSuggest 

Our personal suggestion would be Ubersuggest.  

On Ubersuggest, you can add your business website as a ‘project’ which allows you to see a variety of statistics about your website such as backlinks, SEO issues, and site speed.  

When using Ubersuggest to view your ranking, you should add the keywords that you are trying to rank for so that you can track where your site ranks on Google and when any changes occur such as moving up or down in the rankings. 

Top Tip: Set up a project on UberSuggest and see what keywords you rank for higher and lower over time. If you see your keyword falling in ranking, start posting more content or update your current pages with this keyword. You won’t regret it!  

Google Lighthouse  

Another great tool for checking out mobile speed and SEO is Google Lighthouse. No, we don’t mean those blinding lights that guide boats! 

Lighthouse is a page experience tool built by Google. The tool executes five audits for accessibility, performance, SEO, Progressive Web Apps and an extended list of best practices.  

Powered by the new Core Web Vitals, these audits together give you an excellent overview of the quality and performance of your mobile website as well as your desktop site, or web app. 

We find that Lighthouse is the BEST for checking out site speed. In 2022, site speed is super important to Google, and a lot of websites still don’t have mobile-optimised experiences.  

Top Tip: Take a look on Lighthouse (you can find it by right clicking on your site and inspecting element) and see what you can do to make your speed better. For example, do your images take too long to load? Don’t forget, this will need to be on the Google Chrome Browser and not Safari!  

Take it from your personal experience, would you stick on a website that is struggling to load? Or would you bounce out and find a faster one? Site speed for the win! 

Google Search Console 

Another one we swear by is Google Search Console. Through Google Search Console, you can crawl your website, see what people are searching for when they click on your website, check out which keywords get you the most traffic and clicks and so much more.  

Google Search Console is a FREE tool and it’s amazing. Every website SHOULD have it set up already, but if you don’t, click here.  

Once you have Search Console set up, navigate to the “Performance” tab on the left.  Then click the colourful buttons at the top to turn on Total Clicks, Total Impressions, Average Click-Through-Rate, and Average Position. 

Top Tip: Google Search Console is also used for submitting sitemaps. If you haven’t submitted your sitemap to Google yet, then you need to do it. NOW. For SEO, having a sitemap is critical to having your important pages indexed, demonstrating which pages are valuable, and having them indexed regularly to make sure only your most-up-to-date content is appearing in search results. 

Why should you check your SEO ranking? 

You should check your SEO ranking regularly to see where your website is ranking on Google and which keywords you are ranking for. 

If you do not keep up to date with the standard of your website, then you will not be able to improve. Find out what keywords you want to be found for and find which ones you are not currently ranking for; Use this information to include these keywords in your future website improvements and content. 

Top Tip: Blogs are a great way to be found for keywords. You do not want your website to become cluttered and disorganised due to too many keywords, blogs are a great way to be found online and for people to visit your website. 

If you have started optimising your SEO already, brilliant! If you haven’t started, first of all why? Secondly, click here to learn HOW to optimise your SEO for your business.  

If you want to check out your SEO ranking and optimise it for your business but don’t know how, then just get in touch! Digital marketing is what we love to do. Click here to book a discovery call now to see how we can help your business.  

SEO 5 Trends to take notice of in 2023

SEO 5 Trends to take notice of in 2023

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an effective way to attract customers to an online platform. With 74,000 individual search terms being typed into Google every second, it is vital to ensure your website is ranking high.  

Did you know that only 0.78% of Google searchers will click on results from the 2nd page or further? 

Getting your website to have top-ranking SEO performance requires attention to a multitude of trends and strategies. This guide should draw your attention to the best up-to-date SEO trends to watch out for in 2023.  

1. An Effective SEO Strategy Will Need to Include Video 

Video is quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to connect with consumers. It is projected to be consumed more than all other forms of content. Google recognises this and will likely show a website on the front page if it has a video alongside the written content. 

Use video as part of your SEO strategy as it much more effective than a written document.  BUT, always stay relevant and be optimised with keywords whilst still being user-friendly.  

A great platform to start with is YouTube. It is coming to the front due to its ever-growing audience; Using keywords, along with a relevant channel name and description, can help your website rank higher in searches.  

2. Increase Your Brand Awareness and Build Trust with Influencers 

Influencers can influence the decisions of their followers because of their relationship with their audience and their knowledge and expertise in a particular area, e.g. fashion, travel or technology.  

Influencers are often associated with trust, the more trust this person has the more people will follow their opinion. Changing your SEO marketing strategy to include an influencer can drastically increase your sales and reputation as a trustworthy business.  

Choosing the right person is key, a higher follower count does not equal a good fit for your business; looking into their audience, previous partnerships, and public image is key to ensure your business will profit from this endeavour. 

3. Mobile Friendliness 

Almost every person you talk to will own a smartphone. As they become more and more advanced and widely used, it is crucial for your website to be mobile-friendly.  

Ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly and can be accessed/read as intended on a mobile device is vital to ensure you do not eliminate this sector of your audience. It also allows you to check that everything functions as intended and that there is no compromise on quality.  

Google has a mobile-friendly test that can be used to check this. 

As technology has improved, devices that support voice search have become very popular. It is predicted that by 2022 over 55% of households will own a smart speaker. 

To optimise your content for this way of searching, you should ensure that you have effective keywords, and find longer and shorter phrases that people would use in conversation when talking about this topic. Including these phrases throughout your content can ensure better SEO optimisation for your content when using voice search. 

If this feels foreign to you, we can help! Book a discovery call here

5. Long-Form Content Will Help Improve SERPs  

Search engine results pages (SERPs) are the pages you encounter when doing a Google search.  

Producing long-form content (not to be confused with long-tail keywords) can help to rank higher on SERPs, however, this content must still be relevant and high quality. The length of your content can affect the number of traffic/shares that your website gets. A longer read of 3,000+ words can get 3x more traffic and 4x more shares.  

A longer content piece needs to keep the reader engaged and provide information that can be shared with other people. Longer content also provides you with more space to include your keywords. 

To make a long piece of content more readable, you should split it into sections using subheadings to make it easier to find specific information (this is especially important when being used on a mobile device). 

These 5 SEO trends to watch out for in 2023 show that SEO is constantly changing and evolving. It is critical to stay on top of these trends to keep your place in the rankings. However, it can be difficult to stay on top of the latest trends. 

If you are unsure how to incorporate these trends into your business or feel like you could be doing it better, CREATIVE in TiME are here to help.