Source: https://moz.com/blog/cant-do-keyword-research-like-its-2010-whiteboard-friday
Keyword research nowadays has been more complex. Search volume and impressions are two metrics that have been used for quite some time. As SEOs become more keen on every detail for ranking a keyword, more and more metrics have been integrated on how to select the right keyword for your site.
Keyword Research Tools
1. Adwords keyword tool is not showing all the data – this tool gives you an estimate on volume and impression figures. Take for example, a keyword can reach more than a million searches or it can go as low as 500 thousand searches on a single month. Google will eventually round this figure to the closest estimate, maybe around 700,000 to 800,000 monthly searches. You can use Google suggest or “related searches” located at the bottom of search results to see what keywords are being used by searchers. Visiting forums and asking information about what keywords would likely a person would be using can help a lot on keyword research.
2. Pages built for every keyword – avoid doing this since every user may use synonymous keywords trying to find the same content. Create one page that can cover keywords and key phrase that have the same meaning and intent.
3. Use the right metrics on your keyword research sheet
- Keywords and volume
- Difficulty – see which phrases that your current site will have a hard time to rank based on the top domains and link authority of your current website.
- Opportunity – the opportunity of your site to rank for ads, location results and video results for a search query.
- Business value – the value of each visit from ads in relation to the cost of the ad itself.
- Requirements or options – check top search results if Google is favoring most updated website or top results contain product listings (ecommerce type of page).
- Prioritization – selecting your top priority keywords for your title tags.