How can I effectively use keyword research to identify gaps and opportunities in my competitors’ strategies?
User Intent:
As you gather and refine your keywords, you need to know the intent behind them. This ensures the content you create fulfills a person’s albania phone number data needs as they search on Google.
There are typically four buckets of user intent behind keywords:
Informational intent:
Users are looking for answers or learning something new. For example, “What is keyword research?”
Navigational intent: They’re trying to find a specific brand or resource. For instance, “Google Keyword Planner.”
Commercial intent:
These people are nearly ready to buy, but what is email marketing, how it is done and its characteristics want to compare products, for example, “Google Keyword Planner vs. SEOToolSet.”
Transactional Intent: They’re ready to act, like making a purchase. For instance, “subscribe to SEOToolSet.”
The important step here is to analyze the content that ranks for your target keyword to confirm its intent.
If the top-ranking results are product pages but you’re creating a blog post, you might need to adjust your approach.
You can also consider gathering metrics, such as the target word count for that keyword based on the top-ranking pages.
Assess the Competition: Who’s Already Winning?
Ranking for a desired keyword entails evaluating your competitors. You have to understand who’s already ranking and what they’re doing to stay ahead.
Assess content quality: What makes jiangsu mobile phone number list their content valuable? Is it detailed, user-friendly or visually engaging? For more, see my guide on crafting high-quality SEO content.
Evaluate the domain: Do competitors have strong backlinks and a high level of trust? Check out my article on the site authority metric before you do this.
Spot gaps: Can you offer deeper insights than your competition, update outdated information or target a specific niche they’ve overlooked?
Use tools like SEOToolSet, Ahrefs, SEMrush or Moz to uncover competitors’ backlinks and identify gaps in their keyword strategies. I discuss this more at length in How to Do Competitor Research for SEO.