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.
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...
As I have often stated, I work with many small clients, especially in the medical field. There are few problems associated with this market, none of them unique, but a pain to deal with for the revenue that you make on taking on small clients.1. Explaining SEO – It’s hard enough to explain SEO processes to CEOs and corporat...
My company is very focused on the global marketplace. Thus far this year, we've targeted the Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and British languages in search results. If you're playing "One of these things is not like the other..." you probably feel the urge to inform me that "British" just doesn't belong. On the technical merit of your argument, I woul...
For the last three months I have been hard at work learning SEO by optimizing a local small business website. The business is called Giggly Wiggly Preschool and is located in the Seattle suburb Issaquah, Washington. This Issaquah Preschool was the preschool I attended many years ago so I am happy I was given the chance to give bac...
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I've been coming across keyword research posts now and then and decided to make up an extended list of the tools which appeared particularly useful for me. 1) Google Adwords Tool for keyword suggestions (well, this one is used by everyone here, so it does not require a long explanation) - I always h...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Most SEOs are hard-set on chasing the “head keywords” -- the very popular ones. Others are starting to pay more attention to the long tail. Now, how many are actually pursuing the invisible long tail? “At Google's Universal Search announcement,...
An essential component of any SEO campaign is picking the right keywords. Unfortunately, many people don’t really understand the concepts behind picking keywords. I’ve seen many people, even so-called SEO experts, who think it’s just a matter of coming up with a few randomly-chosen phrases relevant to the page subject. Nothing could be further from the truth....
Matt McGee (who I owe a link to for winning the SEO group NCAA tournament bracket back in March...damn you, Florida) wrote a fantastic post over at Small Business SEM called "I Have My Keywords...Now What?" It's concise, it's to the point, it's magical. Read it. Seriously. Click over to it and read it. ...
Last week I chatted with Levi from Wordze about the keyword research tool he built. Levi, who's chummy with SEOmoz's resident black hat blogger G-Man, is a programmer who tinkered around with various keyword research sites and decided to build his own. ...