How to Find Thousands of Keyword Ideas for SEO

In this video, I’m going to show you howto generate a list of thousands of keywords and find easy to rank for topics.

Stay tuned.

[Music] What’s up guys, it's Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitorsand dominate your niche.

This is the second part in ourkeyword research tutorial series.

So just a quick recap on the first video.

We covered some very importantkeyword research fundamentals.

You learned that search volume isn’t superaccurate by definition and that not all searches result in clicks to the actual results.

So think of the query “Time in New York.

” So today, we’re going to build on thesefundamentals and generate a solid keyword list using some of Ahrefs’ keywords reportsso you can start creating content, rank in Google, and get more search traffic.

Let’s dive in.

First, I’m going to go to Keywords Explorertool and instead of searching for a specific query, we’re actually going to start witha seed keyword in a rather broad niche so we can find new topics.

And by “seed keyword, ” I’m referring toa single word or maybe two words that a lot of searches would include.

So I’ll type in the keyword “parenting, “and I’ll run the search.

On the overview page, you can see the samemetrics that we talked about before.

So today, we’ll be talking about these reports here: All, phrase match, having same terms, alsorank for, search suggestions, newly discovered and questions.

So let’s click through to the phrase match report.

The phrase match report lists keyword ideasthat have an exact match mention of your target keywords in the order they’re written.

‘Parenting’ is just one word, so if wewere to type in something like “keyword research”, then it would only look for keywordsthat have that whole phrase in the exact order it’s written.

So something like “research keyword” wouldn’tappear in the phrase match report.

But it would be available in the “havingsame terms” report, which shows you all of the terms of your target keyword in any order.

So looking at this report for the keyword, “parenting”, you can see that there are over 110, 000 keyword ideas thathave your seed keyword in them.

And the reason why we can find so many morekeyword ideas than other tools is because our Keywords Explorer database has over 5.

8billion keywords and we update it every month with fresh data.

So you’re unlikely to find a keyword toolwith a bigger database.

Now, there are a few keywords in here that interest me.

So as my brain is processing, I can clickon the “get metrics” button” to start loading up detailed metrics on each of these keywords.

The first is “parenting styles, ” which isa huge topic in itself.

And then there are some other sub categoriesto this like “authoritarian parenting”, “attachment parenting”, and “helicopter parenting.

” And actually, I’m going to update the metricson this one too, “parenting classes” since there could be commercial value in this, plusthe keyword difficulty score is quite low and worth a look.

From here, you can do the same thing we didin the first video and analyze the clicks vs.

search volume, open up the top 10 SERPs, and look for solid opportunities with traffic and or business value.

Now, obviously filtering through 110, 000 keywords just isn’t going to work.

So let’s get into some neat filters thatwill save you time and bring your searches in focus.

The first filter is to find low difficultykeywords with high volume.

This is super straightforward.

You can just set the maximum keyword difficultynumber here to something low like 10 and then the minimum search volume to something like 1, 000.

Alright, so these one here looks pretty cool.

“Parenting books” and “best parenting books.

” Now this is actually interesting to me.

You would think that the top keyword for thistopic would be “parenting books.

” Well here, you can actually see that the opposite is true.

“Best parenting books” seems to be thetop keyword for both of these queries.

Now, if we open up the top 10 SERPs for “parentingbooks” and look at the top keywords, you’ll notice that the majority of these articlesget the most traffic from the search query prefixed with “best.

” So something like this would tell us a bitabout keyword intent when someone types in “parenting books” into Google.

They’re likely looking for a list of thebest ones so they can pick and choose which ones to buy.

And analyzing this search result here fromnpr.

org titled, “Why I’ll never read another parenting book, ” you’ll see that they havethe second most unique linking websites in the top 10 results, yet they only generatea fraction of the traffic compared to the ones that are ranking higher for “best parenting books.

” Now, this should tell you that if you wereto create content around this topic, you might want to create it as a list post style ratherthan an opinion piece or something else since it’s pretty clear on the type of post thatpeople and Google seem to favor.

It should give you a few hints too on someof the basic on-page optimizations you should do like in your title, your permalink, themetas, and the content.

And I do want to make a note that judginga keyword’s difficulty from something as simple as a number between0 to 100, usually isn’t enough.

So, this is just to give you a baseline metricfor quick filtering, then you should do a proper assessment on keyword difficulty, whichwe’ll be covering in the next video.

And you can also alter these numbers to onesthat are relevant to your industry.

So for example, KD will likely be a lot higherthan 10 for SEO related terms and I’d probably lower the search volume to around, maybe two to three hundred.

Okay, so these two look good, so I’ll click the checkboxes here.

Then I can click “add to list” and I’ll createa new list called “Parenting Post Ideas.

” Finally, I’ll apply the changes and we’re off to filter #2.

And that’s to find keywords with SERP features.

So first, I’ll clear these filters.

Next, I’ll click on the SERP features drop down here.

Now, depending on your needs, there are allsorts of different SERP features you can use to narrow down your results.

So for example, if you wanted to see searchqueries that have ads, you could use the Adwords top or bottom features.

Then there’s the knowledge type features, videos, which is kind of an interesting one for people doing a push on YouTube and thenthere’s also featured snippets which is a pretty awesome one and a low-hanging wayto collect up to 8.

6% of clicks, even if you don’t rank in the #1 position.

If you’re interested in featured snippets, we’ve got a couple great posts on our blog which you can check out, which I’ll leavelinks to in the description.

Now, it’s important to note that both keyworddifficulty and the SERP features area here work with cached data.

And this means that after you click the “getmetrics” button, you might see slightly different difficulty scores or SERP features.

Alright, so the next filter you can do isto look for highly commercial keywords with low difficulty.

And the way you do that is to set the maximumkeyword difficulty, again, to something like 10.

And then the minimum CPC to something like 5.

And this could be a good way for those ofyou who are monetizing with Adsense to rank your pages and collect a heftycommission on each click.

This one here on parentingpodcasts could be a good one.

If we look through the top 10 SERPs, you can see that the posts are mostly list posts.

So you could collect a bunch of parentingpodcasts, listen to them, write reviews, and then send an outreach email toeach podcast you reviewed.

This filter is also great for companies whereAdwords advertising is generally expensive.

By ranking for these lower competition keywordsin organic search, you can potentially get free traffic with high business value.

The next filter is a super cool oneand that’s to use modifiers.

So I’ve already cleared all of the filters here.

This time, we’re going to use modifier keywordslike “best”, “top”, and the past year to look for some long tail keywords.

So in the “include” filter search box, I’ll type in best, top and 2017, separated by commas.

Then, I’ll click on the dropdown and select “any.

” What’s interesting here is that the majorityof these keywords have low-ish difficulty scores, which often tells us that it mightbelong to another parent topic.

Now, if we look at the SERP results for “topparenting blogs, ” you'll see that the top keyword is “parenting blogs.

” And then looking through the search results, you can see that some of these results rank for hundreds of keywords and generate thousands of search visitors.

So this might be a good additional keywordto include in your post for a more generic topic like “parenting blogs.

” You could also use bottom of the funnel keywordshere to find keywords with high business value.

Since parenting is more of an informationaltopic, let’s look at the phrase match report for the keyword “lawyer.

” So a keyword we could type inhere is something like “hire.

” And here, you can see a few great topics youcould write about like “hire a lawyer” or “hire a lawyer online.

” You’ll also find some great topic ideasfor earlier stages like “when to hire a workers comp lawyer” and “how much doesit cost to hire a lawyer online?” And if you’re not into things like pro bonowork, then you can pair your search with the “exclude” feature and type in something like”free”, “cheap” or both to exclude all queries that you’re not interested in targeting.

There are an endless number of filters youcan create, so I encourage you to go and play around with the different combinations andsee what works for your business.

And with these filters, you can use them inany of these other reports.

So I’ll quickly go through these so youcan see some unique features that might help you with your content marketing efforts.

So I briefly showed you the “having sameterms report”, which again, shows you all keyword phrases that have yourtarget keywords in any order.

This one here, “also rank for, ” is oneof my favorite reports that I like using once I’ve narrowed down my topic.

This report pulls the top 10 ranking pagesfor your target keyword and lists the other keywords that these pages rank for.

So let’s say I wanted to write a list ofpost on “the best protein powder.

” Then you can get some cool keyword ideas like, “whey”, “best tasting”, and “for women, ” which are all great sub categories you can include in your post.

There are two other cool reportsthat I think you’ll find super helpful.

Next is the search suggestions report.

So I’ll click it here in the sidebar onour “parenting” query.

And this report takes the autocomplete suggestionsfrom Google and gives you all of the insightful metrics right beside it.

So if you’re anything like me and wonderedwhether Google’s suggestions have any real value at all, then it’s all available for you right here.

The newly discovered report is also really cool.

And this report shows you a list of keywordideas that contain your seed keyword as a phrase match that were recently added to our database.

And in order for a keyword to be added here, it needs to reach a certain level of popularity for us to pick it up, which can cause a delaybetween the time people actually started searching for the keyword and the time we add it to our database.

So please don’t treat the “newly added”report in a literal since.

It’s a great report you can use to findnew searches with decent popularity.

And you can use this report to monitor andfind new content ideas regularly.

For example, if we look at the newly discoveredreport for “Netflix, ” we can see a bunch of new queries that people are searching for.

If I press cmd + f and look for the word “leaving”, then you’ll see that every month, people are searching for movies and shows that willno longer be available on Netflix.

And if we click on the SERP drop down forone of them, you can see that the top 10 results are owned by news sites, where Netflix couldeasily create this page and siphon thousands or even tens of thousands of visitors to theirwebsite every month.

You’ll also see that the same applies forthe query “new on netflix” and “coming to netflix” appended with the month and/or year.

Looking at the SERP results, you’ll see that again, they’re dominated by third party websites.

And you’ll see that the trafficpotential is monstrous here.

For Netflix, this could potentially be aneasy way to gain a ton of traffic, plus a way to get new customers since I’m suresome people would sign up if they saw that their favorite shows or movies were coming soon.

Another cool thing you can do inhere is to monitor trending topics.

So if we look at this report with the keyword“bitcoin, ” and then we click on the date filter here, you can choose a “from” and “to” date.

But what’s super cool here is that as soonas you click the drop down, you can see the number of newly discoveredkeywords that we found each month.

So from the looks of it, it seems there wasa massive uptrend in 2017, followed by a rapid decline of new search queries in 2018.

Which is actually quite interesting becausethis seems to correlate with their stock price.

But I’m not here to give investment advice.

So for your own brand you can see if searchdemand is growing and you can also look up topics to see if your niche is booming orif it’s somewhat stable like for the query “keyword research.

” Next, is the questions report which is really cool.

So I’ll click on it here in the sidebar.

Remember how I mentioned that parenting isa very informational kind of niche? Well this is the perfect report for that.

This report creates a list of questions relatedto the keywords you’re analyzing.

These questions are cool because you can easilycreate very focused content targeting them.

So if there are a lot of questions in yourindustry, you could create your own Q&A, your own FAQ, or some kind of series or columnto target relevant questions and drive traffic to your site.

And generally speaking, the phrases with abunch of words in it are going to be easier to rank for.

Take a look at this one, “which type of parentingis most effective during adolescence?” If I open up the top 10 SERPs, you’ll seethat the top results are dominated by a site called quizlet.

com, all of which don’t havea single backlink, yet still generates hundreds of search visitors each month.

And if we click through to the top rankingpage, you'll see that there are just a bunch of definitions, which doesn't solve the searcher's intent.

That’s a lot of angry searchers, right? Alright, the final report is the “all” report.

And this report combines all of these reports into one.

So if you’re the type of person that prefersto work with large data sets and filters, then you’ll find this one to be indispensable.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to showyou a powerful way to generate keywords from up to ten seed keywords all at once.

So I’ll paste in a list of 10 keywords related to golf.

After the page loads, you can see the overviewand a comparison of the keywords you entered here.

And you can access the samereports as we did before.

So let’s go to the phrase match report here.

Now instead of getting just the phrase matchfor the single keyword, you have the phrase matches for all of the keywords in one single report.

Again, you can use filters like the includeand exclude feature to narrow down your results.

So for example, “Ping” is abrand that sells golf equipment.

But it’s also the first word of the sport, “ping pong.

” So we could exclude the word “pong” fromthe results, which will remove tens of thousands of irrelevant search queries.

There’s obviously an endless number of keywordideas that you can find in these 3 reports, so try out these different reports and filters, add some of the good ones to your content calendar and let’s get your site ranking.

So that wraps it up for generating keyword ideas.

Make sure to subscribe for more actionableSEO and marketing tutorials.

And in the final video in this series, I’mgoing to give you a data-driven way to find out whether you can actually rank in Googlefor these keywords that you want to target.

Excited? So am I.

I’ll talk to you soon.

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