Keyword research helps you retrieve information like how many times a certain keyword is searched on Google, variants of that keyword, trend, etc.
As a blogger, you need to create content that is in demand. Content that people are looking for.
One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is writing articles that nobody wants. Writing whatever comes in mind, or whatever they think will draw visitors.
This is a waste of your time and effort.
However, It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t create original content. But for your original content to attract any visitor, your blog should have an audience.
For building a community, you need to consistently publish posts in your niche that people are already looking for. But without a keyword tool, it’s near impossible to know what type of content is attracting visitors. If you keep creating content blindly, you might end up with Dead Content: Content that has run its course and now barely gets any attention.
In this post, I’ll teach you how to use Ubersuggest- A free Keyword Research and Traffic Analysis Tool. This tool will help you discover keywords that generate traffic from Google.
What is Ubersuggest?
Ubersuggest is a free Keyword Research and Traffic Analysis tool owned by Neil Patel.
Ubersuggest is absolutely free to use. There are no plans or upgrades.
What Does Ubersuggest Offer?
In brief, much more than you’d expect from a free tool.
With Ubersuggest you can retrieve information like
- Monthly search volume of keywords
- Changes in the search volume over the past 9 months
- Keyword suggestions and related keywords
- Backlinks to a page and number of social shares.
How To Use Ubersuggest For Keyword Research-
STEP #1: Decide The Target-Keyword
You probably already have a few keywords that you want to rank for. But they may not be the right one. You need to be sure that the keyword that you want to target has enough(what is enough for you?) search volume and isn’t too tough rank for.
Head over to Ubersuggest, enter them one by one.
So if you want to rank for “food delivery apps”.
Enter this keyword in Ubersuggest.
This will show you an overview of the keyword according to the selected country:
What Do These Terms Mean in Ubersuggest?
- Search volume: Average number of searches this particular keyword has during a month
- Ubersuggest SEO difficulty: Estimated competition in organic search. Higher number = greater difficulty = more competitive = takes more time.
- Paid Difficulty: Estimated competition in paid search(ads).
- CPC(Cost Per Click): Average cost per click for ads.
- Ubersuggest Domain Score: Domain score is determined by traffic, search appears and other factors of a domain.
Suggestion and Related keyword ideas are search terms related to the one you enter.
Click on View All Keyword Ideas or select a keyword to view more keywords & websites that rank for them with estimated monthly visits, backlinks, Domain Score, and social shares. You can filter keyword ideas according to search volume, SEO difficulty, keywords, paid difficulty and CPC.
Every keyword has a SD(SEO Difficulty) assigned to it. You want to pick a keyword that is easy to rank for and has a decent search volume. Because these keywords are relatively easy to rank for.
The higher the SEO difficulty of a keyword the longer it’s going to take for you to rank. It can even take years because the big names are already there. And doing all they can to stay there.
Google is not going to rank your content in the top 10 or even 100 immediately. Even if it’s lengthier and better. The more competitive a keyword is the longer it takes to rank.
STEP #2: Analyze
Visit the top 10 pages that rank for the keyword you want to target and analyze their content.
Don’t be lazy.
Don’t skim through the articles. Read.
Some pages may have more social shares than others, even when they rank below them. Try to figure out “WHY”. And how you can use the same or a revised tactic to get more social shares?
Try to figure out why they are ranking. Is it possible to go in more detail or write a better piece of content?
As you are reading, write down the subheadings(subtopics) of important sections. And include them in your own post.
STEP #3: Write:
Write your post keeping in mind your targeted and related keywords.
Write naturally and in-depth. Don’t force keywords into your content or repeat yourself unless something is worth repeating.
Add related images, tables, charts, infographics, etc. The elements should look natural and add value to your article, avoid unnecessary stuffing. Adding too much of all this will slow down your page and people may click away even before they start reading, increasing your Bounce Rate.
Divide your article into sections with subheadings and bold, highlight, italicize, underline the important texts to grab the reader’s attention.
Engage your readers with questions.
STEP #4: Proofread
Proofreading not only helps you correct any grammatical and spelling mistakes but also improve the overall quality of your content.
Never publish your posts before you proofread.
You can use a tool called Grammarly to correct spelling mistakes and most grammatical errors. But it still can’t tell whether the words you used are conveying what you actually mean.
Now go back to Ubersuggest and enter your target keyword.
From the Keyword Ideas, look at the related keywords and insert them into your article wherever it looks natural.
Just like you did with the targeted keyword, don’t force the related keywords in the writing.
You should always optimize your content for both readers and Google. Actually, give a little more value to readers. Because they influence your ranking the most.
When you are “the new guy” you don’t have many backlinks, if any. So there are two major signals that help Google decide whether to rank your page or not:
- Session Duration: Average amount of time that users spend on your page. If users visit your post but as compared to other pages the session duration is low, you will rank below them.
- Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is %age of visitors that quickly(within 10-20 seconds) bounce off your page.
Obviously, for users to spend more time, you need to provide what they want. And you can be sure that they don’t want every possible variation of your targeted keyword stuffed in there.
STEP #5: Proofread Again and publish:
If the quality of the article really matters in your niche or English is not your native language, you should proofread again.
For non-native English writers, it is difficult to convey what they want in words. Especially finding the right words.
So what seems right at the time of writing, might seem weird when you proofread, and totally out of place the 2nd time.
Ubersuggest For Spying on Competitors:
Ubersuggest also comes loaded with a Traffic Analyzer. You can use this tool to analyze the traffic of your competitors and spy on them.
Analyze Your Competitor’s Traffic
Enter the domain of your competitor in Ubersuggest.
You’ll get a country based overview of the domain: Domain score, organic monthly traffic, top keywords that the domain ranks for and Backlinks.
The Organic Monthly Traffic chart shows how the organic(traffic from search engines) has performed over the last 9 months.
Scroll down further and you’ll see SEO Keywords Ranking. This is just to analyze the traffic.
The important stuff comes next: Top SEO Pages.
These are the pages that get the most traffic from organic search.
The pages are listed in descending order so that you know what pages contribute more to your competitor’s traffic.
Ubersuggest divides top pages by country. This helps you know what kind of content is popular in a country. Which is a huge help when you are targeting a certain region.
Social share count indicates how visitors interact with the page. If the count is high that means that user engagement is high and they consider it worth sharing.
Find The Keywords
Click on View All under Est. visits.
This will show you the top 10 keywords that the page ranks for in addition to Search Volume, estimated visits, position, CPC, Paid Difficulty and SEO Difficulty.
You can view more keywords by clicking NEXT 10 or Export the whole list in CSV format.
Now you know the keywords that your competitor ranks for. You can target one of those keywords to steal their traffic.
You would want to target a keyword whose SEO Difficulty is low with a good search volume.
Now just repeat the process from the Ubersuggest Keyword Research Guide. Start by entering the keywords that you want to rank for,
Discover Backlinks
Ubersuggest also lets you discover your competitors’ backlinks.
To view them click View All:
Note: Last seen is the date when the Ubersuggest bots last verified the backlink. It doesn’t confirm whether the backlink still exists or not.
If your content is fresh and better than that of your competitor’s you can contact the authors of those articles and ask them for a backlink and also why they should do it.
More often than not, you won’t get them to link to your post. The reason could be anything, they are lazy, they fear the impact that it may have on their ranking, they don’t like your content or anything.
But don’t let this stop you. Because those who really care about their readers will give you a backlink if they think you are providing something that will help their readers.
Final Words
Once your blog traffic is 50k+ a month you can start creating content that’s relevant to your audience. It doesn’t matter if nobody has published an article on that topic if you think it will help your audience; do it.
Ubersuggest is the best free keyword research tool. no not according to me, it’s a fact. There’s no point searching for Ubersuggest alternative. Because currently, there is no tool that even comes near to the features that Ubersuggest offers.
Obviously, it can’t replace paid tools like Ahref, Moz and others. They have superior… well, everything. But they also cost a lot. Unless you are a business or earn enough that you can afford such paid tools. Ubersuggest is the best tool you could ask for.