What Are Three Key Considerations When Evaluating Keywords For SEO?

Last Updated on May 17, 2023 by Jordan Alexo

When it comes to SEO, one of the most important aspects is your choice of keywords. Knowing how to pick the right one can make or break your online success.

According to Bloomberg, 80% of new blogs are doomed for failure within the span of 18 months – an upsetting statistic that can be avoided with proper execution.

One of the reasons why many blogs fail is because the wrong keywords were used in their SEO. It’s not enough to just randomly pick words and hope for the best; you need to make sure each keyword carries weight, relevance, and authority.

Also, your site domain authority and link profile are strong enough to outrank your competitors.

In this guide, you’ll discover three key factors to consider when evaluating potential keywords for SEO: relevancy, search volume, and competition.

And lastly, I’m going to share my secret five-step method to find low-competition keywords that will get you the best results.

Key Takeaways

• The wrong choice of keywords is one of the biggest reasons most blogs fail.
• The three key factors to consider when evaluating potential keywords for SEO are relevancy, search volume, and competition. You must analyze these factors before deciding which keywords to write content about.
• The higher your domain authority, the more competitive and high-volume keywords you can target. If you have a new website, you should target low-competition, long-tail keywords relevant to your niche.
• Topical authority plays a big role in ranking for specific keywords related to a particular topic. For this reason, the more content you build around a particular subject, the more likely Google will see you as an authority and rank you higher in search results for relevant search terms.
• Nothing beats consistency! You should publish content and update the existing one regularly. In other words, it is more important to publish three or more posts every week than fifty in a single week and never look at your site again.

3 Key Factors To Evaluate When Analyzing Keywords

Let’s quickly go over the three essential considerations when evaluating keywords for SEO.

Factor #1 – Keyword Difficulty

At this point, you should have an idea of your domain authority. Based on this, you can get an idea of the keyword difficulty you can aim for.

This difficulty depends on factors such as how many high authority websites are currently ranking for the keyword and the quality of their content.

If the first ten results, most sites have high domain authority. It may be difficult for your site to outrank them for that keyword. In this case, you’re better off choosing a different keyword with a lower difficulty level.

Factor #2- Evaluating Keyword Relevancy

How relevant are the web pages to the keyword you want to rank for? For instance, if you find a keyword about “dog training tips.” You want to check if the web pages ranking for that keyword are about that topic and not something else.

Let’s imagine most web pages are from high authority websites, but they are not about dog training tips. In this situation, you can outrank them by creating relevant and high-quality content about that subject that answers people’s queries better.

Factor #3 – Evaluating Keyword Traffic

Although everyone wants to target super low competitive keywords with high search volume, that is often impossible!

One thing you’ll realize is that SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner don’t give an accurate monthly search volume.

For this reason, search terms that show only ten searches per month may still be valuable. Also, you’ll realize they’ll bring more organic traffic to your website than you expected.

Not only they’ll rank for your main keyword, but they will also capture long-tail keywords that are related to your topic.

Of course, if you can find relevant keywords with higher volume, then it’s better to aim for those.

However, when evaluating your keywords, it’s essential to consider these factors.

What Are Factors You Should Consider About Your Site?

To see what keywords you should target, there are a few things you need to consider.

The fact is not all websites are created equally. Some websites are more credible, authoritative, and popular than others. For instance, a website like Inc. com has a higher domain authority score than most blogs out there.

So, it can easily target competitive keywords with high search volume and put them on the first page of search engine results.

What Is Domain Rating?

Domain Rating (DR) is a metric that measures the authority of a website’s backlink profile on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100.

For example, a new website might have a domain rating of 0, highly established website like CNN has over 90 Domain Rating (DR).

An easy way to see your domain rating is to use a tool like Ahrefs, which will provide you with your DR score. You can go here.

Now let’s take a look at three factors that help you determine which keywords are best for your SEO strategy.

1 – Domain Authority

I already mentioned this, but the more authoritative your website, the more competitive and high-volume keywords you can target. If you have a new website, you should build content around low-competition, long-tail keywords relevant to your niche.

In fact, this was one of the biggest mistakes I made with Jordan Alexo. Initially, I went straight for high-competition keywords without considering my site’s domain authority.

For this reason, my site didn’t increase monthly traffic despite my efforts to provide high-quality, optimized content. You should always consider your site’s domain authority when deciding which keywords to target for SEO.

2 – Topical Authority

The more content you have built around a particular topic, the more topical authority you have. For instance, if your site has a lot of content about the “Keto diet,” Google will recognize it as an authority on that topic.

You’ll have an easier time ranking for keywords related to that diet, and you’ll be able to target more competitive ones too. Contrary to someone who has a blog entirely about “artificial intelligence” and, for some reason, decided to write a post about the Keto diet.

That person’s site wouldn’t rank as well for “Keto Diet” related keywords since 99.9% of their content isn’t relevant to that topic.

Hence, it’s essential to clearly focus on the content you want to write and build topical authority around it. In other words, you should create content around specific topics and build your authority in that area.

3 – Frequency

Google loves a site that consistently publishes new content and updates existing one. Therefore, it’s more important to publish three or more posts every week; than fifty in a single week than never looking at your site again.

So, it’s a good idea to have a posting schedule so that, whether rain or shine, you’ll always provide fresh content for your readers.

Note

Always take into consideration these three factors when deciding which keywords to target. For instance, the lower your domain authority, the less competitive search terms you should write content about.

Instead, you should focus on building long-tail, niche keywords and increasing your topical authority through consistent content creation.

By doing so, you’ll increase your chances of ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and ultimately drive more organic traffic.

5 Steps To Find Good Low-Competition Keywords

Now that you understand the importance of targeting low-competition keywords let’s dive into three steps to finding them.

Step 1) Use Semrush

My favorite all-in-one SEO tool is Semrush. Also, you can get a free trial here. This tool lets you enter seed keywords and generate a list of related keywords.

Once you have an account, you can pass it to the next step.

Step 2) Enter Your Seed Keyword

The next step is to enter your seed keyword into Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. I’m going to use “SEO.” I know this search term is super competitive.

However, my idea is to find low-tail keywords that I can easily create content around that are related to SEO.

Step 3) Choose “Related” And Apply Filters

After entering your seed keyword, click on the “Related” tab. In the “Related” tab, you’ll see a list of similar keywords to the one you entered. To find low-competition keywords, apply the following filters:

Keyword Difficulty (KD): Customer Range (0-20)

Once again, you can choose a higher KD depending on your domain authority and how much time and effort you can dedicate to content creation.

Search Intent:

You can choose either informational or transactional. If you want to attract people looking to purchase products related to your niche, pick transactional. Otherwise, if you want to attract people to read informative content about your niche, choose “informational.”

Click on “Volume”

Now click on volume so you may have the ones with the highest search volume appearing at the top of your list.

Step 4) Analyze The Results

Once you have applied the filters, analyze the results. Often these long-tail keywords won’t have the same traffic volume as the shorter, more competitive keywords.

However, the idea is to create high-quality content around these long tail keywords and easily start ranking for them on Google, etc. This will drive organic traffic to your website over time.

Here are a few good keywords I found:

In a Google sheet, you can list all the keywords you found using Semrush. This makes it easier to keep track of your findings and prioritize the ones you want to create content around.

Step 5) Create Content Around These Keywords

Once you have about twenty or more keywords, it’s time to start creating high-quality content that includes the selected search terms.

Your content needs to reply to people’s search queries and intent as best as possible. Also, remember to include related keywords and internal links within your website to improve its relevance and authority on the topic.

Last Thoughts

So now you have a clear idea of how to use Semrush to find low-competition keywords related to your niche that you can create high-quality content around.

However, don’t forget to look at the three important factors of search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent when selecting the keywords to target. Also, you should consider your domain authority.

The higher your DR is, the higher the KD you can choose for your target keywords.

Once you have a nice selection of search terms, start creating high-quality content that includes the selected terms. Remember to prioritize the most relevant keywords and create informative, interesting content around them.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below, and Jordan Alexo will be happy to help you out!