Brainstorming SEO Keywords

Keywords are essential for generating traffic from search engines. But which keywords should you use? And how do you brainstorm your ideas? Let’s go through some ways to generate ideas and different types of keywords you can use.

To get started, there are tons of organizational note apps that lend themself to a personal brainstorm, so play around and see what works for you! I personally use Google’s JamBoard as my virtual sticky note go-to. This way I can visualize the contents of my site and see what keywords make sense for which pages. For my example photography business, I decided to break it up into the different types of photography I’m involved in and some potential keywords that would relate: 

Some questions to ask yourself when brainstorming:
 

• Who is your target audience? 
• What sets you apart from your competitors? 
• What synonyms can you utilize? 
• For example: New York photographer and NYC photography are two different keywords.
• And what other words does Google autofill? 
• Type the words you've come up with in Google and see what else pops up!

When determining types of keywords, there’s “Head” and “Long-tail”, and there are benefits to using both types. Head keywords are short, usually one-word keywords that catch a wide audience like ceramics, tapestry, and shoes. Long-tail keywords are Multi-word phrases that are more specific, such as engagement photography, NYC shoe designer, and LA dog cafe. Head keywords can catch a more general audience who might not be specifically looking for you, whereas long-tail keywords cater to those who search with the intent of finding a specific product or service.

How did you brainstorm your keywords? Any tools or tricks that aided you in the process? Share your thoughts and tips in the comments below!

Great questions @Jo_SQSP  - hadn't thought of using Jamboard for keyword brainstorming so I'll add that to my list of tools.

We just published a round-up of our favorite free and affordable tools for keyword research earlier this week — some of our suggestions include Google Autocomplete, keywordtool.io, and Answer the Public.

Check out the post for more details and screenshots. We also cover all the places where you should be sure to optimize for your target keywords in Squarespace 7.1. If there's anything we missed let me know!

Nice post.

The problem is that these methodologies are being used by everyone and the datasets that are being accessed are limited, even if everyone is saying that they come from their own unique source.  Even Google's own keyword suggestions tool will only show you decent data if you are spending money in Google Ads.

Add to that the fact that nearly every commercial position - IE a keyword that has commercial value - is taken up by a paid-advertising slot, which are then followed by organic positions that are so far down the page as to be almost worthless for ranking and lead-generation purposes. Then factor in personalized listings and the whole thing becomes unmeasurable due to variances based on their past search history.

I think analyzing the search market for your segment is the most important thing to do and to then isolate the elements of pages as a clue to what people actually want to find against a search phrase. SEO has long-term value but I might be more inclined to run a short-term paid search campaign for keywords the "tools" say are important and then look at engagement metrics of those audiences to help isolate the keyword choice to then recurse back up to the SEO task.  You could do this on a different web-domain as it is just R&D.

Bear in mind that Google Ads now use what's called close-variants so the keyword you type in might not actually be the keyword the advertiser targeted. I would also make sure that the website ticks all the core web vitals box.

What I would also say is that if you are launching a website from scratch, try and make sure as much of the optimisation is done as possible so that on the first visit by search you have everything in place. If you have a website and are re-optimising page elements significantly expect up to 4 months to pass before you can reliably consider the pages to have been re-indexed and settled properly.

This is not replying at the previous posters who also bring their views that are valuable, but I hope this can help others.

G.

5 hours ago, GlynMusica said:

keyword that has commercial value

Of course if to everyone who speak about SEO think most of all about Long-tail keywords and research which just basic part what professional call SEO strategies. SEO not just keywords it's strategic thinking and competitive analysis UX of your site. 

19 hours ago, Jo_SQSP said:

Google’s JamBoard

Of course visualising site very helpful but site will be  on top if yore structure growing and people  finding  something  once in a wile

I totally agree with @Tiny_Coast - focusing on your target market's language style is important.

For my audience, I try to remember that most of them are new to terminology that I use, so I  keep an eye on forums, Facebook groups, and the comment section on my YouTube videos to see what language styles I should focus my strategy on.

Instead of optimizing a blog post for "single page header code injection installation" I would use more casual language like "add code to one page"

I also want to add Pinterest suggested search to the list! They have a lot of data that prompts those suggestions, and while it might not be as fancy as SEMRush or Raven Tools it's great for brainstorming. 😊

On 6/24/2021 at 10:06 AM, Remindable said:

once in a wile

These is  key word which helpful in these situation.

On 6/30/2021 at 2:17 PM, inside_the_square said:

SEMRush

Semrush these is a tool I use very often, but  works much better before the Pandemic started

On 6/30/2021 at 2:17 PM, inside_the_square said:

focusing on your target market's

But who is your target market  this is the question not easily answer for? 

On 6/30/2021 at 2:17 PM, inside_the_square said:

For my audience, I try to remember that most of them are new to terminology that I use, so I  keep an eye on forums, Facebook groups, and the comment section on my YouTube videos to see what language styles I should focus my strategy on.

Your CSS .pdf  works amazing with visual information, only a problem it's only visualize but do not solve problems which squarespace have itself .

You are absolutely right, keywords research, analysis and then taking the user intent out of them is one of the most important task related to SEO. There are various tools for this purpose but I still recommend to use manual method using google. Then I cross check with Ahrefs which is a very handy tool. 

The next important task is key word grouping and use of the keywords in an article. There must be all the keywords in the article without stuffing. Yoast is another powerful tool that helps in this matter. But still I prefer to take the skill to next level where your brain guide you in a better manner and tools should be used only for a guide or support. 

You can visit my webiste thepoolparadise.com to check and comment about my keyword research and article writing skills. I would love to take the constructive criticism for the improvement of my work. 

Thank you. 

On 8/9/2021 at 11:58 AM, DigitalizeTraining said:

You must keep the keywords that users search the most and try to avoid keywords that have no traffic.

Not every traffic sell, how  training  help, bring keywords which sell something on top results?  

Hi there,

I think you surely know that there are SEO tools, which do the work for you, but I can only agree with you, because even if we have today KI, wich helps a lot, at the end of the day the most important  thing in a SEO research is to use your own brain.

regards,

Jürgen

I recommend a tool called "Keywords Everywhere" - it's very cost-effective ($10 of credit lasts me about 3 months) and is easy to cut through the fat in keyword research.

We will soon be implementing some features which should make using Keywords Everywhere not necessary, but until then, it's a great tool 👌

Apart from Google search results and Google's AdWords Keyword Planner tool, the competitor analysis tools like Semrush or Spyfu are also really helpful. And let's not forget Ahrefs, my personal favorite! 

On 5/27/2022 at 12:18 PM, JuergenSchmid said:

Hi there,

I think you surely know that there are SEO tools, which do the work for you, but I can only agree with you, because even if we have today KI, wich helps a lot, at the end of the day the most important  thing in a SEO research is to use your own brain.

regards,

Jürgen

Absolutely agree with you. The tools help you a lot, though creative thinking is what separates you from others. Basically, with paid tools you pay for saving time in gathering the data in one go. While you can do that yourself by combining a few sets of different free tools. I accept critics of this if I'm wrong.

I'm a big fan of the free tool Google Keyword Planner. It's not as comprehensive as some of the other tools out there, but it's easy to use and gives me a good idea of how popular a certain keyword is. That proves to be enough for me. However, some of the paid tools mentioned earlier offer more detailed information about a particular keyword in one go, which saves time I admit. But for someone like me, that's on a budget, it just works fine gathering pretty much the same data on my own by combining free tools like GKP, Also Asked and GSC.