Keyword Research

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.

Most Recent Articles on Keyword Research

Illustrating the Long Tail
Rand Fishkin

Illustrating the Long Tail

The long tail of search demand has been around since the dawn of web search and, since that time, search marketers have been attempting to tap into the powerful stream that high quantities of unique content can provide. I recently came across some great data from Hitwise (about 1 year old, but still highly relevant) showing off just how substantive the long tail can be. Bill Tancer's post ...

Determining Keyword Value: A Recipe for Prioritizing Page Optimizations
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Determining Keyword Value: A Recipe for Prioritizing Page Optimizations

E-commerce search engine optimization is quite possibly the most tedious and time-consuming type of SEO. An e-commerce web site can have hundreds of categories and thousands of product pages, all waiting to be optimized, haunting your every moment.The amount of work on an e-commerce site can be so daunting it can sometimes be difficult to even know where to start. If it's a bra...

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How To Analyze Keyword Difficulty - Tooless!
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How To Analyze Keyword Difficulty - Tooless!

There is a lot of information on the web on how to do the basics of SEO yet it took me years to figure out the right way to analyze Keyword Difficulty. I think there are a few reasons for this. One being that it’s a difficult subject to explain and it’s a lot more complicated than it looks. I know there is a keyword difficulty tool from SEOMoz (htt...

Find the SEO Appeal of Keywords
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Find the SEO Appeal of Keywords

(Authors: Andres Torrubia, Antonio Parraga and Hector Rodes) The Problem with Classic Keyword Research When tasked with defining a keyword strategy for a given site, most SEOs will likely choose just a handful of keywords based on keyword research. If you are in a niche market, this approach may be perfectly fine but when you have a site that plays in m...

How Not to Judge Keyword Competition
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How Not to Judge Keyword Competition

I have been witness to many instances wherein people have judged the competitiveness of a keyphrase by simply searching it in Google, and then checking the total number of search results. For them the total number of results is a measure of the competitiveness of a given keyphrase. I could have understood if they were people who are new to SEO, but I have also seen many SEO practitioners do exactly the same. This post will attempt to clear this misconception.

Upside Down Marketing
Matt Lambert

Upside Down Marketing

Instinctively, without thinking, earlier on this evening I clicked a 'thumbs down' against Rand's video post about buckets of keywords. Of course, it means I have to write a post to explain my dastardly act of down thumbing, and having listened again to see if I was just being mean, my view is now that actually I probably don't know. Maybe.

Traffic Estimate Differences Between Google Adwords and Search-Based KW Tools
BruceBrownlee

Traffic Estimate Differences Between Google Adwords and Search-Based KW Tools

Google provides monthly traffic estimates by KW in both its original Adwords Keyword tool (ADKWT) and its newer Search-Based Keyword Tool (SBKWT). In some cases the numbers reported are similar, but in most cases the monthly traffic numbers appear to very different, with the SBWKT numbers being only a fraction of the ADKWT. Here are some examples taken from a "business intelligence" search with each tool.

Offline Keyword Research for Local Languages
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Offline Keyword Research for Local Languages

In mid-June 2008, I met my friend who has a canvas painted shoes boutique. She requested me to make a blog that promotes her painted shoes boutique. One of the challenges I came across when building the blog was the keyword research, as none of the online keyword research tools I used were able to return good results of searches for our local language (Indonesia). The tools always showed "0" or "not available." The experience made me doubt that there was a market share available for her product over the internet.