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

Hidden Data in Google's Keyword Tool
Chris Goulet

Hidden Data in Google's Keyword Tool

<p>After <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-top-10-reasons-blogging-will-be-light-on-seomoz-for-the-next-week">reading about</a> how posting in the main blog would be a bit flaccid this week, I figured I would give YOUmoz blog a test run with something that I noticed a few months back. This might be of interest to you and get the blood rushing to your head or it mi...

The Short Tail Of Search
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The Short Tail Of Search

We all do it, take shortcuts I mean, keyword research is such a pain in the ass that any way to short circuit the process is welcomed with open arms. The obvious short cut is to ask the client, he knows what he wants; he is an expert on market research, he has analysed all the sites that compete in his search space, he has sat down and analysed his AdWords campaign and culled the dodo’s, ...

Keyword Research For Emerging Markets... Or Not
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Keyword Research For Emerging Markets... Or Not

We've all heard the buzz about Emerging Markets for a few years now, and while it's started to really crank with SMO and alternate language versions of websites, I have yet to hear anyone yet talk about KW research specifically for EM.This begs the question, is there anything worth talking about? As an SEO, my intuition tells me to start researching and securing great placem...

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The Logical Path to Keyword Research
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The Logical Path to Keyword Research

Keyword research used to be a real task for me; my problem was where to start. Keyword discovery tools treat keywords like orphans and give little or no clue as to how they relate to one another or how the content they target fits into the overall information architecture of a site. Ask the client and he will wax lyrically about processes, using industry specific jargon, rather tha...

The Long Tail of Search in the Recruitment Business
Richard Baxter

The Long Tail of Search in the Recruitment Business

Recruitment websites are full of constantly evolving, fresh content in the shape of new vacancies. The big UK recruitment agencies (not to be confused with “jobs boards”) can have as many as 1000 jobs at any one time live on the site. Better still, there’s always a few new jobs posted every time the site gets crawled. So how do you take advantage of the traffic generati...

Discover and Track Your Long Tail Patterns
Ann Smarty

Discover and Track Your Long Tail Patterns

I promised Gabriel to come up with the article and so here it is. I decided to share with SEOMoz members my technique to catch up the targeted Long Tail. I used to work in the celebrity niche promoting an entertainment ecommerce site and that's where blogging was one of the most effective solutions to build the brand and generate both tra...

Replacing Overture Inventory with Estimated Google Inventory
Gabriel Goldenberg

Replacing Overture Inventory with Estimated Google Inventory

As most of you likely know, Yahoo stopped updating Overture's inventory data in January 2007. Besides the issues this may cause for those relying on it for research on seasonal terms (that boxingdayspecials.com buy isn't looking so hot anymore, huh?), it means that search marketers have at best outdated information in the volume of searches carried out for a given keyword in a given mon...

An Exhaustive List of Search Engine Based Keyword Research Data
Rand Fishkin

An Exhaustive List of Search Engine Based Keyword Research Data

Rather than trying to make this post go through all the tactics and specifics of Rebecca's already comprehensive KW Research article, I figured I'd instead provide a solid list of every which way you can look at a keyword to get an idea of metrics, value and potential from the engines themselves (rather than services like AdWords, YSM, Wortracker or KW Discovery). This is more of an "exper...

Most Likely to Succeed, or the High School Guide to Keyword Selection
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Most Likely to Succeed, or the High School Guide to Keyword Selection

It turns out, I managed to learn something extremely valuable about SEO back when I was in high school. Which is odd, given that I graduated in 1991. It was my senior year, all my friends had been in the class of 1990, and I was taken suddenly by an uncharacteristic desire to make my mark on my small rural high school. After toying briefly with the prospect of toil...