Keyword research is an essential aspect of online marketing. There is a lot of information on the web and people can only find what they want by using the right keywords. When most individuals search for information online, they depend on search engines to lead them to the pages that have material that is relevant to their searches.

Companies and online marketers know the value of keywords and they spend a lot of effort and resources to ensure that their websites are optimized for the right keywords. If you are knowledgeable in this area, you can make money as a keyword research expert.

• How to Make Money as a Keyword Research Expert
• Can SEO Make You Rich?
• How Can I Make Money From Keywords?
• How Can I Learn SEO And Make Money?
• How do I Find The Most Profitable Keywords?
• Does SEO Require Coding?
• Can You Learn SEO on my Own?
• How do I Find my Popular Keywords?
• How Can I Make Money Searching?
• What is The Salary of SEO?
• What Are Lucrative Keywords?
• Top Tools for Keyword Research
• How Much Should I Pay For Keyword Research?
• What Does a Keyword Researcher do?
• How Much Does SEO Cost UK?
• How do I Know What Keywords to Rank For?
• How do I Become an SEO Expert?
• What Skills Are Needed For SEO?

How to Make Money as a Keyword Research Expert

The Necessity Of Keyword Research

Search engines operate on several parameters and websites are categorized according to certain phrases or words. Any online marketer can easily make a lot of money if he understands how to optimize his site for the right keywords.

Read Also: 10 Common SEO Interview Questions That Can be Asked in Your Next Interview

Finding the right keyword depends on a variety of factors. These include the niche, the demand, competition and so on. Keyword research provides a lot of benefits and this is why it is a continuous practice.

Getting The Right Tools

In order to make money as a keyword research expert, there are certain tools that you require. Manual research is tedious and time consuming. These keyword research tools will make it easier and faster for you to conduct your research.

There are several of these programs in the market so you have to ensure that you choose the right one. It is also advisable to use two or three of them so that you can compare their results for each niche that you are working on.

Offer Your Services To Companies

In order to get jobs from companies you have to present yourself as a search engine optimization expert. Many companies want to establish a strong presence on the internet and they need this type of service to be successful.

They know that customers will not just visit their websites without proper optimization. They know the value of keyword research experts and they are ready to pay for their services. You can really make a lot of money if you position yourself as an expert in this field.

Offer Your Services To Webmasters

Keyword research services can also be offered to other internet marketers. Anyone who has been doing business online for a few years should understand the value of comprehensive research. They need to find out the markets that are hot and the people that are spending money. They have to know the demographics such as age, gender and location.

The best way to reach the target market also has to be determined. You can find a lot of webmasters online at popular forums. Offer your keywords in packages of four or five and provide additional information that will enable them to make money with the provided keywords.

Another way to make money as a keyword research expert is to start your own online business. You can go into affiliate marketing, open an online store or start a professional blog.

Can SEO Make You Rich?

SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization and is the process of optimizing your website to get organic or non-paid traffic from the search engine results page.

Alternatively, SEO involves making certain alterations to your website design and your content making your site more attractive and visible to a search engine. You do SEO in hopes that the search engine will display your website as a top result on the search engine results page (SERP).

The process for SEO is easier than it appears to be. It is a lucrative business for anyone wanting to make money online. And once you get hold of the information on how to earn with SEO, you’ll understand it better as to how it works.

How can we earn through SEO?

1. Selling on website — Rank for a keyword where people want to buy it, then people will click on your link and instantly spend their money.
2. Get a Job at an Agency — Refine your technical skills like analytics and technical SEO, get a steady paycheck.
3. Dropship other’s products on your website — If running an e-commerce site isn’t working, then dropshipping is for you.
4. SEO Consulting or Copywriting — Once you get the hang of SEO, you might want to sell this knowledge as an expert. This is a wonderful way of making money with SEO as many organizations are willing to pay a big chunk of money for anyone helping them rank better in search engines.
5. Ad Revenue —  Ad revenue via ad programs is a great way to monetize your SEO knowledge. This can work out as a primary business, or simply as an additional stream of income.
6. Host Paid Seminars: SEO is driven by information — if you can establish yourself as an expert and build credibility, people are more than willing to pay for it.

How Can I Make Money From Keywords?

Making money with SEO is a great way to earn a living online or supplement your income. You can do it all from the comfort of your own home, and you have the potential to make more money than what most people earn in their jobs.

While it may not be easy when you start, once you learn how to do it right, the profits will come. If you are interested in learning how to make money with SEO, here are some ways that can help you get started today.

1. Create a High Traffic Blog

Having a high-traffic blog will enable you to earn more money because you will have more visitors coming to your blog. The more visitors you get, the higher your chances of earning affiliate commissions, display ads, and EPCs from AdSense are.

A way to increase traffic is through SEO. It is important to include keywords in your content that match you with a good title for you to get ranked well by Google when people search for those terms.

While it is not easy to get ranked by Google, it is very easy to make SEO. You can get ranked by staying committed, having persistence, and being an experienced writer. Take your time and learn from the best. Eventually, you will be able to rank higher and make money.

Creating a high-traffic blog is also important because it will not only increase your SEO earnings but it will also help increase the quality of your links, which will also increase your traffic.

2. Write Blog Posts With Your Keyword in The title, Tags, and Content

Start a blog on popular blogging sites like WordPress or Blogger. Write blog posts that have your keyword in the title, tags, and main body of the article. Your goal should be to focus on one topic category.

Make sure to use any synonyms for your keywords throughout the article and anchor text links back to other articles you have written on related or unrelated topics within that same niche. You also want to ensure that there are places where you include your target keywords throughout all of your content.

Keep each post around 450-800 words and write at least 1-2 each day to build up a large amount of content.

By finding keywords in your niche that are getting hundreds of searches every month, and you write articles around those terms, people will naturally link to you once they read your article. A good way to find these high traffic, low competition keyword phrases is using Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Use titles for all of your social media channels, especially Twitter and Facebook posts, to include keywords related to the topic of the post.

3. Translate Websites and Blogs

Websites today are getting more popular as they become available in multiple languages.

If your language’s website doesn’t have an SEO expert, you should consider translating it using Google Translate or any other translator available online free of cost.

This way, if you know how to read English fluently, nothing could stop you from making money with SEO through translation services on websites. Have the courage to start and build up your SEO skills to be at par with the best.

If you find any website or blog that is not getting enough attention from its readers, don’t judge that site and pass it by without even thinking about making money with SEO through translation services of that website.

Yes, this is possible, and there are many sites like these online, which have tremendous potential to earn money with SEO through translation services.

You need to start scanning these websites as they become available for translation in multiple languages other than English so you can start earning more profits through your marketing career.

4. Guarantee an Online Presence

It goes without saying that if nobody ever knew about your site, it would be next to impossible for you to make any decent amount of income with SEO.

Therefore, having a well-built website with a blog attached and other means of social presence like a Facebook page or Twitter account is vital for success in this field.

Always keep in mind that search engines do not care about how much you know or what content you have on your site unless they are one hundred percent sure that people are using your services because of your exceptional online presence.

To guarantee this, ensure that your site is showing up in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for the most relevant searches related to your content and services.

5. Create an Online Community Of Bloggers

Blogging has become a way of life for most people, whether it is personal or professional blogging.

It is a great way to get instant attention from those interested in reading your articles published at one specific location through their respective blogs.

Search engines see blogs as quality sites suitable for ranking high on SERP due to the fact that blog posts are often updated regularly.

6. Try and Sell SEO Services

Selling SEO services is also a great way of generating monthly income from SEO.

People are always looking for ways to get their sites ranked on the 1st page of Google, and you can offer your services as an expert in search engine optimization to help them achieve that goal.

You can promote your services by putting up a simple website with details about what you do and how much it costs. You can even market yourself using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

When people get to know more about your services, they will surely contact you to help them rank their sites.

7. Web Design

This is something you should only do if you have the know-how and resources available to run a website or a digital product. This will allow you to make money from affiliate marketing, coaching, or creating products around this area.

I would recommend visiting web design forums to get the knowledge on how to perfect web designing to enhance the searchability of your website further. Make sure you have a good hosting provider.

Furthermore, when you perfect web design, you can also do web hosting. You can make decent money by selling web hosting services online if you have the knowledge and resources available to get started with it.

You will need to offer some sales pitches for people to buy-in from you. Again, only do this if you already know what you’re doing. If not, then stick to writing content and helping others on forums instead.

For you to earn more money with web hosting, you will need to offer good pricing too. You have to be competitive with the other hosting providers out there.

Have your product. Do a lot of research if you plan on making money from this business. This will require you to know how SEO works and what products people want to buy online these days.

A good place to start looking for an idea or niche that could make SEO work for you would be by reading posts on fundamental keyword research strategies.

How Can I Learn SEO And Make Money?

Nowadays, there are a lot of ways to make money online: from building an ecommerce website to creating a blog to promote products and services. But none of that will actually work unless you’re able to drive traffic to your site. This is where SEO proves to be particularly helpful.

Here are five ways to make money with SEO in 2022.

1. Work in an SEO agency

By working in an SEO agency, you’ll not only learn technical skills such as website analytics, but will also be exposed to the management side of things by creating presentations and pitching to new clients.

Additionally, you get an opportunity to grow in the company, the chance to learn new skills from peers, job stability and a steady source of income, the opportunity to work with multiple clients and other growth opportunities within the organization.

But there are also some cons, including the inability to choose clients and brands to work with and the need to work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. without much flexibility. 

2. Create an ecommerce website and sell products

If you have deep knowledge of ecommerce SEO, you can use search-engine optimization to sell physical products through an ecommerce website. 

Start by picking your niche and finalizing the product you’ll be selling. You can do that by doing keyword and audience research to understand which keywords your potential customers are using to find this particular product.

For instance, if you find a keyword such as “stainless steel pasta maker” that gets a lot of traction but there aren’t enough companies selling this product, you can figure out the demand for a particular product and then plan to sell these products on your ecommerce website.

Before you decide, make sure you also perform an in-depth SEO competitor analysis; that’s the only way to figure out how much it will take to rank in the first positions for your target keywords.

Ecommerce sites allow full control over branding and messaging. Moreover, the ecommerce market is booming, and it’s a lucrative choice to invest in it. Of course, it also provides a good source of income.

But there’s also an element of unpredictability, as you may have difficulty finding customers for your product, and scaling may prove to be a challenge. 

3. Dropshipping other products on your website

Let’s say you’ve set up an ecommerce website and it’s doing splendidly, but now your customers are seeking new products or maybe you are having a hard time managing inventory.

Dropshipping is the answer!

With dropshipping, you can sell a product through your website without worrying about shipping and fulfillment. It’s a great way to sell products without worrying about manufacturing, inventory or even risking buying products that may not sell. 

This model works because it allows anyone to set up an ecommerce business and focus on marketing and scaling instead of worrying about pre-ordering products and shipping. 

Here’s how it works: An individual places an order from your website. You then share the order information with your drop shipper. Once the order information is received, the drop shipper sends you an invoice for the product sold. The drop shipper mails the package to the customer, and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of keeping inventory or worry about shipping.

It’s important to use appropriate SEO-friendly content, depending on the products you’re planning to sell through your website. For instance, if your niche is “vintage furniture” make sure that you include all the appropriate keywords (three to four search terms) so that your target audience can find your website easily. 

Create original and unique product descriptions (instead of copying the same text from the manufacturer’s website) to make the content stand out and make sure you have the right keywords and a personalized tone and voice that your customers are familiar with.

With drop shipping, you can start selling unique products without worrying about shipping and handling, have the freedom to choose products that align with your values and ideals (for instance, if you’re vegan, you can create a niche by selling vegan beauty and skincare products) and diversify your brand by giving your customers something new and unique every other month. 

But there are also some things to watch out for: not enough control as shipping and production are handled by a third-party vendor, a lot of competition, not much control over supply-chain, and you may have to deal with legal liability issues.

4. Offer SEO consulting services

With SEO consulting services, you can help clients meet their business goals by increasing traffic to their website and boosting sales. 

An SEO consultant provides valuable search insight to their clients to help improve their SEO ranking and increase organic traffic. They help clients with keyword research, website auditing, technical SEO and developing effective SEO strategies that can be implemented on various platforms, among other things. 

SEO consultants also perform competitor SEO analysis and share detailed plans on how to leverage this data, whether that applies to the content strategy, backlink strategy or particular keywords that they are using. An SEO consultant is also good at changing plans by taking into account new SEO trends and Google algorithm updates.

While this sounds intimidating, it can be a very lucrative and enjoyable career, especially for someone with a fair chunk of experience in an SEO agency.

The pros of SEO consulting include an opportunity to work with new clients, flexibility to work with clients and brands of your choice and an opportunity to expand and grow your consulting business. 

The cons of SEO consulting include the stress of managing clients, difficulty in getting new leads and clients, and it requires extensive experience.

5. Start a blog and monetize through ads and affiliates

So, how long does it take to make money from SEO? If you have a well-established blog with a good amount of traffic, then you can make money with SEO fairly soon by creating sponsored content and posting banner ads on your blog. 

Paid ads allow you to get paid via the number of clicks and traffic on your blog while sponsored content means that you’ll talk about a particular brand or service on your blog.

Starting a blog gives you the freedom to choose your niche, whether it’s technology, beauty, fashion or travel, and you get to infuse the content with your brand while building an online community of like-minded individuals. It also provides flexibility, as you can choose your hours to work, and gives you a lot of creative freedom and space to experiment with new forms of content. 

But starting a blog also requires a lot of time to write good content, and it may be difficult to create interesting, topical and evergreen content regularly. You may also have to deal with technical issues and need help resolving those issues.

How do I Find The Most Profitable Keywords?

The longer your list of keywords, the wider the array of customers you’ll reach. Let’s start by narrowing things down a little bit. You can find the audience that’s most interested in your product or service by understanding the three major groups of online searchers:

1. Informational searchers are looking for general information on a topic. It’s usually hard to tell exactly what each person is looking for. One person might be doing research for a term paper. Another person might be killing time wait­ing for a bus. The vast majority of this group aren’t ready to buy and probably never will be.

2. Comparison searchers are definitely interested in your product, but they’re still at the research stage, checking out reviews and comparing prices. Some folks from this group will be ready to buy in a matter of days or even hours, but for others, it may be weeks, months or possibly never.

3. Buyers know exactly what they want, and the only barrier to making a purchase is finding the right place and the right deal.

So how do you tell which of these three groups a person is in? By studying the keywords they enter into the search bar. As a general rule of thumb, the more specific the search, the closer they are to the “Buyer” group.

Take, for instance, the three different types of people searching for televisions:

An information seeker will generally search for keywords containing just one or two words with no modifiers:

• TV
• 66-inch TV
• OLED TV
• Flat screen TV

A comparison shopper is a bit more specific, using modifiers for a greater depth of information:

• Samsung TV reviews
• 4K TVs
• Compare OLED TVs
• Alternatives to LG 66-inch TV

Finally, the buyer is very specific, often using the results of his previous research in the keywords:

• Order 42-inch LG TV
• Buy LG 4K online
• VIZIO M series 2017 buy online
• LG OLED B6P best price

If you’re just getting started with your AdWords campaigns and budget is your biggest concern, it makes sense to target only the buyer group. These folks are the easiest to convert to customers. Let’s start with a group of buyers and put together a first draft of our keyword list.

Step 1: Scour your website.

Browse your site and your entire product range, and make a list of everything you sell. You probably know your product line pretty well. Step into your customer’s shoes, and assume they don’t know your products by heart. Think of synonyms they might use. Then combine these with some of the common buyer and comparison keywords.

Sticking with our TV example, if one of your products is a LG OLED TV, then you might come up with these keyword combinations:

• LED LG OLED TV
• Buy LG OLED TV
• Best LG OLED TV
• Compare LG OLED TV

Step 2: Sniff out your competition.

Take a look at your top competitors’ websites. You’ll almost certainly find a few phrases and expressions you hadn’t thought of. Add these to your list as well.

Step 3: Ask your customers.

Do a survey. Have a casual phone chat with a few of your most recent buyers. Ask them specifically how they found your site and, if they can remember, the keywords they searched on. At this stage, you won’t hear a huge amount that surprises you, but you’ll definitely pick up a handful of new keywords or modifiers to add to your list.

Step 4: Ask your staff, family and friends.

This is an extension of Step 3. At this stage, you may feel like you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. But that’s the point — it’s all about compiling as exhaustive a list as you can.

Step 5: Dive into keyword tools.

For the most part, Google’s keyword resource is good enough. As you gain experience, however, third-party tools will allow you to dig even deeper. Most keyword tools of this type work by figuring out what your competitors are bidding on and feeding the data back to you. There are limits to how accurate this supply of information can be. But they will give you keyword ideas you would otherwise have missed.

Does SEO Require Coding?

The short answer is: no, SEO typically doesn’t require much (or any) hands-on coding. You can absolutely do a fine job of SEO without touching code. But the longer answer is that yes, a good sense of how programming works, or even an ability to do a bit of coding yourself, is always a useful skill to have.

The extent to which SEO Specialists work with code will depend to some extent on the nature of their workplace—each one is different, and each comes with a different set of expectations. If you’re working for a large company with a dedicated development team or IT department working under you, for instance, the digital tools already at your disposal will likely be enough.

That said, the more effectively you can communicate your needs to that team—whose members may speak the language of Developers but not of SEO—the better. If nothing else, you’ll have a sense of just how big an ask you’re making when you turn to a Developer with a request.

Can You Learn SEO on my Own?

As an industry still in its infancy, most colleges don’t formally teach SEO. Luckily, you can learn everything you need online and through application, making a degree or college education in SEO unnecessary. In fact, the majority of SEOs are self-taught, using mainly free online resources to learn (many of these will be discussed in this guide).

There is an incredibly helpful and active online community of SEOs. As you familiarize yourself with this community, you will inevitably stumble your way onto the websites of “SEO Gurus” selling courses that teach you SEO for thousands of dollars.

The truth about these courses is that the majority of information they provide can be found online for free. So why would anyone pay for these?

The answer is that a course can save you time. The information is bundled together allowing you to do your learning all in one place with a curriculum that is structured and keeps you focused. This prevents you from bouncing around from resource to resource and getting off track.

Is a course absolutely necessary to learn SEO? No, definitely not. Will a course save you time? Potentially, as long as you take a course from a reputable SEO. A good rule of thumb to follow is to only buy a course from an SEO practitioner who makes money doing actual SEO, not just selling courses on how to do SEO.

How do I Find my Popular Keywords?

As thought-provoking and enjoyable as keyword research can be, it’s also equally complicated and mind-boggling if you’re a beginner just on the tipping point of actually getting it.

Sure, you’ve perused through Google’s Keyword Planner and tinkered with Google’s Autocomplete. But, honestly, keyword research is intimidating when you’re just starting.

Getting into the groove of keyword research doesn’t just happen overnight. You need to know how people search and what they search for before you can even start to think about mapping your keywords.

And with more than 6 billion searches a day worldwide, how do you know where to start?

Amazingly, many people prefer to search for popular brands than type them in direct. That’s how pervasive Google has become for us as a day to day tool.

With the help of the great data research tool Ahrefs, we were able to surface the 50 most searched global keywords as of November 29th, 2021.

Ranking	Keyword	Global volume
1	youtube	1225900000
2	facebook	1102800000
3	whatsapp web	607900000
4	google	548200000
5	gmail	438800000
6	amazon	381600000
7	translate	371100000
8	google translate	314600000
9	traductor	287300000
10	hotmail	243500000
11	instagram	230700000
12	weather	156600000
13	netflix	152500000
14	yahoo	133100000
15	twitter	131800000
16	yahoo mail	130600000
17	google maps	107200000
18	whatsapp	105600000
19	fb	102200000
20	roblox	100200000
21	ebay	95710000
22	outlook	89090000
23	google classroom	74170000
24	walmart	73980000
25	maps	72110000
26	yt	71600000
27	pinterest	66510000
28	speed test	65420000
29	nba	64530000
30	bbc news	63020000
31	ikea	57590000
32	omegle	56690000
33	news	55580000
34	classroom	55000000
35	twitch	52960000
36	home depot	51740000
37	amazon prime	51370000
38	g	46310000
39	weather tomorrow	46150000
40	facebook login	46100000
41	discord	45250000
42	paypal	44350000
43	linkedin	44170000
44	tiempo	42120000
45	y	41190000
46	cnn	39000000
47	calculator	37550000
48	shein	37420000
49	fox news	37240000
50	google drive	36550000

How Can I Make Money Searching?

You can make money with your search engine by connecting it with your Google AdSense account. AdSense is a free program that gives you a fast and easy way to display relevant Google ads on your result pages. When users click on an ad in your search results, you get a share of the ad revenue.

If you don’t have an AdSense account, you can apply for one by going to Google AdSense website. If you already have an AdSense account, don’t create a new one; just associate the existing one with your search engine. All search engines in your account will automatically be associated with that AdSense account.

You can also associate your existing AdSense account with your search engine in the context file by following these steps:

1. Find your AdSense ID.
2. Associate the AdSense publisher ID with the search engine.

What is The Salary of SEO?

The average SEO Salary in India is ₹237,156.

The salary is based on a lot of factors. Let’s go one by one so you will have a clear idea of the affective factors.

SEO Salary Based on Cities

If we want to find SEO salaries in India by cities, as you can clearly see, Bangalore – The Silicon Valley of India pays 49% than the rest of India (national average). Chennai and Mumbai are also on the top lists. Among the tier 1 cities, New Delhi pays 16% lesser than the national average. Ahmedabad being the last spot holder pays 38% lesser than the rest of the country.

Going by the salary scale of these top-ranking SEO jobs, we can safely conclude that SEO salary in India is quite well. While freshers can earn around Rs. 1.8-2.8 LPA, professionals with over 5-8 years of SEO experience can make around Rs. 3.5-6.6 LPA.

As for senior-level SEO salary in India (for job roles that demand over ten years of experience), the annual remuneration is even higher, ranging between Rs. 15-30 LPA or more, depending upon the company size, location, and skill set.

What Are Lucrative Keywords?

Knowing your audience is crucial. Once you have identified your niche and created detailed audience personas, you can look to create a spreadsheet and compile a keyword list that has a good balance of head terms, body, and long-tail phrases.

Here are ten tips to ensure you end up with a set of keywords destined to succeed.

1. Never Underestimate Keyword Relevance

If you want to rank for a specific keyword, then you should build relevant content around that keyword in the form of a valuable blog or service page. In advertising, relevance has a major impact on your quality score, so you only create ads that are relevant to viewers.

2. Check Keyword Search Volume and Competition

In every keyword research tool, you can view metrics for each keyword. Two of the most important values to consider are search volume and competition.

• Search volume – Take care to select keywords that will drive more traffic to your site. If the search tools indicate your preferred keyword doesn’t get many monthly searches, try some synonyms, as they may have a higher search volume.
• Competition – By conducting a quick Google search with the personalization option disabled, you can see who is currently ranking for specific keywords. This will give you a basic overview of your competition.

3. Find Related Terms by Latent Semantic Indexing

Search engines use latent semantic indexing (LSI) to provide closely-related pages whenever people search. A solid keyword strategy should involve finding good LSI keywords for your content, as it helps strengthen your content with greater relevance and reach.

4. Aim to Maximize Keyword ROI by Considering User Intent

As long-tail keywords are more specific, they attract people further along the customer’s journey. By controlling the keywords of each page on your site, you exercise control over the types of users that arrive on that page.

So, to attract users at the beginning of their search process you can use broader terms that are less action-oriented. Conversely, if you want to boost conversions, consider including a call-to-action (CTA) in your key phrases for that page.

5. Identify Negative Keywords

Just as you can consider user intent to discover search terms your ideal customers are using, you can also identify search queries that are being used by unqualified leads.

These terms are known as negative keywords. Finding these terms and adding them to your ad campaigns helps filter out irrelevant traffic, which benefits you in several ways:

• Saves you money otherwise wasted on irrelevant ad clicks.
• Ensures your traffic is more qualified, and therefore more likely to convert.
• Makes your content and ads more relevant to viewers.

With these benefits in mind, it is clear negative keyword research is no afterthought – you should spend just as much time on it as you do on normal keyword research.

6. Gauge Performance in PPC Tests

In the beginning, there is a certain amount of guesswork as it’s hard to know which phrases will be popular among users.

If you want to quickly discover potentially lucrative keywords, try running some PPC tests on Google Ads. Gauge their performance to see which terms show the most promise for use in organic search marketing.

7. Create Scalable Keyword Groupings

After you have identified some popular terms, you should look to create a solid group of keywords that is scalable. Ideally, this will be a batch of high-value keywords that you can create content on for the foreseeable future with the view to boosting your website authority on a niche topic.

8. Know the Trending Topics

Regardless of your niche, the most popular terms will probably already be fiercely competitive. By keeping a close watch on Google Trends and Twitter, you can determine trending terms and topics, which makes it easier to create relevant, current content that has little competition but a lot of interest.

9. Make it Location based

Honing your focus to target location-based keywords tends to garner better results, as you compete with fewer people, and cater to a very segmented audience.

10. Use Branded Key Phrases

Forging your own brand identity is vital, and you can expedite this mission by creating and using your own branded keywords. Once you populate the top search spots for your own brand terms, you can leverage your reputation to combat any negative feedback or poor reviews.

Top Tools for Keyword Research

So, now that you’re ready to get started with keyword research, you just need to pick the right tool. There are plenty on the market, many which offer free trials.

Here are some of the best to try out:

1. SEMrush
2. Ahrefs
3. Google Keyword Planner
4. Google Trend
5. Moz Keyword tool
6. KWFinder
7. Spy Fu

How Much Should I Pay For Keyword Research?

SEO pricing and SEO plans vary widely from organization to organization simply for the fact that each business has different needs. Determining search marketing and the cost of SEO for your enterprise business requires carefully weighing the different options available along with their potential value.

That way, you can create scale or implement a plan that is tailored to your business.

The best answer is that it depends. It’s so frustrating, and you can see why – companies invest anywhere from $2,000 – $20,000 per month! But, there’s a reason: So much goes into the cost of SEO. 

In general, SEO costs between $750-$2,000/month based on the scope of the project. For enterprise-level companies, pricing starts at $2,000/month. SEO software for keyword rank tracking costs between $500 – $4,500/month (depending on the number of keywords tracked), and rates for consultants fall between $500-$3,000 for a monthly retainer.

There is no single cookie-cutter SEO pricing package for every organization. Moreover, you should be very wary of any agency, consultant or tools provider that tells you otherwise. 

Because your business’s organic search strategy must take into consideration the things that set it apart from the pack, the dollars you put in should reflect that. Your SEO plan is dependent on your current search visibility.

For instance, the launch of a new brand requires a particular strategy when it comes to search engine optimization, digital marketing, social media, and PPC management.

This strategy will be inherently different from that of a company that already has brand awareness within that product category.

Be aware that when it comes to shopping for SEO, you get what you pay for. 

Pricing models vary: Most services are priced according to an agency’s monthly retainer, single project free, fixed-price contract, or an hourly fee for agreed-upon work.

Depending on the size of your organization and whether you have an in-house SEO team, you may save money by opting directly for the tools or technology that align with your goals and training your own team to use them effectively.

For example, you might need a tool that helps streamline content creation with what your target audience is searching for, a tool for auditing the health of your company’s backlinks when launching a link building campaign, or even a keyword tool that helps you survey competitors for keyword opportunities in advance of changes to your company’s products and services.

The specific services and tools you choose should depend on what will add the most ROI for your organization.

What Does a Keyword Researcher do?

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of theses queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Keyword research provides valuable insight into the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google. The insight that you can get into these actual search terms can help inform content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy. However, keywords themselves may not be as important to SEO as you may think.

Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and, assuming you use the right SEO tool, how popular those topics actually are among your audience. The operative term here is topics — by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to create content on. Then, you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.

How Much Does SEO Cost UK?

Average UK SEO Costs

Type	Price	Info
Agency SEO	£1200 – £9000/month	Professional SEO agency’s typically charge between £500 – £2000 per day for their services. The price will depend on how much time is needed on a monthly basis to improve your website’s organic traffic.
Consultant SEO	£100 – £1000/per hour	An SEO consultant’s hourly cost will vary greatly depending on their experience level. They’ll usually know the value they can bring your business and won’t be afraid to charge for it.
Cheap SEO	£100 – £400/month	Cheap SEO services utilise less experienced SEO’s to provide a cheaper service. They’ll usually rely on risky black hat tactics or won’t be able to get the results they promised.

Agency SEO Costs

Established SEO agencies will usually charge between £500 – £2000 per day for their services, and you can expect to pay between £1200 – £9000 per month depending on the amount of time your project requires.

The amount of days your website will need per month will vary greatly depending on the industry and type of website you have.

For example, SEO for online shops (eCommerce) requires more time to be spent working with developers to improve the technical SEO aspects of the website than a B2B or B2C lead gen website does.

Lead generation websites will usually require less time per month, but can require more – depending on how competitive the industry is.

Consultant SEO Costs

Companies who hire consultants will usually use their services for an hour a month to get feedback from an SEO expert who can help guide their marketing team in the right direction.

The price of an SEO consultant will depend on their experience level and specific area of expertise, but you can expect to pay anywhere from £100 per hour to £1000 per hour.

It’s important to establish whether or not the consultant has worked in a similar industry before. They don’t have to have worked for a competitor, but a similar type of SEO is crucial.

Types of SEO include:

• eCommerce
• Business to business
• Local business
• National business
• News publisher

This is not so much of a concern when using an SEO agency, as they’ll have different specialists for different projects.

Cheap SEO Costs

There are companies in the UK that’ll provide SEO services for as little as £100 per month, but the results you’ll get are far from ideal.

Any company that’s charging between £100 – £400 for monthly SEO services will not be able to afford to employ a professional SEO to fulfill their clients needs.

Experienced SEO’s (the one’s who move the needle) earn around £40,000 per year as a base salary, and with an average of 261 working days per year and the added monthly cost of SEO research software – those prices wouldn’t even cover the cost of an employees time for half a day per month.

Any SEO company offering SEO services between £100 – £400 per month will either be completely inexperienced or spending as little time on the project as possible.

This is why cheap SEO providers resort to using dangerous black hat SEO tactics to get your company temporary success in Google. What they likely won’t warn you of is how dangerous it can be to your business in the long term.

With SEO, and any form of online advertising – you get what you pay for.

How do I Know What Keywords to Rank For?

To find ranking keywords for your site or a competitors site using Keyword Explorer, follow these steps:

1. Type in your website URL into Keyword Explorer
2. Select the country where you audience is based
3. Click the Analyze button
4. You’ll see Top Ranking Keywords
5. Click Ranking Keywords on the left panel to view more keywords
6. You’ll see all the keywords your site is ranking for, along with Difficulty, and Monthly Search Volume.
7. Use the radio buttons to toggle between the options to display monthly search volume as a single number or a range
8. Add competitors to see how you stack up against other sites in your industry

You can search by your root domain, subdomain or exact page. For example you can search a subdomain like blog.mysite.com, or an exact page, like mysite.com/category/product, and selecting the relevant option from the dropdown.

The Ranking Keywords table will show how many keywords your domain, subdomain or page is ranking for within those coveted Top Ranking Positions, along with Page Authority and Domain Authority.

From here you can export your keywords to CSV or add them straight to your Moz Pro Campaign.

How do I Become an SEO Expert?

Because the field of search engine optimization is so new, most people don’t learn SEO from a traditional 4-year college program.

(Although those do exist.)

Here are the most common ways that people become SEO specialists:

• Take an SEO course (or several SEO courses)
• Learn SEO by optimizing their own website
• Work at a marketing agency
• Take on SEO clients
• Get an online SEO certification or degree
• Work as an “in house” SEO professional

Here’s a breakdown of each of these six options:

Approach	Learning Speed	Ease of Learning	Cost	Personal Support and Guidance	Putting SEO Into Practice
SEO Course	4/5	5/5	2/5	3/5	1/5
Your Own Site	4/5	2/5	4/5	1/5	5/5
Work At Marketing Agency	4/5	3/5	1/5	3/5	3/5
Take On SEO Clients	3/5	2/5	2/5	1/5	5/5
Online Certification/Degree	3/5	5/5	4/5	4/5	1/5
In-House SEO	5/5	3/5	1/5	4/5	3/5

Becoming a master of SEO requires perseverance and dedication, but it is possible to become a comfortable specialist with the material by spending a few minutes a day studying. Rather than becoming overwhelmed by the wealth of information, find a few valuable resources that you can use to gain the knowledge you need to succeed.

Summary of how to become an SEO professional or specialist:

1. Train yourself in basic HTML editing, especially meta-tagging, H1, H2, and Href commands – it only will take a few hours
2. Find a web site you can work on freely, many local businesses, like dentists and chiropractors will welcome the help
3. Train yourself on the major CMS platforms, like WordPress and Drupal – it only will take a few hours
4. Subscribe to and read SEO blogs, like BrightEdge Blog
5. Download SEO management white papers
6. Review the BrightEdge Share presentation content
7. Watch SEO expert how-to videos on YouTube
8. Attend SEO industry conferences, like Share
9. Write a post about SEO in your LinkedIn profile or an SEO related group
10. Get SEO certified

What Skills Are Needed For SEO?

Obviously, there are many factors that determine the effectiveness of an SEO campaign, but at the core of every campaign is at least one person calling the shots. This person will be setting goals, leading team members, performing research and accomplishing a ton of miscellaneous tasks; but without the right general skills to back these responsibilities, your entire SEO campaign could fall apart.

So what are the most important skills you’ll be using in SEO?

1. Analysis

The first and most important skill on this list is analysis, a vague concept that applies to a number of individual SEO areas. What you need as an SEO professional is the ability to take data about who, what, when and where, and understand the “how” and “why” questions that go along with them.

For example, you’ll need to look at reports on organic traffic increases and determine which of your tactics were responsible for that increase. You’ll need to look at recent ranking drops, and track down the root causes for that setback. You’ll need to crunch data on thousands of keywords to understand the best direction for your campaign, and you’ll need to figure out which pieces of content best resonate with your audience (and why).

2. Research

The second most important skill after analysis is research — and you’ll be doing a lot of it. Research for an SEO campaign often starts with a basic keyword and competitor analysis, which provides the insights necessary to create the strategic foundation for your campaign. But SEO demands far more research than that; you’ll also need to read up on the latest news about search engine technology.

Next, you’ll need to run experiments to see how your tactics affect your search rankings (and user perceptions). You’ll even need to look up answers to your problems when you inevitably run into challenges. The faster and more efficiently you research, the better.

3. Coding basics

You don’t need to be a professional programmer to be successful in SEO. Today’s CMS systems often have basic SEO functionality built in, and if push comes to shove, you can follow step-by-step instructions online if you need to make a change to the backend of your site.

Still, it helps to have some familiarity with coding basics; you should be able to peek at the source code of a given website and identify the key features relevant to your campaign. You should also be able to quickly and easily make swaps and changes without breaking your site.

4. Humility

After a few years on the job, search marketers may feel that they’ve learned everything and that they’re some of the best experts in the business. But SEO is a field full of surprises; just because you think you know something doesn’t mean that’s objectively true for all clients, or that things won’t change in a few weeks or months.

Read Also: Interview Tips That Will Help You Get Hired

Staying humble opens you up to new possibilities, and helps you solve problems faster (especially when you’re working with a team).

5. Communication

The importance of communication in an SEO environment can’t be understated. You’ll need to communicate proactively with your other team members to ensure your directives are carried out. You’ll need to explain complex concepts to your clients, who may or may not have much technical proficiency in the subject.

You’ll also need to produce content that your readers can relate to. All these responsibilities require excellent communication skills; without them, you’ll have a hard time remaining competitive.

6. Learning speed

Learning speed is also important, in part because there’s always new information emerging about SEO and the effectiveness of specific strategies within that field. It’s also important to be a fast learner because there are many different platforms and tools you’ll be using to get the job done.

7. Tenacity

Tenacity isn’t really a skill, but it is a characteristic you’ll need if you want to be successful. SEO can be a challenging industry at times: Your assumptions will be overturned, your efforts will occasionally be fruitless, and you may face criticism and misunderstanding from your clients. Being able to persevere past those low moments, and find solutions to your problems no matter what, is vital if you’re going to succeed.

If you don’t currently possess these skills, or there’s one skill you feel the need to improve, there’s always time to make yourself a better fit for your chosen career path. These foundational skills will guide you in everything from campaign planning and keyword research to reporting and retrospective analysis, so improving even one of them could improve your performance in multiple areas simultaneously.The more you invest in yourself, the more you’ll be able to do to achieve your goals.