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Do you want to learn how to find keywords for content writing? You’re in the right place! I’m Marie, and after having been a successful YouTuber and Influencer with over 20,000 subscribers, I quit it all to grow my couple travel blog with my partner Eric. In less than a year, I managed to 10x my traffic, reach over 50,000 monthly sessions and generate revenue by implementing my SEO and Keyword Research Strategy. I’m now an SEO strategist and teach others how to increase their traffic in my course Keywords That Convert and through coaching.
One aspect of blogging that is absolutely and undeniably essential to growing traffic is having a solid SEO strategy. Learning how to find keywords for a website is one of the basics of SEO content writing. Without it, it is likely that your blog won’t be getting consistent and increasing traffic. Keywords for content writer bloggers are the same as ingredients for a cook, you can’t do your job well without them.
I know, from experience that writing blog posts you’re passionate about and not getting anyone to read them is absolutely heart breaking. All these hours and efforts that you put into posts and no-one even know they exist! It’s even more frustrating when you know there are people out there who are looking for your expertise, they just can’t find you.
We’re going to turn this around! In this post, I teach you about keyword writing and how to get your targeted audience to find you online so they can benefit from your experience and expertise while allowing you to increase your blog traffic!
In this post, you’ll learn:
- how to find best keywords for SEO without getting flagged by Google
- how to find keywords for blog posts that are good for you
- how to find organic keywords in Google Analytics
- how to find what keywords a website is ranking for
***Some of the links in this post are affiliate links meaning we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This does not change the fact that we only recommend products, stays, activities and attractions we are satisfied with and all opinions expressed here are our own.
What are keywords in content writing
Before we jump in detail into how to find the best keywords for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how to find keywords for your business, it’s important to understand what a keyword is.
What we call a keyword is one or several words that people are searching for in search engines such as Google, Bing, or Ecosia. Though we call those search terms “keywords”, it would actually be more accurate to call them a keyphrases as they usually contain more than one word.
There are several types of keywords including short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are usually understood as being two or less words. For example, “small dogs” would be considered a short-tail keyword. Long-tail keywords are usually understood as being more than two words and can often go up to ten words. For example, “can small dogs walk more than two hours” would be considered a long term keyword.
To sum it up, and for example, every time you search for a recipe on the internet, you are using keywords (or keyphrases) without even knowing it.
Why worry about how to find keywords for content writing on your blog
There are several reasons why the importance of keywords for writing blog posts is so prominent, see as follows:
Knowing how to find best SEO keywords is the base for traffic growth
Keywords are essential to have a solid SEO strategy that increase your blog traffic. The importance of keywords in content writing is due to the fact that they are the only reliable indicator of what your audience is actually searching for. Without them, you might as well be writing to the walls and hoping for a miracle. Likely, your blog will be getting very little traffic if you don’t focus on a solid Keyword Research Strategy.
Knowing how to find the most searched keywords on Google gives you marketing trends insight
Without a proper Keyword Research Strategy, you cannot have insight of current marketing trends. How will you know what’s topical, what everyone is talking about, what could possibly shift your perspective as a topic expert? You won’t if you don’t know how to find keywords for content writing.
Knowing how to find top keywords for a website allows you to gain customers
When you know how to find keywords for content writing, you then know what your potential customers are looking for. This allows you to tailor your offer to them, but also put out content that will intercept them in their buying journey, all leading to more customers on your end.
Knowing how to find keywords for your website allows you to gain user intent insights
Knowing how to find keywords for content writing is a powerful skill that gives you insight on the intent of users. Are people looking to buy your services or are they not at that stage yet? By gaining insight on this data, you allow yourself to tailor your offer, write more targeted content and shift your perspective if necessary.
Monetizing your site
If your goal is to work online, you need to make an income online. As a blogger, this is done by monetising your blog. There are several ways through which you can monetise your blog such as ads, affiliate marketing, and products. But what all these ways have in common is that they all rely on traffic. A blog without traffic is nothing and cannot be monetized. And the best way to increase your traffic is a reliable and solid SEO Keyword Research Strategy.
Keyword Research: Learn how to find keywords for content writing
One of the best advantages about blogging is that you can learn to do it right. SEO article writing is a skill and it heavily relies on a solid Keyword Research Strategy. An efficient Keyword Research Strategy teaches you how to find keywords for blogger content writing and how to find low competition keywords with high traffic that will increase your traffic and achieve the goals listed in the previous section.
Download our Free SEO and Keyword Research Audit Checklist here or book a one-on-one coaching session where I can teach you my exact Keyword Research Strategy that allowed me to 10x my traffic in under a year and monetise my blog.
In this section, I teach you how to find the keywords for SEO that will increase your traffic on your blog. Some of these ways are free and some work by subscription or a one-time fee.
You can also download our Free Ebook on the best 18 FREE SEO tools that will increase your traffic.
Thinking about your niche, the first step of how to find keywords for content writing
The first step of how to find out keywords for a website is thinking about your niche and your content pillars. To stay relevant, you shouldn’t have more than five content pillars to avoid the risk of spreading yourself to thin and not growing any authority or expertise.
Thinking about your niche and content pillars opens the door to a brainstorming session. Take a piece of paper and start thinking about blog topics for content writing that would work for your blog and the audience you’re trying to attract. Often times, people get lost in a never-ending list of topics and analysis of competitors and forget what they are all about. This is a good way to avoid that.
For example, if you blog about pets, one topic on your blog could include pet food.
Think about specific things about those topics and learn how to find long tail keywords for SEO
This section explains how to find long tail keywords free of charge, meaning without using any paying tool.
Now that you have a list of blog topics, you need to be more specific to find a lot of different keywords. How to find longtail keywords isn’t hard if you can be a bit creative. Your niche and content pillars will also help you determine what these long tail keywords could look like. For example if one of your pillars deals with pet budgets and another with pet food, you could try to find keywords that mix the two ideas.
For example, in the previous section, we saw that one topic of your blog could be pet food. By extension, there are lots of different sub-topics that are encompassed in this one.
Use a keyword research tool: Top 5 keyword research tools to learn how to find keywords for content writing
Another way to do content writing keyword research is to find keywords from website tools. How to do a keyword search for free has its limits and there comes a times where using professional tools is inevitable to grow your blog.
One thing to know is that these tools have really multiplied in the past few years so it might feel overwhelming to try and choose one. Instead of listing all of them below and pretending they are all the best, I selected the ones that I’ve actually used at different stages of my blogging journey. It’s a mix of very complex tools, free tools, easy and cheap tools, and paying tools that I use now.
There are a number of keyword research tools out there so let’s check the best ones out!
- Keysearch for the best SEO keyword research tool
Keysearch is the keyword research tool that I prefer out of all the ones in this list. I find it user-friendly, easy to understand right away and 98% accurate in terms of data. It is Keysearch that I’ve used to grow my blog traffic and that has allowed me to multiply my traffic by 10 under a year and reach 50,000 sessions. You can join Keysearch here.
By using Keysearch as part of my keyword research strategy, I am able to rank on the first page of Google for most of my posts, which means I am no longer writing for the walls and waiting for a miracle to happen! As my traffic grows consistently, I’m also able to monetise my blog and generate revenue.
One of the best things about Keysearch is that, when searching for a seed term (for example “pet food”), it will provide you with over 600 other keywords similar to yours but that could be a lot easier to rank for! This gives you more keyword ideas that you probably didn’t even know people were searching for!
- Moz for how to find keywords for SEO free of charge
Moz’ is an SEO platform that offers a free keyword explorer tool. It’s not as developed as other paying tools and doesn’t present all the date. But that has its own advantages as it make the platform a lot less overwhelming, especially for beginners. Moz also provides you with a priority score that can let you know whether the found keyword is good for your blog or not. Though it doesn’t replace a proper analysis and keyword research strategy, it’s pretty good for a free tool!
- Google Keyword Planner, a free keyword research tool
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool developed by the king itself, Google. Google Keyword Planner offers two main features.
The first feature allows you to explore keywords, find ideas and discover new keywords you haven’t though of. Similar to other tools, you input a word and it will come up with a range of similar queries. You can order them by volume, competition and filter them as well.
The second feature allows you to do a deeper research on keywords and obtain more data to analyse whether the keyword is right for you.
- Semrush, another keyword tool
Semrush is another keyword research tool. More complex and difficult to understand, especially for beginners, it also offers more assistance and features, some that you, however may not ever need.
Semrush shares a lot of SERP information, and provides information on search volume, gaps, and lets you optimise your content as you read it. There is a lot that can be done with Semrush which is more useful for established bloggers. If you’re starting out or you’re an intermediate blogger, it might overwhelm you. If however, it interest you, Semrush allows for up to 10 searches a day if you want to try it out!
- Keywords Everywhere, one of the cheapest tools to find keywords
When I started focusing on SEO, I wasn’t sure it was worth it (what an idiot I was!!). So I didn’t want to invest into a paying keyword research tool. It turns out that I also wanted a tool that could really help me as opposed to sort of help me and we all know that all good things have a price. I wasn’t ready to go with Keysearch yet, but I had also used free keyword tools and wanted to check what was beyond that. So I went with Keywords Everywhere.
Keywords Everywhere is a browser extension that you can add to Google Chrome for free. To use it, you need to purchase a number of searches on their website. At the time I was able to purchase 100,000 searches for $12 which I though was good enough for me.
And it was! Using Keywords Everywhere changed my approach to blogging and really got me into SEO. It was, at the time, the step I needed to go further. It is with Keywords Everywhere that I started getting my first rankings on the first page of Google, against, I must say, websites that were much stronger than mine. I was so proud! It was no chance, it was just pure strategy.
I eventually outgrew Keywords Everywhere because the features are limited but it was a great beginner and cheap tool to do keyword research.
If you have a tight budget and would like to dip into keyword research with one toe first, try it out!
Check keywords you already rank for: how to find keywords on Google Analytics
You might be wondering how do I find keywords in Google Analytics and you’re right to wonder as one way how to find keywords for content writing is simply find out what keywords you already rank for. If you already have a blog started, there is likely a number of keywords that you get more traffic for. These likely rank better than others even when it’s low. From these keywords, you can start thinking of related queries that people may be asking and replicate what you’ve already done.
How to find keywords in Google Analytics is actually quite easy. First you’ll need to link your blog to Google Analytics and wait a few days for it to generate data. Once it’s done, you can head to the tab “pages and screens” where it will tell you which posts ranks the best and which one gets the most traffic.
If you’re wondering where to find keywords in Google Analytics, it’s actually another question you should ask yourself: how to find keywords in Google Search Console. GSC is a bit easier to navigate, especially for beginners so that’s what I’ll use here.
When going into your GSC, you can see directly which posts are bringing the most traffic and which keywords are ranking best for each post. You can use that to decide on your next keyword!
Hang where people search to find ideas
Blogging content writing requires you to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Blog content writing should be a selfless activity as your purpose should be to serve others and help them find answers to their questions. That’s why you need to hang out where your audience does. And that’s in the Google Search bar!
The Google Search bar is a goldmine of information. The best feature that can teach you how to find keywords for content writing is the auto-auto-suggestion of queries.
For example, if you type “pet food” into the search bar, a drop down will appear with a range of suggestions and long-long-tail keywords! That’s a great place to start for some keyword ideas.
Get new keywords writing ideas with AlsoAsked and Google Trends
There are other ways to get new blogging and content writing keyword ideas for free. For example, Google Trends tells you how to find trending keywords on Google. you can then pick the ones that are relevant to your niche and pillars.
AlsoAsked is another free platform that is quite powerful when it comes to finding keywords for SEO content writing. It essentially generates more queries related to yours and gives you dozens of keyword ideas, all for free!
AlsoAsked is one of the free SEO tools I recommend in my FREE Ebook on 18 Free SEO tools to increase traffic:
Competitor analysis
Part of a solid Keyword Research Strategy is competitor analysis. You may be wondering how to find the keywords of a website or how to find out what keywords competitors are using, and you’re right to wonder! Any business must monitor its competitors.
Now there are a couple fo things to keep in mind when doing competitor analysis and learning how to find keywords of competitors website. The first one is that plagiarism is illegal in most countries so you shouldn’t copy someone else’s content, even if you credit them, without their approval first. Second, just because a competitor is ranking for a keyword, doesn’t mean that’s a good keyword for you!
One way to know how to find competitor keywords, is simply by checking out their blog posts and seeing what words come up regularly that they are probably targeting. To do this, you can:
- use your eyes, though that may take a while
- use the search shortcut ctrl+f and type one word you think they could be targeting. As you search, check out what words are surrounding this one and if there is any that come up regularly.
- learn how to find keywords on a page: check out the page source
How to find good keywords for SEO: Short tail or long tail keywords?
As you can see from above, searching for long-tail keywords is one way how to find SEO keywords for a website. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be looking for short-tail keywords at all. If you can rank for them, go for it!
Organise your keywords
Once you know how to find SEO keywords for free for your website, it’s important to be able to organise them. Google Keyword Planner is a popular tool, especially among beginners. You can check it out here.
If you’re wondering how do I find SEO keywords that are good for my blog, let’s see this in the next section.
How to find keywords for content writing that are good for your blog
Whether you’re looking for how to find profitable keywords, how to find low competitive keywords or how to find best keywords for blog, you need to learn how to find the right keywords for SEO that are good for your blog. That what we are seeing in this section.
- Realistic terms: how to find out keywords for SEO shouldn’t be your one and only point of focus. You should also be looking for realistic terms that people are searching for.
- Low competition: the most popular keywords often have a high competition which can be hard to beat especially for a beginner.
- High search volume per month: A good keyword for your blog is a keyword that has a high search volume.
- Relevancy to your niche: Knowing how to find relevant keywords for your website will allow you to find keywords that are good for your blog. It’s essential to impose yourself as an authority.
- Relevancy to one content pillar: Just like it should be relevant to your niche, a keyword should be relevant to at least one of your content pillars to establish expertise and authority
- You can write posts about a similar topic: Writing only one post about a certain topic doesn’t establish authority. When you find a keyword, ensure that you can write about similar queries.
- Think of user intent and experience: Always think about user intent and user experience when choosing keywords. A good keyword is one that provides your readers with a positive experience for both.
- Specificity: Keywords that are general do not demonstrate authority, expertise, trustworthiness or experience. Keywords that are specific and targeted do. So be specific and pick keywords that are too.
- Personal experience: Experience is a recent add on to the E-A-T requirements of Google, which are now E-E-A-T. If you want to know how to find keyword for content writing, you need to pick keywords for which you can bring your own personal experience to.
How to find keywords for content writing: The Don’ts
Doing keyword research for content writing and knowing how to find best keywords for your website is an essential part of your SEO strategy. That said, with that comes the temptation to implement certain techniques that are total red flags. Some of the techniques might have worked in the past but are not longer reliable or/and are not longer accepted by Google which means your blog could possibly be red flagged and that would result in no-indexing, loss of rankings and inevitably loss of traffic. To ensure that your keywords content is reliable, efficient and in line with Google, I’m sharing the following don’ts to avoid at all cost!
Think you know better
Knowing how to find the best keywords for your website is something we all had to learn as bloggers. It is the foundation of traffic growth, yet a lot of people keep thinking they can figure it out on their own. The reality is that you probably will figure part of the strategy on your own, this post being part of it but you cannot believe that you will know better and guess what your audience wants to know about. You cannot give in and let the little voice in your head tell you that you can just pick keywords you think people search for without doing proper keyword research. It won’t work, it will waste your time and you’ll end up discouraged. So please, let me save you some time and don’t think you know what your audience is searching for. Instead, learn how you can know what your audience is searching for.
Keyword stuffing
Ten years ago, bloggers used to write blog posts of 300 words and then they would stuff keywords at the end, making sure the colour of the text was white to hide them in the white of the page. Back then, this would get you to rank on the first page of Google! But these days are long gone. And keyword stuffing in general is a technique that’s long gone and could even get you marked as spam. Keyword stuffing, in addition to that example, is when you add way too many keywords in your post in places that don’t make sense and in ways that are not natural, essential just to stuck them in there. Keyword stuffing is a big no!
Copy other’s content hoping it attracts traffic on your site
Though competitor analysis is part of a solid SEO strategy and can help you get ideas for keywords, copying your competitors content is illegal, unethical and on top of that, probably completely useless in most cases.
If your competitors are doing better than you, it’s because they have a proper SEO and Keyword Research Strategy that is tailored to their blog and business. Not because they copied someone else.
By copying other bloggers, you will harm your blog more than you will help it, in the following ways:
- You will loose respect from your peers which in the long run can impact your business big time
- You will loose credibility among your peers and your audience. Copying others always end up being known by the rest of us and possibly eventually your audience. You will loose any authority you thought you had.
- Your traffic will likely not increase. Analysing your competitors’ content is a great way to find ideas, find trends, and give you ideas to improve your own SEO. But copying a competitor (by copying the post or just the keyword) just because you think you can rank for the same content will likely not work for you if you don’t have a proper SEO strategy.
You can book a one-on-one SEO coaching with me here.
Forget to adjust your perspective
Your perspective on your blog is your brand. Knowing how to find keywords for content writing without knowing your perspective and adjusting where needed will not take you very far.
How to find keywords for content writing: Learn
Knowing how to pick keywords for content marketing is a skill that you need to learn and invest in. Of course, you could probably figure it out on your own but by the time you do, it might have evolved and you would have to start over without even having had the time to implement what took you so long to learn.
Free resources
How do you learn about the best way to find keywords for SEO, you ask? Well, you’re doing it already! There is a ton of free resources online that can help you learn how to find keywords for content writing.
Here are some of ours:
Paying resources
There comes a time in every blogger’s journey where we need to learn from people who have achieved what we want to achieve. Most successful bloggers have worked hard and smart to get where they are and it’s because they didn’t wait to figure it out on their own and sought help and guidance instead.
Now everyone is at a different stage. You may be at the stage of thinking about having a blog. Most beginners start with free resources to get going and start finding their way in a field that can be pretty overwhelming. However, there are definitely pros in buying a course or getting coaching as soon as you start, such as:
- Getting answers to your questions quickly
- No gatekeeping
- Learn updated strategies right away
- Obtain quicker results
- Can monetise blog sooner
At a different stage, you may have a good blog with no traffic and have no idea why. What’s obvious is that if what you have been doing is not working, you need to change or adjust your strategy. In that case, a professional audit of your blog or a personalised coaching can be the push you need to get to the next stage.
You can also book an SEO audit of your website. After the audit, I will send you a list of recommendations to improve your site’s SEO including your Keyword Research Strategy.
How to use keywords in content writing
Now that we’ve seen ways to find keywords for your blog posts, you may be wondering how to use keywords in article writing. How to include keywords in content is quite important as some parts of a post are more valuable for Google as others. This means that if you don’t include your keywords in those sections, you will likely not be able to rank for them. In addition, there are certain ways you should write your keywords that will make a difference.
How to write keywords for website
When you do keyword research, keywords pop up in different ways and different order. For example, after a tedious keyword research, you may find that “vegan pet food” is a good keyword for your site. When looking for similar queries to add to your post, you might find other key phrases like “pet food vegan”, “pet food that is vegan”, “vegan food for pets”. You may think that all these phrases mean the same thing and you’re right. And you may be tempted to make your life easier by only using one of those since they all mean the same thing. That’s where you are wrong.
You should always write the keywords for your website as you’ve found it. So if your keyword is “vegan pet food”, the three words “vegan”, “pet” and “food” should be used in that order.
Where to place your keywords
Finding keywords for your content is one thing but knowing where to place them is another. When learning about a solid Keyword Research Strategy, you’ll see that the number of keywords you should include is never the same and varies depending on certain criteria. That said, where you place the keywords is a different story. There are certain parts of your post that should always contain your keyword. Let’s see them below:
- Title
- Headings
- Metadata
- Images
- Body of the post
Advanced placement of keywords
It would be a shame to know how to find good SEO keywords but not placing them in these to advanced placements:
Conclusion on how to find the best keywords for writing content
As you can see knowing how to find keywords for content writing is more complex than it looks at first but it remains the basis of a solid SEO strategy for traffic increase. Though there is a learning curve, anyone can learn how to find the right keywords. While keyword research tools and free keyword research techniques are great components of keyword research, they won’t do anything without a reliable Keyword Research strategy.
Want to learn more about how to increase your blog traffic? Check out my free SEO resources here.
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