3-Step Keyword Research. Step 2.1 Getting keywords ideas by googling and use list of synonyms

Step 2.1 Getting keyword ideas

Brainstorm for your ideal customer’s search terms

Before getting any data on volume or competition, you’re going to want to think of every possible way your topic might be searched for. At the risk of starting out like a dense sociology textbook from the ’70s, I’ll work through this with examples.

In fact, I’ll kill two birds with one stone and do the keyword research for this very post and guide you through how I did it.

Write what the post is about. This post is about keyword research. That’ll be my first (or ‘seed’) keyword. Put it in the sheet.

Get more specific. It’s not about the history of keyword research, or keyword research for eCommerce on-page SEO, it’s about the keyword research process. Put that in the sheet.

Google it. At the bottom on the page, you’ll see Google’s suggestions. They’re fine, but not the last word on the best alternatives.

Note: the reason we can already see the volume and suggested bid is because I have Keywords Everywhere installed. Don’t let the early insight sway you too much, because at this point we just want to get a list to narrow down later. Put them all in the sheet!

Use a list of synonyms. Keyword research takes you on tangents, exploring different paths before going back to the root term and rephrasing. For example, once I’ve decided to go down the ‘keyword research’ path, I’ll look for a different way to say ‘process’. To do this, I can pop on over to Thesaurus.com and search my term.

Some of these options are great while some would be ridiculous. When was the last time someone asked you about your keyword research modus operandi?

After checking this, I’ll swap out the word process for ‘method’ and ‘strategy’ wherever it appears so far in my list, but keep the originals too. It also gave me some original ideas like ‘checklist’ and ‘step-by-step’. This is what it looks like so far:

Some keywords are probably 0 volume and some are irrelevant, but that’s the last thing we want to worry about for now. At the minute, we’re just getting a list together that we can narrow down later.