The Only SEO Keyword Research Tutorial You’ll Ever Need (For Beginners)

This video outlines a 3-step keyword research process for SEO, emphasizing its critical role in driving leads and sales. The process begins with gathering a large pool of keywords using AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, then filtering these to identify the best opportunities, and finally clustering keywords into topical themes for content creation. The speaker stresses understanding keyword intent, categorizing keywords into informational, commercial, and transactional types, and mapping them to the customer buying journey. The methods described for gathering keywords include using AI prompts, analyzing subreddits and forums like Quora, and even extracting information from scholarly articles and Amazon book previews. Competitor analysis, both through paid tools and free methods like sitemap extraction, is also highlighted as a powerful way to uncover valuable keywords. The final step involves validating keywords by analyzing Google search results and determining if content can be created that surpasses existing offerings.

• Keyword research is the foundation of SEO, guiding all optimization efforts.
• The 3-step process involves gathering a large pool of keywords, filtering for opportunities, and clustering them into topical themes.
• Understanding keyword intent (informational, commercial, transactional, navigational) is crucial for targeting the right audience at each stage of the buying journey.
• AI tools, competitor analysis, and community platforms like Reddit and Quora are valuable resources for discovering relevant keywords.
• Validating keywords by analyzing SERPs and focusing on low-competition, high-relevance terms is essential for content creation and ranking.

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The Importance of Keyword Research [0:05]

• Quality keyword research is the starting point for generating leads, traffic, and sales through SEO.
• It acts as the "North Star," "compass," and "blueprint" for all SEO actions.
• Effective keyword research can determine the success or failure of an SEO campaign.
• A proven three-step process, refined over 10 years, has been used to generate millions of organic sessions.
• AI tools and clever techniques can drastically reduce the time needed to find hundreds of qualified keywords.

This section emphasizes that mastering keyword research is fundamental to any successful SEO strategy, providing the direction for all subsequent efforts.

"quality keyword research it's the North Star the compass the blueprint that dictates all of your SEO actions and can very well make the difference between success and failure in your SEO campaign"

Understanding Keyword Intent [1:38]

• The purpose of keyword research is to understand what target customers search for at each stage of their buying journey.
• This understanding allows for the creation of search-optimized content that solves problems, adds value, and leads to conversions.
• Not all searches are transactional, and not all businesses should expect direct sales from every search term.
• Keyword intent refers to the underlying purpose or goal behind a user's search query (e.g., learning, purchasing, comparing, finding a specific website).
• Keywords are typically categorized into four buckets: informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational.
• These categories can be mapped to the customer buying journey or a traditional marketing funnel.
• An example illustrates this progression: starting with an informational query like "best way to sharpen a knife," moving to a commercial query like "king wetstone reviews," and finally a transactional query like "buy king wetstone."
• Keywords can often be made local with modifiers like "near me" or specific city names.

This segment details the critical concept of keyword intent, explaining how understanding a user's goal behind a search is vital for creating relevant and effective content.

"Keyword intent is one of the most important things to master when it comes to keyword research and SEO in general"

The 3-Step Keyword Research Process [4:27]

• The keyword research process involves three main steps:
  1. Gather a large pool of keywords.
  2. Filter them to find the best opportunities.
  3. Cluster keywords into topical themes.
• This process is the same for both new and existing websites.
• The first step, gathering keywords, starts with "seed keywords"—the primary terms by which a business wants to be found.
• AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can be used to generate seed keywords by providing prompts with product descriptions and desired keyword categories (informational, commercial, transactional, short-tail, long-tail).
• It's important to prompt AI tools to output keywords one per line for easier processing.
• Metrics like keyword difficulty and search volume are then analyzed using tools like Hrefs' Keyword Explorer or Key Search.
• Keywords that are not indexed by tools may not have sufficient search volume to be a priority.
• Gathering keywords should be done without judgment initially, similar to not editing while writing.

This section introduces the core framework of the keyword research methodology, emphasizing the initial phase of broad keyword generation using AI and initial metric analysis.

"The first step is we're going to gather a large pool of keywords then we're going to filter them to find the best opportunities and then lastly we're going to Cluster these keywords into topical themes"

Gathering Keywords with AI and Tools [5:39]

• AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can be prompted with specific instructions to generate a wide range of keywords.
• Prompts should include the business type, product description, and desired keyword categories (informational, commercial, transactional), as well as a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords.
• It's beneficial to request specific formatting, such as one keyword per line.
• These AI-generated keywords can then be pasted into keyword research tools like Hrefs Keyword Explorer or Key Search for analysis.
• Tools provide metrics such as keyword difficulty and search volume, helping to identify promising opportunities. For instance, "property management software for small landlords" had a difficulty of 12 and 1.7k search volume.
• It's common for AI to sometimes output keywords in an unhelpful format, requiring a re-prompt to correct.
• When using tools like Key Search, keywords might need to be comma-separated if bulk pasting isn't supported.
• The speaker notes that it previously took hours to generate seed keywords that AI can now produce quickly.
• A prompt template for ChatGPT is offered in the video description.

This segment details the practical application of AI tools for generating a substantial list of initial keywords, highlighting the efficiency gains compared to manual methods.

"thanks to some powerful AI tools and some clever techniques you can get hundreds of qualified keywords in a fraction of the time"

Expanding Keyword Discovery with AnswerThePublic, Reddit, and Quora [13:12]

• AnswerThePublic is a free tool that provides keyword variants based on a target keyword, offering insights into user questions and related queries. While not always effective for every business type, it's worth exploring.
• Reddit analysis involves finding passionate communities related to your niche and examining discussions for keyword ideas. For example, searching for "property managers" and "site:reddit.com" can lead to relevant subreddits.
• Subreddits like "real estate investing" and "property management" can reveal common pain points and user needs (e.g., "managing high tenant turnover").
• Quora analysis is similar, using searches like "property manager" and "site:quora.com" to find questions people are asking.
• Analyzing keywords that subreddits or Quora pages rank for in search results (e.g., top 10 or top 20 positions) can uncover highly relevant terms.
• Examples from these platforms include "best property management software," "fleas in house" (leading to content ideas), and "how to get into Property Management."

This part of the video showcases free and community-driven methods for keyword discovery, expanding beyond AI to tap into real user conversations and search trends.

"Answer the public comes in clutch"

Leveraging Scholarly Articles and Amazon for Keywords [17:49]

• Scholarly articles or books related to a niche can be a source of in-depth and often overlooked keyword ideas.
• Tools like Claude or ChatGPT can extract keywords from images of text (e.g., screenshots of book pages or table of contents) or even entire uploaded PDFs.
• This method can uncover knowledge not readily available on search engine results pages (SERPs), offering a competitive advantage.
• Examining the table of contents of relevant books on Amazon can reveal key topics and potential keywords.
• For example, analyzing the table of contents of a property management book might yield terms like "dealing with problems," "when tenants don't pay rent," and "when a tenant dies."
• The extracted keywords can then be plugged into keyword research tools to check their metrics.

This section introduces a more creative and in-depth approach to keyword research, utilizing academic and commercial literature to find unique and valuable terms.

"this can really give you a competitive Advantage"

Competitor Analysis for Keyword Discovery [20:34]

• Competitor analysis is a highly effective method for finding keywords.
• Identify organic competitors by using tools like Hrefs' Site Explorer or by simply searching your seed keyword on Google and examining the top-ranking sites.
• Analyzing a competitor's organic keywords can reveal thousands of terms they rank for.
• It's useful to narrow down competitor keyword analysis to their top-ranking positions (e.g., top 10 or top 20) for relevance.
• Filter out branded keywords (e.g., competitor names) that are not relevant to your own business.
• This analysis can uncover unexpected but highly relevant keywords, such as "squatter's rights" variations.
• Even without paid tools, competitor sitemaps can be used with tools like SEO Owl's sitemap extractor and AI to pull keyword ideas from their URL structures.
• Identifying related competitors using search operators (e.g., "related:appfolio.com -appfolio.com") can further broaden the analysis.

This segment emphasizes the strategic value of analyzing competitors' SEO efforts to discover keywords that are already driving traffic for them.

"competitor analysis it's one of my favorites honestly"

Refining and Filtering Keywords with Hrefs Tools [25:29]

• Hrefs' "Matching Terms" feature can generate keyword ideas based on the top keywords from your list, finding phrases you might have missed.
• This feature can yield a large number of keywords (e.g., 19,376).
• Hrefs provides handy presets to filter these results further, such as "high volume low competition" (e.g., difficulty up to 10, at least 500 monthly searches).
• The "User Lifecycle" filter helps identify keywords relevant to different stages of the funnel, like "top of funnel" (who, what, when, where, why, guide, tutorial).
• The "Questions" preset helps find keywords in the form of questions.
• Similar filtering processes should be applied to "Related Terms" (keywords not directly containing your phrases but related in Google's eyes) and "Search Suggestions" (Google's autocomplete suggestions).
• The goal is to filter down the massive keyword pool to hyper-relevant terms.

This section dives into the advanced filtering capabilities of tools like Hrefs, showing how to systematically narrow down a large keyword list to find the most promising opportunities.

"We have 225 keywords but we are not done yet because now I'm going to show you one of the most powerful features of HFS and probably my favorite feature of the tool itself"

Validating Keywords and Building Topical Authority [27:34]

• After collecting a large keyword pool, it's crucial to validate keywords and determine their relevance and achievability.
• Set a low keyword difficulty (e.g., 1) when starting a new site to focus on "easy wins" within specific topical clusters.
• Analyze the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a keyword by Googling it and examining the top 5-10 results.
• Ask: Can content be created that is better than the current top results? Can the product or service be naturally integrated?
• If the answer to both is "yes," the keyword is a valid target.
• Broaden keyword difficulty (e.g., to 3) to find slightly more competitive but still attainable keywords.
• Identify opportunities for creating comprehensive content series, such as blog posts for each state related to "squatter's rights."
• Clustering keywords by topic or theme is the third step, grouping interrelated keywords with separate intents to build topical authority.
• Topical authority signals to search engines that a website is a trusted expert on a subject, leading to higher rankings.
• Building topical clusters typically involves a "pillar page" (main hub) with interconnected sub-pages.
• When similar keywords have almost identical intent, choose the one with higher search volume to rank for both. Hrefs' "Parent Topic" feature can help identify the primary keyword to target.

This final section explains how to assess the viability of keywords, build authority through thematic content, and strategically choose which keywords to target for maximum impact.

"the ultimate goal of keyword research is to create a plan that Maps search optimized content to each of these relevant queries"