Keyword Analysis

Do you know the difference between Head Tail and Long Tail Keywords? Learn how to do a keyword analysis for your website or page and create more effective content for your brand!

 

What is a Keyword?  

Keywords are terms inserts at search engines when there is a need, as a doubt, a guide, a comparison or search for products or services. In SEO, keywords can be everything: person, products, services, objects and places.  

  

Keywords are divided in two types: Keywords Head Tail e Keywords Long Tail.   

Keywords Head Tail:  

These are the shortest and most generic terms, usually with higher search volumes (¹⁾. 

And despite the search volume, these keywords have a keyword competitiveness (2) and very high competition.   

  

Keyword "Marketing" for example, can rank all contents, websites and materials with a wide range. After all, this keyword can refer to multiple threads. For example: Digital Marketing, Personal Marketing, Business Marketing, Traditional Marketing, etc. 

  

So, even with a large volume of organic traffic, it usually to be less qualified, as anyone looking for this particular term can land on your page. That's why they are extremely generic. 

Keywords Long Tail:  

Are longer and specific terms for searches, for example “Digital marketing guide for beginners".   

  

These keywords have lower search volume and, consequently, less traffic, but with higher qualification and conversion chances. This is because it brings more targeted and specific content and be better to clearing up doubts quickly. Long Tail Keywords are ideal for converting visitors into leads. 

Definition of competitive metrics: 

(1) Search volumes: is the volume of searches on search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) for each keyword. 

  

(2) Keywords competitiveness: is the difficulty that involves ranking for a certain keyword. It is influenced by the popularity of the keyword and the level of competition in the industry in question. 

How to choose the best keyword?  

Authority Score 

In the first place, check how your Authority Score.  

Authority Score is a "rating" (from 0 to 100) given by search engines about the authority that a site has. 

 

The higher the Authority Score, the greater the authority and relevance of a domain, which helps place the site in search engines and conveys confidence. 

 

Authority examples links: government websites, Wikipédia, websites of large associations and institutions, websites of large media groups, etc. 

 

To check the Authority Score, you can use the Semrush (Domain Overview): 

 

  

if you still don't have access to Semrush for your project, request via email geovanna.bispo@ab-inbev.com.

 

This metric influences the keyword decision process because the more authority a site has, the easier it can be to rank keywords. And, consequently, the smaller the Authority Score rating, the harder the ranking. That's because the site is still gaining space and trust in search engines. 

 

It is like a company. The more time and relevance it has in the market, the greater the public's trust in it, as people already understand who this company is, how it behaves and if there is stability. On Google, it works more or less the same way. 

 

The more popular your site is, the more people will come to and mention it, which improves the Authority Score as your site is being seen as a reference in the industry in question. The name of these mentions made by other websites is Backlink. 

  

And for your website to be a reference in a certain subject, is important that the page content be quality and have assertive keywords, so that it is mentioned by other sites as an authority in the segment. 

 

Know more about what is and how to create quality content at Content guide. 

Persona 

To choose the best terms, be Head Tail or Long Tail, you will need to ask yourself: how would my target audience search for my product or service? 

  

And, for you can answer this question, it is necessary to know your public well. That's why it's so important that a Persona be created. 

  

Persona is basically an example of an ideal buyer. This example is based on qualitative and quantitative data from market research and competitors. It presents a creation of your personal stories, motivations, goals, challenges and concerns. 

  

Therefore, to perform a meaningful keyword analysis, it is essential that you understand your customer. 

  

To know more about what is a persona and how to create a buyer persona, check out the

check out the Persona Creation Guide. 

Goal 

All the SEO strategies begin with goal settings. They can be increasing the number of visits to the blog, increasing the number of subscriptions to the newsletter, improving traffic, increasing the length of time on the site, etc. 

 

Ask yourself what the purpose of your website and page is, and search for keywords for each of those goals. How does my persona search for this? 

 

Remember that you can do targeted keyword analysis for each of your pages, as well as define general keywords for your entire site, based on your product or service, for example. 

 

Suppose that you have e-commerce for beer sales. You can work with the keywords “beer” and “best beer” on all website pages. And on each pages, you can work specific products with Long Tail keywords, for example:  

 

For the gluten free beers page, you work the word “gluten free beer” and its variations from your search, for the lager page you use "lager beer" and its variations, and so on. 

How to do a Keyword Analysis 

After defining your buyer persona, that is, your ideal consumer and the goal that you want with your page, do a brainstorm with all terms that can be used to find the solution according persona necessity. Think all variations and semantics are possible.  

  

Then, use the SEO tools and your keywords list to collect datas. After, use the SEO strategist that lives in you and choose your ideal keywords! Below we outline a good process for defining which keywords you prioritize and/or study. 

Brainstorm  

Make questions to yourself about how your buyer persona would search for products or services. What search terms they go to use to find content that attends to their personal interests.  

  

You can even use the search engines themselves to look for ideas. Just put the words you want, or the beginning of them, in the search bar. And below you will see the most recently sought suggestions.   

  

In this moment, use a spreadsheet to organize your keywords and separe in Head Tail and Long Tail. Remembering that Keywords Long Tail are more specific and qualified.  

  

See here an example spreadsheet. 

Remember to think of keywords for each phase of the customer journey³.    

  

(3) The customer journey is the way that the customer walks during all the relation with a company. Is the history with the brand, from the first contact (visit, service, printed material or online content) to closing and after-sales. 

  

The journey is an important study of personas and keywords because each stage the client has a different wish and will go use differentes keywords to do searches.  

Tools and datas 

Search for data on the chosen keywords and insert it into your spreadsheet. 

There are some tools to help you with the keywords analysis. At these tools, you will find the monthly search volumes according to localizations, CPC (cost-per-click - how much that word would cost per click on the ad) and difficulty in organic placement. 

  

Keyword difficulty (KD%) shows the percentage of difficulty you will have using the keyword to rank your site, ranging from 1% to 100%, from easy to difficult. 

  

CPC (also called PPC - Payment per click) will not help you very well with making decisions right now, but later, it will give you a sense of how much you would have spent if you had purchased that keyword to use it in Google Ads. 

  

To verify the data for your keyword analysis, use Semrush. It is a very complete tool. But in addition to it, you can also use others as support. Check out: 

  

Tools/ websites: Semrush, Ubersuggest, Keyword Planner, KW Finder, Answer the Public   

Plugins Google Chrome Web Store: Keyword Surfer, Keywords Everywhere  

  

Your spreadsheet will look something like this:  

  

These data were taken from Semrush on 12/14/2021 based on the US location.  

How to do a Keywords analysis with Semrush 

To perform keyword searches using Semrush, go to the “SEO” category in the side menu and select the tool “Keyword Magic Tool”.   

  

Enter the keyword you want to search and the location. Then just click on “Search”. 

 

 

  

Next, you will see a list of keywords suggested by the tool and their data: 

 

How to verify keywords ranking

You can also analyze keywords that have already ranked your pages in some search engine position. To find them, it is also possible to use Semrush.  

After inserting your domain website, click in the “SEO” category and “Organic Research”. You will find the keywords in “Positions”.   

  

   

To verify the keywords positions, click on “Position Changes”.   

  

 

  

In this space it is possible to filter the keywords to check improved positions, worsened, won and lost keywords. That way you can also find keywords to work with and analyze opportunities and improvements. 

  

When researching your keywords and variations, you will likely see several ways to work with your content. In addition, there will also be several opportunities in the keyword list that already rank your site in some position. 

  

Verify positioning pages and analyze what improvements can be done, both in the optimization part and in the content. You can use the keyword in question in your content and/or insert variations of it. Having a keyword as the main and the others as secondary. 

Main and secondary keywords 

As explained above, keywords can be divided into two parts in the content: main and minor. As an example, the keyword “gluten free beer” can have variations like “gluten free beer” or “zero gluten beer”. 

  

This means that you don't need to use just one keyword on your page. Your choice can be multiple and you can separate these words as main and minor. 

  

Choose variations from your research and tools and add them to your content as long as they make sense. The ideal is use in a page the keywords with similar semantics and that fit the subject page. 

  

Also, if you have a website with a low Authority domain and would like to work Keywords Head Tail, that is more difficult to rank, a good way is to insert like secundaries, into the content. That way, you will  be able to work these keywords subtly and, over time, get a good ranking with them. 

Analyze the opportunities 

Now that you understand what keywords, what is a persona and how to create a persona and have already done your keyword research and collecting data about them, it is necessary to analyze which are the best opportunities.  

  

It is recommended to give preference to keywords with lower KD, that is, less difficulty in positioning. But that doesn't mean you can't work on keywords with high difficulty. 

  

Remember that Keywords Head Tail e Long Tail has different tem purposes and keywords with high organic difficulty can be more difficult and delayed to rank.  

  

Keep always in your mind: 

  

Don’t exist a rule to choose ideal keywords. The choice must be according to the necessite and page goal, what is defined if you will use words with higher or lower search volumes. So, you, the analyst, will decide which are the best keywords for your strategy.  

  

In this way, you can use Keywords Head Tail or Long Tail, with low or high difficulty, regardless of the Authority Score. But know that organic positioning isn't a process that happens very fast. Your keywords can be ranked in days or months, depending how are worked and how your website is optimized.  

  

To know all about your page needs to be optimized, click here. 

 

 

Keyword monitoring in Semrush  

 

After performing keyword analysis and applying your strategy to the project, it is very important to monitor your project to track the results. 

  

As explained earlier, you can monitor your keywords in SEMrush, a great tool for this purpose, as it brings a lot of data to make your monitoring even more complete. 

  

  

  

For help you understand how to use the keyword monitoring features, we have summarized the “Keyword Research” category, which you can find in the side menu. Below we will get in details to you, we will cover the differences between each tools, and giving an overview about the reports. 

 

1. Keyword Overview  

The Keyword Overview report is the easiest place to start your keyword research and familiarize yourself with Semrush reports and metrics.  

  

This is where you find data for keyword searches such as keyword search volume (local and global), CPC, level of competition, volume trend, and more. On this report, you can find a summary that contains information from other Semrush keyword reports: Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Manager, Position Tracking and Organic Traffic Insights. You will understand about each of them later. 

  

Look:  

  

 

1. Volume: the average number of times per month the keyword was queried on Google (nationally). Click to learn more. 

Keyword Difficulty: an estimate of how easy it would be to rank your site for that keyword with SEO. Check out more details below. 

2. Global volume: the combined total of monthly keyword search volumes across all country databases contained in the tool.  

3. Intent: the most common purpose of the keyword searched by a user in a search engine. Intents can be read by search engine algorithms to show proper results and SERP features. The main types of search intent are: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. Learn more about Intent by clicking here.  

4. Results on SERP (Search Engine Results Page): the number of URLs displayed in organic search results for a given keyword.  

5. SERP Features: hover the mouse over the icons to see which special SERP features are present on the results page for that keyword. Learn more about SERP Features clicking here. 

6. CPC: is the average cost per click, that is, the value of the keyword to be used as an ad in the SERP.   

7. Com.: the competitiveness of advertisers who bid on that keyword for their ads on a national level. A score of 1.00 indicates the highest level of competition and a score of 0.00 indicates no competition. While this metric refers to competitors on paid search, it can also be representative of a keyword's organic value. Know more clicking here. 

8. PLA: the top product listing ads (Google Shopping) seen in the SERP for that keyword.  

9. Ads: the top Google Ads PPC ads seen in the SERP for that keyword.  

10. Trend: how much interest web searchers have shown in a given keyword in the last 12 months, that is, this data helps you understand the seasonality of your target audience. The trend graph shows whether a keyword's search volume over the year or whether it remains relatively constant.  

Understanding the Keyword Difficult

Semrush classifies the difficulty of positioning keywords in 6 levels, with a score ranging from 0 to 100, having the following references for notes:  

  

1. 0-14 = Very easy. In this range, we see little competition for the term, making it easier to rank, that is, the keyword’s competitiveness level is very low and it can be a good opportunity for your page to appear in the top positions when someone searches for the keyword in question. 

2. 15-29 = Easy. These keywords have some competition but are still possible to rank when you're starting out. To be able to rank for this, you'll need quality content focused on keyword intent. 

3. 30-49 = Possible. Average competition. You will need well-structured and unique content that is properly optimized for your keywords. 

4. 50-69 = Difficult. High competition, requiring more SEO strategies, such as some backlinks, in addition to well-structured, useful and optimized content to compete.  

5. 70-84 = Difficult. Even fiercer competition. These keywords will take more effort in terms of getting higher authority referring domains to rank your well-optimized and useful content among the top pages. 

6. 85-100 = Very difficult. The hardest keywords to compete with, especially for a new website. This will require a lot of on-page SEO, link building, and content promotion efforts to eventually rank and acquire traffic. 

 

Click here to know more about Keyword Difficulty of Semrush.  

Keyword Variations, Questions & Related Keywords  

Here you find keyword variations starting from the word you searched for, i.e. similar groups of keywords that you can search to find your perfect target keywords. 

  

  

• Keyword Variations: search phrases that include your original keyword as well as additional modification words. Keyword variations help you find the most popular searches related to your main query. 
• Questions: search terms where Semrush sees a “who, what, where, when, why, how, is, can, etc.” Questions are great for generating content ideas for blog posts, FAQs, and content pages on your website. Answering commonly searched questions can help your SEO, including voice search optimization. 
• Related Keywords: keywords that have similar results to the queried keyword. With related keywords, you'll find common misspellings and topic-related search phrases. Related keywords are great to target with PPC because misspelled keywords often have a lower CPC and lower competition level.  

  

This data is pulled directly from the Keyword Magic Tool so you also get the total volume and average difficulty of the keywords. If you click on the number of keyword suggestions, you will be taken directly to the Keyword Magic Tool. 

 

SERP Analysis  

If you scroll down, you'll see the Keyword Overview report listing the top domains whose landing pages appear organically for the search term you're analyzing. 

  

  

It's great to find your site on this list, it means it's showing up in search results and that Google considers your page to be one of the best and most relevant for the given keyword. But don't miss the chance to strengthen and improve your ranking. 

Analyze the advertising value of a keyword

If your site doesn't naturally rank for keywords, you can still get search traffic by bidding on keywords through Google Ads. 

  

Below the organic listings, you can also find the top PLA copies (Product Listing Ads), Ad Copy (Google Ads) that appear for a keyword in paid search results. Take this as inspiration to write your own ad copy and analyze the landing pages they are pointing to. 

  

  

2. Keyword Magic Tool  

Keyword Magic Tool presents the entire database of searched keywords and their variations, as explained in the previous tool, the Keyword Variations, Questions & Related Keywords items are extracted from the Keyword Magic Tool. Therefore, you can access this data in two ways: through Keyword Overview and through the side menu. 

  

  

Here you can find:  

  

• Extended keyword database with global keyword research possibilities; 
• Total volume and average difficulty automatically calculated for your entire target keyword table; 
• Automatic grouping of target keywords into subgroups by topic;  

• Question filter to find keywords that ask questions; 
• Information about which SERP features are present on the results page for each keyword;  
• Integrated filtering, ranking and difficulty analysis to facilitate the complete keyword research process;  
• Ability to organize your query lists for different projects/sites you are working on.  

  

  

3. Keyword Manager  

Keyword Manager provides deeper analysis of up to 1,000 keywords at a time. You can use it to update metrics in real-time to see if any SERP (Search Engine Results Page) features or a keyword's top competitors have changed since the last Semrush update. 

 

But attention! This monitoring is paid according to the contracted plan. Contact the responsible team via email geovanna.bispo@ab-inbev.com to more information.   

 
Main information about this report   

Below you will see the main information offered by Semrush's Keyword Manager report. To learn more about the step by step of each item below, check out the Semrush guide.  

 

  

 

1. Adding Keywords  

Keywords can be analyzed in Keyword Manager in a few ways:  

 

1. Starting from the + sign at the top of the Keyword Overview;  
2. In Keyword Magic Tool main table;  
3. From the Keyword Gap tool;  
4. From Organic Research (Positions and Position Changes tabs);  
5. Manually imported.  

 

With your keywords in Keyword Manager, you can analyze: 

• Intent; 
• Volume; 
• Trend; 
• CPC; 
• Competitive Density; 

• Keyword Difficulty %; 
• SERP Features; 
• Click Potential; 
• Top Competitors; 
• Last Changes (Last Update). 

 

To narrow the focus of your report, use the filters available above the table. You can filter by keyword, databases, SERP features, search intent, tags, or by a specific metric.  

 

2. Intent  

The Intent column shows a user's search intent for each keyword. If you hover over the intent tag, you'll see the search objective. This feature enriches your keyword research with automated intent analysis.  

 

3. Tagging Keywords  

You can separate keywords into groups by adding tags. You can tag your keywords in Keyword Manager with the checkboxes (1, 2) or simply click the tag field on a keyword.  

 

4. Update Metrics  

Top Competitors and Click Potential will be listed only after clicking the Update Metrics button. Once clicked, you will be able to see the list of snippets that are in the top 10 SERP results for the keyword at that time. The Update Metrics button allows you to update metrics for any individual keyword in real time.  

 

Please note: Users are limited depending on their subscription level.  

 

5. Sending Keywords to Other Tools  

Keyword Manager also offers the ability to submit certain keywords to your Position Tracking and PPC Keyword Tool campaigns set up in your projects.  

 

You will be able to choose whether to submit all of your keywords to position tracking or the PPC Keyword Tool, or to submit only a selected number of keywords. To do this, you must first have a position tracking campaign or PPC keyword tool already set up.  

 

6. Lists sharing  

You can share existing Keyword Manager lists with an email address of a user that you want to grant access to your lists. You can share a project with multiple people by typing each email separated by a comma. 

 

You can decide whether to share with Viewer access or Editor access. Users with Editor access will be able to make changes to their lists.  

 

4. Position Tracking 

Position Tracking allows you to track a website's daily rankings for a custom set of keywords. This information may also be pulled from Google Search Console. You can set your targeting to track any specific geographic location and on any device (mobile, tablet or desktop). The tool comes with tagging, sorting, filtering and reporting capabilities that make it easy to track keywords and positions to generate new insights and improvements. 

  

Observation: Entering keywords in this report comes at an additional cost, so we recommend using the Google Search Console report. But if you still want to purchase this tool, contact the responsible team via email geovanna.bispo@ab-inbev.com to more information.   

 

1. Visibility: The Visibility index is based on click-through rate (CTR) that shows a website’s progress in Google’s top 100 for keywords from the current tracking campaign. A zero-percent visibility means that the domain isn’t ranking in Google’s top 100 results for any of these keywords; and a 100-percent visibility means that the domain keeps the first position in the SERP for all of these keywords.  

2. Estimated Traffic: An estimation based on the average click-through rate of each position in Google’s results multiplied by the volume of the keyword, and divided by 30 (i.e., the number of days in a month). It shows the probability that a user will click on a domain’s search result depending on this domain’s position in the SERP.  

3. Average Position: The average of your rankings for all keywords in your Position Tracking campaign. Any keyword you're not ranking for will be assigned a rank of 100.  

4. Keywords: General information on keywords for which your domain ranks in the Google top 3, top 10, top 20, and top 100.  

5. Distribution of rankings: The distribution of the domain’s organic rankings over time. You can see how many keywords the domain has rankings for in Google’s top 3, top 10, top 20, and top 100 organic search results.  

6. Top Keywords: The best-performing keywords for your domain.  

7. Positive Impact: Keywords for which your domain’s rankings increased the most in the selected time period.  

8. Negative Impact: Keywords for which your domain’s rankings dropped the most in the selected time period.  

9. Tags: Your domain best performing keyword groups.  

10. Top Competitors: A competition map and detailed information about the competitors you’ve added.   

 

In the overview you also have access to this feature, with the domains added by the tool itself. Competitive domains are displayed depending on the level of competition, which is based on the number of keywords in each domain and the number of keywords in common for the domain. If domains have a high number of common keywords for which they are ranking in Google's top 20 organic search results, they can be considered competitors. 

 

However, in the Position Tracking tool, you can check the information of competing domains that you want to compare, not the ones that Semrush suggests. 

To add competitors for monitoring, simply click on the “Add competitors” button. 

 

  

 

11. SERP Features: SERP features that we tracked on the last date of the selected time period.  

12. Pages: Your domain’s best-performing landing pages.  

13. Visibility by Locations: Your domain performance for the tracked countries.  

14. Cannibalization Health: This metric is based on the ratio of keywords that have cannibalization issues to the total number of keywords in your campaign.  

 

Keyword cannibalization is when different pages on the same blog or website are trying to rank for the same keyword on Google or other search engines. This means that, with the cannibalization of keywords, the company competes with itself for the top positions in the SERP for a given keyword.  

 

5. Organic Traffic Insights  

Organic Traffic Insights combines your data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Semrush into a single dashboard (after integrating the tools as we taught above in this guide). This includes data such as click-through rate, sessions and volume with organic keywords and rankings found by Semrush and Google Search Console.  

 

With this integration, you can discover these “not provided” keywords from Google Analytics and quickly cross-reference data sources to get a more accurate overview of your site's organic search performance.  

 

To learn more about Organic Traffic Insights tool settings, check out these links: 

• Configuring Organic Traffic Insights  
• Organic Traffic Insights User Manual  
• Connecting Google Analytics and Google Search Console  

Deleting Semrush Tools  

When you want to delete a specific Semrush tool, you will have to delete the entire project. This will remove all other campaigns configured in the project. 

  

So let's say you want to delete Organic Traffic Insights. When you delete the project, you will also delete the position tracking campaign, social media tracker, or any other tool that is also in that project. 

  

Projects should not be excluded (exceptions should be aligned with the Global team). Projects cannot be recovered once they are deleted, so it is important to be careful when deleting a project. Only delete a project if you are 100% sure, because all data will be gone forever.