Now more than ever, brands, businesses and blogs have to be steadfast in their online marketing and content approaches. With so much competition, breaking away from the pack and generating visibility is a difficult concept: you need to be able to combine both organic and paid efforts in many situations.

Keyword research plays a huge role in SEO because it allows brands to find ripe targets that can bolster their visibility in search engines. Keyword research is in fact the foundation and first step of SEO, so knowing what it entails is very important.

Let’s take a look at the main components of keyword research in 2020 and explain how they aid the broader process.

Ideas

It’s said that everything starts with an idea. While most ideas don’t pan out, in the world of keyword research, the sky is the limit. Pinging search engines with a litany of potential keyword choices can’t be done before you sit down and explore just what concepts are feasible.

Jotting down a variety of content ideas and keyword variations can help make the rest of the process more efficient. You don’t necessarily need to get overly specific with keyword ideas – a broader concept will usually suffice – as you can utilize a variety of tools to transform these broader ideas into something more.

Tools

Plenty of keyword research tools and utilities can be found online, ranging from free to professional. Many basic tools can take the initial ideas you’ve generated and compile lists of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of keyword possibilities. With this list, you can then begin boiling down the choices and ultimately pick the best options.

Paid tools often provide a variety of different metrics about each potential keyword, such as search volume and proprietary data collected by the company.

Niches

Exactly which niches or SERPs you’ll be targeting is a key component in keyword research. Obviously keyword research itself helps you determine which SERPs to target, but overall niches can be more confusing. You’ll need to identify which specific audiences are best-suited for your content and efforts, and that requires deliberate keyword research.

Some niches will be larger than others, while others will have more or less competition. Many brands have to balance size with competition, as it’s hard for an emerging brand to compete against a host of established competitors.

Competitor Actions

Last but not least, knowing what your competitors are doing is an integral component of keyword research. If you are utilizing premium tools in the process, you can combine them with other utilities to figure out just where your competitors are targeting. This can help shed light on where opportunities for SEO may exist that you didn’t discover in your own research, allowing you to start pinging search engine results on a larger scale.

You can’t ignore keyword research if you want to conduct successful SEO operations. Whether you’re managing an online store, blog or something else entirely, generating organic search engine traffic involves ranking in search results. Ranking in search results requires keyword research. These four components will be the cornerstones of any broader keyword research effort, so remember their importance.