How to do keywords research.

 Today, we're kicking off a brandnew keyword research series. And BOOM! You’re invited. Stay tuned. [Music] What’s up guys it's Sam Oh here with Ahrefs,the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitorsand dominate your niche. And today, we're kicking off a brand new keyword research tutorial series using our Keywords Explorer tool.

 And I'm super excited for this tutorial. Now in this video, we’re going to coverquite a few things a lot of people don’t know, they don't think of, or they don't fullyunderstand when it comes to keyword research. So, let’s dive right in. So I’m inside Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorertool and I’m going to search for the keyword phrase, “how to grill steak.” And here, you can change the country, butI’ll leave it to find data from US searches. And right away, you’ll see some deep metricson this search query. The first part that stands out is the keyworddifficulty metric.

 Now, this score gives you an estimate of howcompetitive the top 10 results in Google are for a given keyword based on the average numberof referring domains they have. Now, this is the only metric we use for keyworddifficulty so you shouldn’t treat this number as the answer to know which keywords to target. It’s just a proxy to link popularity ofthe search results. There are a lot of variables to gauging keyworddifficulty, so I’ll be doing a full tutorial on how to analyze whether you can actuallyrank for a keyword in the third video in this series.

 Next, you can see that this phrase averageseleven thousand monthly searches. And this big number here is based on the countrythat you selected in the last step. Now, over here, you can see the global searchvolumes as well as the breakdown of searches by country which is ordered from the mostto least monthly searches. So for this particular query, about 90% ofsearches come from the US. But before we continue, what theheck is search volume anyway? So, in short, search volume represents theaverage number of monthly searches on Google for a given query.

 So technically, if the same person searchedfor the same keyword a million times, then the keyword volume would go up too. So you can see how this metric can be easilymanipulated and isn’t exactly the most reliable one. So, the only source for Google search volumeshas and likely always will be from Google themselves. But there’s also an additionalsource called clickstream data. So here at Ahrefs, we use both of these sourcesto make sure search volume estimates are accurate and most importantly, updated withfresh data, every single month. And this is the exact reason why we add theextra source of data to our search metrics.

 Now, if we jump back to the global searchvolumes, it’s pretty clear that this query is way more popular in the US and then there’sa tiny bit of traffic everywhere else. But other times, you’ll see the oppositeeffect where a keyword is significantly more popular in other countries. So for example, if I type in “rugby” you’llsee that this query is the most popular in France, the UK, and then the US. So this is a good way to decipher whetheror not your keyword is worth targeting for your business. So, if you find that search volumes are lowwhere your target audience is, then it may not be the best keyword to target.

 Alright, back to grilling steak. If we look at the search volume for the originalcountry we selected, then you’ll see this cool graph where you can seedifferent search volumes by month. So you’ll see that people are grilling lessin the winter months and more in the summer, which tells us a little bit about keyword intent. Now, I know it seems like common sense, butthings like this, they often get overlooked during people’s keyword selection process. So, this graph is really helpful and oftenthe first place where my eyes gravitate when I’m doing my keyword research.

Here’s why: If we look up the word “Christmas” andlook at the search volume, you’ll see that there are over 800,000 monthly searches. Well...not really. Search volumes are rounded averages. So if you look at this graph here, you’llsee a trend where people start searching for this keyword in November and December. But the rest of the year? Pretty much crickets. Now, look at the results for thesearch query “presidential election.” There’s a huge spike during the time theevent was happening. And then...crickets. The number promises you 615,000 monthly searchesnext month, but the trend shows that you’ll get a few million visitors only during the time of the election, which happens every four years. 

We have a great post on the Ahrefs blog onthis topic, which I’ll leave a link to in the description. Alright, so next, we have this very importantsection, which is called “clicks”. And this number reflects the total numberof clicks that actually happen on the search results page. And this often tells us whether a searcher clickson multiple results or maybe none at all. And again, this tells us a lot about keywordintent, which just, it can’t be ignored. Now, with this example, and actually most“how to” search queries, the clicks are normally close to the actual search volume. And I’m going to show you two drasticallydifferent search queries to better illustrate my point. So, I’ll open up a new instance of KeywordsExplorer and for the first search query, I’ll type in “time in new york” and for thesecond, I’ll type in “chicken soup recipes.”

 Next, I’ll click on the metrics tab. Now take a look at these results. Even though the query, “time in New York”has 100,000 more monthly searches, than “chicken soup recipes,” the latter gets more clicks. Now, how is that even possible? The best way to illustrate this is to putyourself in the driver’s seat. If we Google “time in New York” and yousee this result, has the reason for your search query been solved? Yeah it obviously has. This is a fact based query and you don’tneed more answers than what Google already gives you. Now let’s pretend that you want to make chicken soup. So you type in “chicken soup recipes” in Google.

 Now there’s a featured snippet here fromGoogle, but can you tell me if the reason for your search query has been solved? No way! Even if all of the directions were here, you’dprobably want to compare other recipes. Maybe you’ll click on one of these resultsand be like, "darn, I don’t have celery." So you’ll look for other recipes. Or maybe you’re some chicken soup connoisseurand you only eat 5 star broth. So you’ll look at reviews. Now, if we look at this comparison again,you’ll also notice this metric here, called “RR,” which stands for “return rate.

 Now, return rate is a relative number thatgives you an idea of how often people perform the same search over the course of a month. Now, this doesn’t mean that people searchfor "time in new york" X% or X times more than chicken soup recipes. I know it sounds confusing, but what you cantake away from this is that people search for time in new york more often. Another example of a query that people search for in Google again and again and again, is “Facebook”, which has the highest return rate. So, you’ll see that it has a return rateof 3.7 in the United States and obviously this doesn’t mean that people only searchfor this term 3 or 4 times in Google. But it helps you understand how other searches compare to this “baseline.” Also in the clicks section, you can judgethe commercial value of the keyword phrase.

 So here you can see that it has a cost perclick of $1.20, but what’s more interesting is the percentage of clicks that go to paid vs. organic. And you can see that paid search only getsabout 2% of the clicks, while organic takes the rest. And if you compare this with the keyword "carinsurance", you’ll see something completely different. The CPC is $40 per click and 38%of the clicks go to advertisers. And it makes sense. If we Google the search query, then you’llsee that the entire fold of the Google search results are plastered with ads.

 One last example I want to show you is somethinglike the keyword phrase “medical school.” You can see that the entire fold is plasteredwith ads, but check out the data in Ahrefs. Only 2% of clicks go to paid ads! Now, the thing that this boilsdown to again, is keyword intent. If you’re looking into medical schools,you might be looking for a list of schools, school ratings, or you might want to knowmore information like how many years is medical school. Now, there is so many possibilities with aquery like this that it shows that paying for this keyword term, it might not producethe results you’d expect.

 Here you can find the same cool graphs thatwill show you the separation between paid and organic clicks. So for certain queries, you might find thatadvertisers are more active during seasonal months, like in the steak example. Now, with the Adwords CPC figures, it’sworth mentioning that we don’t update it that frequently. So treat these as approximate values and ifyou need the freshest data, then go to the source: Adwords. Now, as far as I know, CPC can change prettymuch every hour and they’ll still be estimations since Adwords runs as an auction.

 But the main takeaway from all of these examplesis to focus on search queries that will generate clicks for you. Because even if there is a high search volume,but no one ever clicks it, then what's the point of targeting that keyword, right? Alright, this next part here is super cool. So originally, when I was doing my researchfor this video, the keyword phrase that I entered naturally was “how to bbq steak.” And if you look at the search volume, it onlyhas 350 searches per month in the United States, which doesn't even compare to the11,000 searches for "how to grill steak." Looking at the global volume, you can seethat the country with the most searches is Canada! So I guess barbecuing is a Canadian thingwhich I would have never known.

 So if you look down here, you’ll see thatthe parent topic is different. It’s actually the one that I’ve been showingyou this whole time, “how to grill steak.” And the parent topic, it tries to determineif you can rank for your target keyword while targeting a more general topic on your pageinstead. So the way we do this is by looking at thenumber one ranking page for your keyword and then look for the most popular keyword thatbrings that page the most clicks. So if I had a site on barbecuing, then I wouldknow that I can target the phrase “how to grill steak” to reach a much larger globalaudience. Now I want you to pay close attention here.

 You can see that this parent topic has 11,000monthly searches, but the traffic potential is 77,000? Now, how is that even possible? Let’s go back to the original keywords explorerresults and we’re going to quickly look at metrics on the top 10 Googlerankings for this keyword phrase. But first, I’m going to click the “update”button here to get some fresh search results because the ones you’ll see by default arecached from this date that’s displayed next to the update button. Now, if I scroll down to the bottom of thepage you’ll see the top 10 SERPs and a bunch of cool metrics which we’llgo deep into in another video.

 Now, the first two results are from a featuredsnippet and some related questions. But look at this one here from foodnetwork.com. This one page is generating over 76,000 monthlysearch visitors from all of the search queries that it ranks for! And if you look to the column next to it,you’ll see that it’s because they rank for over 4,000 search queries. This tells us that the topic has a lot ofsimilar long tail queries for which Google is showing this search result. So if you wanted to get similar results, youcould create a comprehensive resource, get some quality backlinks and rankfor all sorts of relevant queries. Isn’t that awesome? You can see the total search traffic of allof the top ranking pages so you can start targeting topics and not just single keywords.

 There’s also something crazy you can dowith the top 10 SERP results feature. So I’m going to open up another tab withKeywords Explorer and I'm going to type in something absolutely ridiculous. I’ll type in: “what is spiderman’s web thingy.” Then I’ll run the search. And as expected, the search volume is notavailable since it’s not exactly a natural query that many people would search for. But if we scroll down to the top 10 SERPs,you can see that there are a bunch of different top keywords we can target and potentiallyrank for the target query, “what is spiderman’s web thingy.” Now, this one here, “spiderman's web” has4,400 monthly searches with traffic potential of 802.

 And this one here from Wikipediahas potential of around 3,200. Then there’s “spiderman's web shooter”which has a search volume of 5,200 with traffic potential of around 1,000. So in this case, I’d probably choose “spiderman's web.” But since search volumes are a bit arbitrary,I’d have to do more research before settling on this topic. Now, the key takeaway here is to focus ontraffic potential of a topic rather than targeting a single keyword based on search volume alone,which I feel like I’ve really drilled down on here. And as you and I, we continue to go throughthis series, you’re going to find that shifting your focus to this traffic centered keywordresearch process, paired with some crafty tactics, will pay dividends.

And in the next video in this series, I’mgoing to show you how to find thousands of keywords with a bunch of cool hacks that willbuild onto everything that you just learned. Make sure to subscribe and let me know inthe comments what you think of this traffic centered approach to keyword research.