Link Building Keyword Strategy: Ways to Find Keywords for Link Building
Most sites that send you backlinks will start with a Google search and find your page in the SERP. Target that search term as your keyword for natural link building.
Have you ever wondered how natural backlinks appear on your website? These backlinks come from a site when that site owner was looking for a source on Google and found your site.
They found your page to send backlinks to because you were using a keyword that appeared on the SERP when they made that search. So, how do you find the right keyword to add?
You will be using some tools and assessments to find excellent keywords specific to your niche. We have explained the process step-by-step in this blog to help you understand.
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Why Is Keyword Research Necessary?
Any form of research helps you make efficient and effective strategies, including keyword research. You can also get to know your target audience when researching for keywords.
This research can be for two reasons-
- You can try to find relevant keywords that other sites will be searching with when trying to find content that adds more context to their own content.
- You can set up different tools like Google Alerts or SEMrush to notify you when any web page mentions your brand name (branded keyword).
You can then send them requesting emails to turn that brand mention into a backlink to your site. This process will be highly fruitful if a high-profile website mentions your brand name or products.
Aside from link-building, keyword research will also directly help your marketing by getting more leads. You can target short-tail keywords that attract more or long-tail ones that convert more.
Low ←Conversion Rate→ High
Other ways researching keywords can help you are-
Getting Insights into Target Audience Behavior
A vital part of keyword research is to see what your target audience is looking for. If people are looking for anything particular so much, they are likely to search for it online.
Now, when you can identify their most searched or trendy items, it will help you plan relevant topics for your content.
When making content on topics that align with the customer’s needs, it will draw more attention from your target audience.
Moreover, it will also help you see the culture of your niche or community. You can learn the industry-related common lingo, inside jokes, big names, new trends, etc.
This data is pretty valuable when planning and making content.
Competitor Behavior
Keyword research can help you pinpoint what your competitors are doing. You can check their target keywords and see their content topics.
You can also check which keywords are helping them rank high and target those yourself.
Branded and Non-Branded Keywords
There are two types of keywords-
- Branded keywords: Keywords that directly include your brand name, products, service, etc. The keyword- ‘SEMrush SEO blog’ is a brand keyword for SEMrush.
- Non-branded keywords: Keywords that don’t include your brand name, but are still very relevant to your business or niche.
For example, if your site is about SEO, ‘top SEO tool’ is a non-brand keyword for you.
Both branded and non-branded keywords are very important for your site’s SEO and link-building.
Find Branded Keywords for Link-Building
When looking for branded keywords for link-building, you need to find two types of keywords-
- Keywords that you rank for
- Keywords that you don’t rank for
We will explain later why you will need both. For now, let’s check the first one-
Finding Keywords That You Rank for
You can use the Ahrefs site explorer tool to find the keywords you rank for. Here is how-
- Go to Ahrefs and log in with your domain.
- Go to Site Explorer > Organic keywords (from the left side)
- Type in the keywords associated with your brand or products in the filters on the top. Make sure you have chosen your targeted country from the filters, too.
- Click ‘Export’
- Import it into Google Sheets or any similar spreadsheet editor.
It is as easy as that!
Finding Keywords That You Don’t Rank for
We will compare the list of keywords you rank for (the list we found in the last section) with all the branded keywords of your business to find keywords that you don’t rank for.
- Go to Ahrefs’ ‘Keywords Explorer’
- Type in the branded keywords that you have used in the last section.
- Select the same country that you have used when forming your earlier list.
- Click the button with the search symbol.
- Select ‘Matching terms’ from the left side. It will display all the branded keywords of your company.
- Click on ‘Export.’ Then, import it to the same spreadsheet but on a new sheet.
It will display all the branded keywords and their details throughout several columns.
- Create a new column and name it ‘Are we ranking?
- Then insert this formula into the first cell of the column-
=ArrayFormula(COUNTIF(First List!A2:A, B2:B)=1)
- In this formula, replace ‘First List’ with the name of the sheet that contains the list of keywords you rank for (we mean the first list).
- Also, replace the cell ranges (A2:A, B2:B) with the cell ranges that include the keywords.
Now, the column, ‘Are we ranking?’ will have ‘true’ or ‘false,’ depending on whether you ranked for the keywords or not. Thus, you can filter the keywords you don’t rank for.
Getting Target-Worthy Keywords from the List
Now, these lists will help you find three types of keywords that you should target-
- Underperforming keywords: Keywords that aren’t performing as much as their potential.
- Mismatched Intent: Keywords in pages that don’t provide what users look for.
- New Keywords: Keywords with high volume, but your sites aren’t ranking with them yet.
So, how can you find these keywords? Let’s show you-
- Underperforming Keywords
Generally, underperforming keywords are the ones that don’t rank number 1. It can be any keyword ranking lower than it should.
- Open the first sheet on your spreadsheet (the first list) and select the column ‘Current position.’
- Sort the column from Z to A. Check the ones with high volume to see which ones get more searches
Those are the underperforming keywords you should target.
- Mismatched Intent
Mismatched intents are keywords that rank number 1, but their top search results often don’t show what the users look for.
For example, if you search for any specific brand’s logo on Google, the first few results may show pages of that brand instead of a page with a high-quality logo.
Check for such mismatched intents on your first list.
- New Keywords
New keywords are the ones that aren’t helping your pages rank yet but have the potential.
- Go to the second list.
- Select the ‘Are we ranking?’ column and filter it to display only ‘false’ results.
- It is optional, but you may want to sort the keywords by search volume to show the highest ones first.
- Explore the keywords and look for any with potential (you are confident that you can write valuable content targeting those keywords)
How to Optimize the Keywords You Find?
There are three ways you can optimize the keywords that you will target. It depends on the type of keywords from above.
For example-
- If the keyword is ‘mismatched intent’ or ‘underperforming’, you can optimize your existing content that includes those keywords.
- If the keyword is new and valuable, which you don’t rank for yet, creating new content will be better.
- In some cases, you should add extra sections to your existing content rather than creating new ones for new keywords.
Creating valuable content like this is a good way to get natural backlinks.
Finding ‘Linkable’ Modifier Keywords (Non-Branded)
Linkable modifiers keywords are variables like statistics, case studies, trends, values, etc. People look for topics like ‘SEO trends’ or ‘link building statistics’ for context or reference to their content.
So, when they search using these keywords, they will find your page and send a backlink (unless it is a mismatched intent). How do you find such keyword opportunities?
- Go to SEMrush and log in with your property
- Get to ‘Keyword Overview’ > ‘Keyword Magic Tool’
- In the keyword magic tool above, select a modifier (trend, stats, values). We have used stats in our example. Also, keep the filter ‘Broad Match’ on.
- Select the ‘Include Keywords’ filter and type in all the topics you are interested in. Select ‘Any Keywords’ here.
- Click on ‘Apply’
It will display all the keyword opportunities for the given topics. You can also check which ones are highly linkable.
- Select the ‘>>’ next to a keyword to get its SERP overview report.
- Check the ‘Domains’ section. When it displays multiple URLs with 100+ backlinks, it is an excellent linkable keyword.
Again, this is another method to get passive and natural backlinks.
Note that there are many other ways and methods for keyword research. You probably won’t even need most of them, depending on your approach.
If possible, we will try to discuss keyword research topics more in future blogs. We advise you to give ample time and effort to this process, considering its significance to link building.
