Identifying the right keywords is one of the crucial parts of an effective SEO strategy. But it can be quite tricky in some cases, especially when you don’t know what tools to use and how to use them.
Welcome to this step-by-step guide to KWFinder, an ad hoc keyword research, and recommendations tool. Dig deeper into the tool’s basics and the exact steps on how to use it effectively!
First Things First, Search By Keyword
First of all, you should have a general idea about what kind of keyword may be relevant for your niche. Once you get that done, type the chosen keyword in the search form under the “Search by Keyword” tab, select the location, and click on the green button “Find keywords”.
Make sure to specify the location and language if you are targeting a specific region or represent a local business. keep n mind that there are more than 50,000 locations and 40 languages to choose from and different locations lead to different results.
Once this step is completed, there will be around 700 keyword suggestions displayed based on one of the following data sources:
- Related keywords (default option)
- Autocomplete
- Questions
Related keywords are based on our database while Autocomplete and Questions generate additional keyword ideas based on the Google Suggest algorithm.
Search By Domain
The “Search By Domain” option is useful for users who want to see the keywords the competitors rank for. You’ll basically see search terms that bring the most of your competitor’s website traffic. To do so, simply follow the following steps:
- Switch to the “Search by Domain” tab
- Enter the domain or exact URL of your competitor
- Select one of the 18 locations
- Click on the green arrow
Switch Between Organic and Paid Keywords
Organic keywords are used in Search Engine Optimization to attract “free” traffic. These kinds of keywords are set apart from pay-per-click keywords that are used in Google Ads. If you can capture some of that organic traffic, you can boost your site’s visibility in a big way. The implementation of well-researched and carefully selected organic keywords can help you achieve this goal.
When you type something into Google, you’re presented with a list of results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Here, you see both organic results and paid results. Paid keywords are the ones that the website appears for in Google Ads results. You pay Google a fee for each click in order to appear in their sponsored action for keywords related to your business. These paid search results appear at the top of the SERP. They feature a little green box with the word ‘Ad’. In order to start driving traffic to your website and running Search ads, you have to sign up for a Google Ads account.
Competitor and Location Suggestions
KWFinder will suggest potential locations and competitors you could analyze depending on your input.
You give KWFinder one competitor and it will provide you with others.
Keyword Metrics
Keyword metrics can be found in the left table represented below. The keyword metrics assess the rankings of your keyword in order to understand how effective your SEO efforts are at driving organic search traffic to your website.
Depending on the type of research (by keyword or domain), you’ll see the following metrics:
- Trend (“Search by Keyword” only) – Trend of the search volume in the last 12 months.
- Pos (“Search by Domain” only) – The highest achieved position of the website in SERP
- Search – Average monthly search volume (exact match) based on the last 12 months (default). Hover your mouse on “Search” and switch between 3, 6, or 12 months view.
- EV (“Search by Domain” only) – Estimated visits per month based on SERP positions, their estimated CTRs, and search volume CPC – Average cost per click estimate of the keyword in PPC advertising (you can change the currency in the tooltip – currency rates are updated once a week)PPC – Level of competition in PPC advertising (min = 0; max = 100)KD – Keyword Difficulty of the keyword-based on the URLs and their Link Profile Strength (LPS) on the 1st Google SERP (min = 0; max = 100)
The Level of Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty, also known as SEO difficulty, estimates the level of difficulty in regards to ranking on the 1st SERP. when optimizing for the keyword. It’s indicated on a scale from 0 to 100.
1. How Can The Keyword Difficulty Level Be Calculated?
First of all, you have to calculate the overall Link Profile Strength (LPS) of every URL on the 1st Google SERP. It’s based on the widely-used Moz metrics (Domain Authority, Page Authority) and Majestic metrics (Citation Flow, Trust Flow). The second step is calculating the Keyword Difficulty (KD) taking into account both high-authority and low-authority URLs in the 1st SERP. It’s because the low-authority ones can outrank the others thanks to their relevance
You can get the Keyword Difficulty by clicking on the keyword row. Generally, the data can be cached for up to 30 days.
For keywords that no one clicked on within 30 days, the score is naturally cached for a longer period of time. These values have decreased opacity (they are washed out).
There is a large number of keywords without any KD value. This simply means that no one ever clicked on these keywords. They may represent an interesting opportunity for you since none of the KWFinder users decided to analyze them before.
2. Pay Attention to Search Volumes and Trends
You will have the opportunity to find exact search volumes in KWFinder and many of them will be different compared to the data you’ll see in Google Keyword Planner because we try to detect clustered search volumes (close variants) whenever possible.
The upper part of the right screen displays 2 trend charts:
Monthly Search Volumes – historical search volumes starting from 2015 (depending on the keyword).
Interest Over Time – Google Trends chart with data starting from 2004 (depending on the keyword).
3. SERP Metrics
SERP metrics is a search engine rank monitoring platform that has a full-featured API build specifically for SEO agencies tool providers and in-house teams with bulk keyword tracking needs. Due to its importance, ERP analysis is an inevitable part of keyword research that will help you in the following matters:
- Find out if you picked the right keyword in terms of search intent.
- Find out if you are able to outrank the SERP competitors.
The SERP metrics are located in the lower half of the right screen as shown below:
Google SERP is the 1st page of Google Search results for the selected keyword.
Domain Authority (DA) – predicts how well the domain will rank in the SERP compared to others.
Page Authority (PA) – predicts how well the specific page will rank in the SERP compared to others.
Citation Flow (CF) – predicts how influential is the URL based on the number of backlinks.
Trust Flow (TF) – predicts how influential is the URL based on the quality of backlinks. It tells you that backlinks from trustworthy websites will increase the Trust Flow while backlinks from questionable websites will lower the score.
Links – the number of external authority-passing links to the URL.
FB – the number of Facebook shares for the URL.
LPS – it estimates how difficult it is to rank on that particular position. The higher it is, the harder it is to compete with the URL.
EV – represents the estimated visits per month on the SERP position.
4. Filtering the Results
Filtering the results is another important step for you to narrow down your research. This way you can find the most profitable and suitable keywords for your website.
Firstly you should eliminate low-traffic keywords. In order to do so, set the minimum search volume and the maximum keyword difficulty your website can beat, or select the number of keywords when searching for long-tail keywords or pick a combination that suits you best.
5. Creating a Keyword List
Keyword lists let you save the terms that you plan to optimize, to keep your research organized. To create a list, select the keywords and click on “Add to list”. You can either create a new list or update one of the existing lists.
If there are keywords already in one of your lists, you will see a yellow star next to them.
In the modal window, you’ll have an option to “Create new list” or “Add to list”. You can also add the keyword to a list by clicking on the grey star. To open the list, click on the Lists” in the left part of the top menu bar to access all your keyword lists.
You can import your own lists of keywords to KWFinder in various ways:
- Write the keywords as separate tags.
- Upload your TXT or CSV file.
- Drag & drop your file.
The amount of keywords you can import depends on the plan you are willing to choose.
- Basic plan: Import up to 200 keywords 100-times a day = 20,000 keywords.
- Premium plan: Import up to 700 keywords 500-times a day = 350,000 keywords.
- Agency plan: Import up to 700 keyword 1200-times a day = 840,000 keywords.
You will be able to export the results in one of the two ways:
- From the “Suggestions” table
- From keyword lists
Final Thoughts
We hope that we provided you with the most useful guide that will help you to get started with KWFinder. All your opinions on the KWFinder guide, tips, or questions are welcome. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts!