Almost all SEO begins with keyword research. Understanding what people are searching for and how many people are searching helps form a solid content strategy.
Beyond the basics, keyword research encompasses many more advanced considerations, including SERP features, keyword search intent, competitive analysis, and even internationalization.
Read the latest Moz posts on keyword research. We’ve also included links to our most popular keyword research resources to help your SEO journey.
Keyword Research : Everything you need to get started with keyword research.
Keyword Research Learning Center : Our free keyword research learning hub. Here, we’ve gathered our top resources in one place.
What is search intent and why does it matter? : Learn more about the power of search intent and how to use it in your keyword research strategy.
Keyword Explorer : Want to dive in? Try our top-rated keyword research tool, with over 500 million keyword suggestions.
Ask any SEO and they will tell you just how important it is to do keyword research. Not only do you need to find keywords that are related to your niche but you need to figure out which ones are actually obtainable for your site. Everyone talks about the “low hanging fruit” and maximizing the long tail keywords. What about the juggernaut keywords? Which keywords are arguab...
This isn't a post about keyword research for video content on YouTube, but exploring the ways in which it can be used to find relevant data, information and keywords in topics where you have a low understanding of the services and industry. Now for an example... ...
Hi there Mozzers! My name is Ollivier Jacq and I work for Paradizo.com This is my first post here at SEOmoz. Everybody knows Google Suggest, but if not here is a short explanation from Google: &ldquo...
Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow spot those SEO opportunities on your site which were low effort and high value? Well this post gives you a few ways you can do that! Sweet. I'm going to be digging around in the recently released search queries report in Google Webmaster Tools:...
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In this blog post I will explain the process and tools I used to analyze a niche online and then I will share the results of my research. I hope you find this both interesting and helpful. The tools I used included: Google.com SEOmoz.org SEO for Firefox Toolbar (Some of the data points are a result of my subjective...
Hey there folks! Today's post is a hands-on walkthrough of some of the decision making used when choosing the keyphrases to target. Producing a list of the most important terms in an industry is nice, but actually choosing the right keyphrases is essential. The post was largely created in response to a question submitted by Kien in the comments of my last post.
This is the ultimate showdown. Well, not really, but let me suspend reality for a minute or 20 as I put these ‘official’ keyword research tools up to the test. The purpose of this post is to try to gain a better understanding of which keyword tools to use and what to expect from them. After all, we all want to be able to effectively pick the ‘right’ keywor...
My mother used to scold me for misusing my toys, playing with my food and for having a bit too much energy. She was well within her rights, as I was a bit of a handful, but at the moment one particular phrase really sticks out in my mind “Is that what that was made for Sam? Use it the right way, please.” Whether I was riding down the stairs in a sleepin...
When working with prospective clients, we often talk with them about the many long-tail or related keywords that they may show up for, in addition to the primary keyword, as we optimize their website structure, increase their content, and improve their link profile. At OrangeSoda, we refer to this as the "halo effect," but it is also referred to as the umbrella effect, keyword as...
Having spent some time looking into keywords on customer and competitor sites, I decided there must be an easier way of collecting and viewing the data? Checking for keywords in page titles, headers, anchor text, image file names, etc can be quite time consuming. I started to think about how useful it would be to have a tool which would crawl a site and t...
There are a variety of tools and techniques recommended for SEO keyword research, from the free to the expensive, from the well known to those that are almost kept a secret. However, There's one source of keyword ideas which is often overlooked: the customers (and potential customers) served on a daily basis.
Google's "Suggest" feature is an interesting insight into popular searches - start typing a search phrase and Google will suggest popular phrases based on recent queries: (I find Number 4 in the list is particu...
Despite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. There's a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link build and optimize (for both search engines and user experience/conversion rate) on many pages. ...
At some point during your University's SEO 201: Advanced Keyword Research & Targeting class, they probably gave a few lectures and case studies on how to effectively split up your keyword research list across multiple pages and use those terms/phrases to maximum benefit. But, for those who might have missed that lesson (which would be, umm, all of us, since no...