Keyword Research and Competition Analysis

What is keyword research (keyword research) and what is meant by competition analysis?

Users search on search engines using keywords or keywords, and the machine will produce results that are relevant to those keywords.

With the help of tools from Google, we can do research to get keywords that are popular or those with low competition.


The importance of keyword research

At the beginning of my career as a blogger, because I did not understand about keyword research, I made an article on the topic of no search. I was surprised, even though the article was ranked number 1 on Google search results but why didn't it get traffic?

It was only after I understood keyword research that I realized that the keywords I was looking for were no one looking for.

So, keyword research is important so that we don't get tired of making articles and finally nobody reads.

Then what is meant by competition analysis?

For a new blog or website whose SEO foundation is not strong, there are times when we need to target keywords that have low competition so that we can still appear on the first page.


Keyword research with Google Keyword Planner
My favorite tool in doing keyword research is GKP or Google Keyword Planner. The reason, because it's free and features complete. In addition, because Google's own property is certainly more accurate.


To do keyword research it's easy enough:

Enter keywords, you can enter more than one. To enter more than one keyword, use a comma or line break
Set the target country
select a language
Click 'get ideas'
Then you will be directed to the following page:


From here we can see that there are 320 people who search for keywords to buy clothes in a month. On the other hand, if I replace it with "selling clothes" it turns out the result is 1,900, this means that those who are looking for selling clothes are more than buying clothes.

By utilizing our knowledge of on-page SEO from the previous chapter, we can optimize our website pages by using keywords selling clothes rather than buying clothes.

Such is the basic core of keyword research.

Look for low competition keywords
In conducting keyword research, usually we as new website owners are targeting low competition. This is because a new website usually doesn't have a strong "foundation" so it will lose if you compete with a large website.

Please read this article to find non-competitive niches and keywords.

Long tail keyword
One more thing you need to know about keyword research is long tail keywords or long-tailed keywords.

In addition to the keywords you are looking for, GKP also displays the number of searches from similar keywords. For example, from the picture above, there are also other keywords such as new clothes such as buying and selling clothes, buying clothes online, buying and selling clothes online, and others.

From here, if we optimize the website for keyword buying clothes, then there are only 320 searches per month. But if we optimize to buy clothes online, the total search is 1,300 + 320 = 1,620.

But of course the decision goes back to you and is relevant or not your content with existing long tail.

Finally, if your website is an online store (e-commerce) or monetized with affiliate products, long tail keywords usually provide a greater conversion rate than regular keywords. This is because people who use long tail usually have higher intention to buy.

For example, people looking for "blue clothes" with "buy blue clothes". The first is usually just looking for information, while the second one looks at the intention to buy.