SEO Keyword Strategy: Search Demand, Keyword Value and Ranking Difficulty

Choosing the right keywords is one of the most important and high-return activities for your business online.

With keyword research, you can understand shifts in demand and search behaviour and create products, services, and content people are actively looking for.

The above screenshot is from Google Trends which shows us the different levels of search interest for two keywords in the vegan niche. Notice how these two closely related topics have different degrees of search interest (vegan recipes is more popular than vegan diet) but they share one common trend which is the peak period which has the highest amount of searches in the year.

A good keyword strategy can help you learn more about your customers and target the right search terms for SEO.

Ranking for the right keywords on Google can drive thousands of visits and leads to your business at no cost. Natural, organic search traffic from Google.

I’ve experimented with MANY keyword research tools and read hundreds of articles before ranking my site on Google — one thing I know for sure is that keywords can make or break your success online.

Here are 3 essential keyword strategies to quickly rank your blog on Google.

#1. Find niche keywords with search demand

Search demand is defined by the volume of searches made for a keyword. It tells us the traffic potential and market demand for your niche.

First, brainstorm 5 – 10 primary keywords that describe your niche topic. Let’s say, you’re in the yoga business and you’re considering which yoga accessory to sell.

Step 1: Use Google Keyword Planner 

In one glance, we can see that “yoga mat”, “yoga blocks”, “yoga pants” have way more search demand than yoga bag or yoga towel.

Let’s choose yoga pants with 100k-1M monthly searches.

Now, we are going to dive deeper into the yoga pants niche and discover more related keywords to build our business around.

Step 2: Use Google auto-suggest

Notice how I added a “buy” at the end? This narrows down my keyword research to conversion-ready search terms.

Copy those suggested keywords in a spreadsheet and paste them into Google Keyword Planner to validate their search volume.

Awesome, we can target these keywords in the yoga pants niche have sufficient search demand:

• flare yoga pants (1k – 10k)
• pink yoga pants (1k – 10k)

In comparison, ‘funky yoga pants’ and ‘blue yoga pants’ have a much lower search volume. Though I wouldn’t rule out blue yoga pants completely, but I would certainly not target ‘funky yoga pants’ because the avg. monthly search volume is too low.

I would avoid anything below 1k for now as that might not drive enough search traffic.

Related: SEO Made Simple: A Step By Step Guide to Rank on Google

Understand the search demand curve

The search demand curve illustrates the distribution of search traffic based on the number of words a keyword has.

Seed Keywords: 1-2 word keywords. The shorter the keyword phrase, the higher its search volume.

Long-tail Keywords: 4-5 word keyword. The longer a keyword phrase, the lower its search volume.

Long-tail keywords have lesser search demand because there are just fewer people searching for such specific phrases.

However, such keywords often convert better because they reach people in the later stage of the purchasing funnel.

A person searching for “lemon tarts” is likely just browsing and not ready to buy. One the other hand, a person searching for “lemon tarts near me” practically has a credit card ready in their hands!

#2. Determine the Value of a Keyword

How much is a keyword worth to your business?

A high-value keyword is able to match your content to the right visitors searching for it, attract potential subscribers and sales leads to your site.

Are your attracting the right visitors with this keyword

Keyword research is not only about ranking for keywords that bring traffic to your site, it’s about attracting qualified traffic. Traffic that is relevant to your business.

The right type of visitor will do any of these things:

• Find your content relevant and stay on your page
• Subscribe to your opt-in / newsletter
• Sign up for your webinar
• Make a purchase

Ask yourself if the keyword you’re targeting will attract visitors to take action on your site.

Related: 13 Actionable Tips to Create a Killer Content Strategy

What is the conversion potential of this keyword

The conversion potential of a keyword tells you whether it is a profitable keyword to target.

Commercial intent keywords have high conversion potential and are likely to drive sales leads to your site. Ranking for such high value keywords will impact your business bottomline.

To check if a keyword has commercial intent, go to Google, and type a keyword.

Usually a keyword with 3-4 paid ads above indicate that it is a highly lucrative and conversion-intent keyword.

Businesses that pay for sponsored listings on Google ads have deep pockets. They are bidding to rank on the top of Google’s search results with only one goal in mind — drive clicks.

These are also known as PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads. Because advertisers pay for each click attributed from those ads.

You can bet that these keywords are highly profitable, conversion prone because each click is meant to drive return on advertising spend (ROAS).

#3. Understand keyword ranking difficulty

Know which battles you can win, and which ones you can’t. Understanding how difficult it will be to rank for your target keyword is part of having a good SEO strategy.

There a few ways to gauge keyword difficulty. The first way is to look at Google’s search results and analyze who are the pages ranking in the top 10.

Basically, those websites are your competition vying for the same position on the search results.

Example 1: “cheap flights”

Example 1, “cheap flights” is an insanely competitive keyword! The top 5 ranking websites are kayak.com, expedia.com, tripadvisor.com, booking.com 

It will be very, very difficult to outrank these sites.

Example 2, “vegan diet”

Thinking of entering the vegan diet niche? To rank for this keyword, you’ll have to outrank nhs.uk, vegansociety.com, mayoclinic.org

Verdict: Highly difficult.

Outsmart your competition by targeting long-tail keywords

A great way to find long-tail keywords that are easy to rank for is to look at related searches at the bottom of the search results.

Voila! A goldmine of potential long-tail keywords that are relevant to the topic of vegan diet.

So that’s how you can skillfully outsmart your competition by narrowing your niche, and target long-tail keywords with a more specific intent.

Secret to ranking quickly on Google: Target long-tail keywords with high traffic potential.

These are high-volume long-tail keywords with at least 10k-100k monthly searches. Not too competitive to rank for, but have the potential to drive tons of organic traffic to your site due to its high search volume.

This keyword tactic was a GAMECHANGER for my blog, and I’ve been able to gain traffic steadily with minimal effort.