Keyword Research for SEO

We don't pay for any Amazon reporting. Amazon's Search Query Performance report tells us how customers discover our listings. This report tells sellers search volume, impressions, clicks and purchases for their top 1k keywords. Both in total and our brand's market share. To find this report: Brand Analytics ➔ Search Analytics ➔ Search Query Performance   At the top, toggle between 2 ways to view search data: ➔ "Brand View": 1k most important search terms to your brand. ➔ "ASIN View": 100 most important search terms by ASIN.   First: Organize & Label the Data.   Export the top 1k keywords by week as far back as possible. Merge into 1 spreadsheet. A free chrome extension makes this very easy. I'll share it at the end.   In a new tab, list each unique search term and add columns with fields you'd like to filter by. Match these fields into the main dataset. These are the fields I add:  • Keyword type: Branded, Generic or Competitor • Competitor: Yeti, Hydro Flask, etc • Product Type: Adult Bottle, Kid's Bottle, Backpack, etc. • License: Character or Sports Team   Now I can see our performance when customers search for Yeti, ice buckets, Paw Patrol, our branded keywords, etc.   Here are a few ways I look at the data:   1. Search Type   One of my favorite charts is the % of our clicks coming from branded, generic and competitor search terms.   Successfully brand building means more clicks from branded search terms over time.   Generic keywords drove 60% of clicks into our listings. Now branded keywords drive most of our clicks. Growing clicks from branded search is important, this is how we track it. (chart below)   2. How Are Customers Finding a Listing?   Pulling the "ASIN View" report for every ASIN in a listing shows exactly how customers are finding your listing.   For our kids listings, character specific keywords are a huge driver. They sum up to be about 40% of traffic.   "Spiderman Toys" has been a great keyword for us. We can know how we're doing YoY on keywords like this.   3. Amazon Ads Incrementality   Knowing if Amazon Ads are increasing total sales is one of life's great mysteries.   Match this report with Amazon Ads click data by keyword & date.   Test turning on and off campaigns and watch what happens to clicks in the SQP report.   The change in average clicks from a keyword is what ads are actually producing.   You can understand how much money you are lighting on fire with branded ads. Only 20% of branded ad clicks are incremental for us.   4. Simple Modern vs Competition's Search Volume   We compare total searches and clicks for our brand to competitors by week.   It shows relative brand health and who's trending up/down.   It shows us passing Hydro Flask over the last 2 years.   5. Flipping Competitor's Customers   With this data, you can see search volume for competitor keywords.   If successful, this is a great customer acquisition tactic. A great use for SP ads.   10% of our clicks come from competitor keywords.

3 Steps To Find Job-Winning LinkedIn Profile Keywords: You've probably heard that you need to optimize your LinkedIn profile. And while there are many profile sections to optimize, there's one foundational piece that underpins all of them: Keywords. Using the right keywords can help you land more connections, interviews, and offers. Using the wrong keywords can mean that you're wasting a whole bunch of time and energy on something that isn't going to get results. The goal of this post is to walk you through a simple, 3-step process for finding job-winning LinkedIn keywords that will actually move the needle in your job search: Step #1: Find (At Least) 5 Target Job Descriptions The first step in this process is to get a critical mass of job description data. Unlike resumes, where you can have a unique resume for each role you apply to, LinkedIn is a one-to-many setup. You only have one profile to cover all of the opportunities out there. That means we need to understand what keywords and skills are most prevalent across all the types of roles you're considering! Here's how: 1. Head to LinkedIn Jobs 2. Run a search for a target job title and put in all the filters you'd use as if you were planning to apply 3. Browse the available roles and look for ones that align with the type of job that meets your criteria 4. When you see it? Copy the job description and add it to a Google Doc Rinse and repeat for a minimum of 5 job descriptions (Note: Feel free to add more job descriptions if you'd like. The more you add, the more accurate the data will be but it will take longer to complete the exercise). Step #2: Use ResyMatch To Filter The Keywords Next, we'll use ResyMatch to parse through all the data in those job descriptions and pull out the keywords: 1. Head to ResyMatch.io 2. Change the scan type from "Resume Scan" to "Job Description Scan" 3. Paste all of the job descriptions from your Google Doc into the field and click "Start Job Description Scan" This will give you a list of all the relevant keywords that are present across the job descriptions you shared! Step #3: Identify The High Priority Keywords To Focus On We want to avoid over-optimization, so we need to be selective about the keywords we aim to target. Review your ResyMatch scan and make a note of the top 10 keywords. The top 5 that are listed are ones you should aim to weave into every section of your profile. The next 5 are keywords you should aim to include in areas with more room for text (About, Experience, Skills, etc). Now go weave them into your LinkedIn profile, focusing on your: - Headline - About section - Experience section - Skills When you're done with those updates, your LinkedIn profile should be optimized for your new set of keywords. That should help increase your chances of seeing more views from relevant employers, more outreach for relevant roles, and eventually more interviews and offers :)

Your keyword research strategy could be why you're stuck on page 2. After 16 years of testing, here's how to find what Google actually wants to rank: 👇 1. Google thinks in entities, not keywords An entity is a specific thing Google can identify: a brand, product, person, or concept. When someone searches "insulated work boots," Google maps that to an entity (work boots) with an attribute (insulated). Your job is figuring out which entity Google prioritized. Keywords are just the surface. Entities are what actually rank. 2. Search intent comes first Before diving into entities, understand what users want. Search your target keyword and look at the SERP features: • Shopping ads + product listings = Transactional intent (users want to buy) • Blog posts + YouTube videos = Informational intent (users want to learn) • Local pack + maps = Users want to visit a physical location Match your page type to what's ranking. 3. Google consolidates synonyms into one entity Search "winter work boots" and "insulated work boots" in separate tabs. Notice something? Same results. Google figured out they mean the same thing and consolidated them into one entity. If you create separate pages for both, you're competing with yourself. Don't do it. 4. How to identify the primary entity Open an incognito window and search your target keyword. Look at the title tags of the top 10 results. Which word appears most often across those titles? That's your primary entity. Use it in your title tag. Example: For cold weather work boots, "insulated" appears in 8 out of 10 titles. This tells you Google treats "insulated" as the core entity and "winter" as a secondary term. Put "insulated work boots" in your title. Reference "winter" in your content. 5. Attributes change the entity completely "iPhone 14" and "refurbished iPhone 14" are different entities with different results. Search both. The second pulls up aftermarket sellers and used product listings. Same with "work boots" vs "steel toe work boots." Attributes matter. Don't assume they're interchangeable. 6. Match your page type to the intent For the search term "insulated work boots", you'll see shopping ads, product listings, and collection pages. That's transactional intent. Users want to buy. Create a collection page listing products, not a blog post explaining what insulated means. Google won't rank the wrong page type no matter how good your content is. 7. Don't guess. Analyze competitors Pull the top 5 ranking pages into Ahrefs. Check their title tags. What entity do they focus on? Check their H2s. What related terms do they cover? This shows you exactly what Google wants to see on the page. Copy the structure, not the content.

Markets that share a language don’t share the same keywords. That’s one of the biggest mistakes brands make when expanding internationally: using the same keywords from one country to another, assuming users search the same way everywhere. Spoiler: they don’t. 🇬🇧 In the UK, people look for “trainers.” 🇺🇸 In the US, it’s “sneakers.” 🇪🇸 In Spain, “zapatillas.” 🇲🇽 In Mexico, “tenis.” And as I just found out (see picture below 👇), even within Spain, the same product can have different names depending on the region. Even when the language is “the same,” culture changes everything — from search habits to purchase behaviour. Keyword adaptation isn’t about translation. It’s about alignment with REAL user intent. 👉 Do you research keywords separately for each market, or do you usually start from a translated list? #SEO #Localization #InternationalMarketing #KeywordResearch #DigitalStrategy

This is the biggest mistake marketers make with keyword research. There are different types of keywords and they have different types of intent. For example, I recently have been looking for an electric vehicle, and I recently searched for “Tesla Model S VS Porsche Taycan”. Now when searching that phrase it’s obvious that I am trying to get the PROs and CONs of each car to figure out which one is better. On the flip side, if I type in “buy an electric car” it’s clear I am looking to buy one. But my query isn’t specific enough for a website to just show me one electric car. Yes, they could in theory do that, but they will get a lot of people bouncing away which will hurt your rankings in the long run. See, ranking for a keyword is half the battle, but the other half is matching the intent with the right web page and content. SEO isn’t about ranking a web page. It’s about helping people out and showcasing a web page that solves the problem they just searched for. So don’t just think about the keywords you want to rank for, but also think about the intent of that keyword. Look, no matter how many backlinks you build, no matter how fast your load time is, and no matter how good you are at on-page SEO… you’ll never rank well if the keyword intent doesn’t align with your web page.

I spoke with a D2C brand that had skyrocketed its organic traffic yet their daily orders were still flat. They came to me expecting a quick SEO fix. But as I dug deeper, I realized what they needed was a strategic framework —an integrated set of choices that would drive not just visitors, but profitable orders. Initial Situation: ➜ 10x increase in daily clicks (from almost nothing to 2,000/day) ➜ Average Order Value (AOV) surprisingly low ➜ Order volume: virtually unchanged despite the traffic surge Problem Identification: Why wasn’t all that new traffic turning into sales? The brand had invested in SEO, yes—but without aligning content strategy with top-selling SKUs, profit margins, demographics, and their unique value proposition. ❌ They chased visibility, not viability. Process (Our Discovery Call): I asked questions like: ➜ Top-selling SKUs? ➜ High-margin categories? ➜ Core audience and demographics? ➜ Product Differentiators vs. competition? ➜ Customer repeat purchase cycles? By understanding these, I identified where intent-rich opportunities matched their strongest business levers. What We Did Next (The Proposal): I presented a tailored SEO program that went beyond “just more traffic.” It focused on: a) Where we choose to play: Pinpointing search opportunities that have a short time to value of results. b) How we choose to win: Mapping keywords to product categories with favourable Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty (KD), and Average Order Value. I presented them a scatter chart of commercial-intent keywords plotted by: ➜ Search Volume ➜ Keyword Difficulty ➜ Potential AOV Impact This instantly clarified the path forward. Instead of random traffic, we were going after the right traffic. The prospect’s reaction? He said no previous proposal had offered this level of strategic clarity. It’s easy to chase vanity metrics (traffic, rankings, clicks), but without aligning your SEO strategy to business goals, you’ll never see the revenue catch up. Stop treating SEO as a game of traffic. ➡️ Treat it as a strategic tool that positions you in front of high-intent audiences. ➡️ It’s not about playing everywhere—it’s about winning in the right places. If you’re looking to make strategic choices—on Google, Bing, or next-gen platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude —and you want to translate visibility into growth, let’s talk. I’d be excited to help you map your SEO opportunities to real business outcomes.

My 3-step Keyword Research Framework that boosts website traffic and rankings: 1. Unearthing Hidden Gems: • Conduct in-depth competitor analysis to identify high-potential keywords they rank for but haven't prioritized. • Utilize SEO tools like SEMrush to uncover long-tail keywords with lower competition but significant search volume. 2. Building Content with Intent: • Craft content that directly addresses the user's search intent behind each chosen keyword. • Focus on providing valuable information, solving user problems, and establishing yourself as an authority in your niche. 3. Ongoing Optimization for Growth: • Regularly monitor keyword performance and search ranking positions. • Continuously refine and optimize content based on user engagement, backlinks, and search engine updates. My aim with this framework is to help businesses achieve sustainable SEO success, not just short-term wins. #SEO #KeywordResearch #LIPostingChallengeIndia

Still doing SEO like it’s 2017? Let me guess. Your strategy: ✅ Open keyword tool ✅ Sort by search volume ✅ Pick “best credit card for travel” ✅ Write 1,500 words of fluff ✅ Pray for backlinks Congrats. You’ve just built a blog post that no one asked for. Because here’s the truth: Nobody searches like that anymore. Not your users. Not even your mom. Welcome to 2025. Where users don’t type “best.” They explain their entire damn life. - “Which credit card works if I earn ₹20k, order Swiggy 3x a week, and shop online every Saturday night?” - “Need a laptop that doesn’t crash when I edit reels and play Valorant after class.” That’s not SEO. That’s life context. Search volume? Not the game anymore. The game is: do you understand the person behind the query? And if your SEO still lives in spreadsheets… If your agency still sends you a 300-keyword plan… You’re not doing SEO. You’re doing nostalgia. So what’s the 2025 play? 👉 Watch how people talk, not type. Reddit, Quora, WhatsApp, YouTube comments - these are your new keyword tools. – Nobody searches “best protein powder.” They ask: “Which one doesn’t make me feel bloated?” – Not “home loan tips.” It’s: “Can I get a loan with ₹28k salary and no co-applicant?” – Not “CRM tools.” It’s: “What’s a CRM that won’t confuse my 3-member sales team?” These are not keywords. They are real-life DMs. 👉 Use ChatGPT like a research partner. Prompt it with: “I run a D2C brand doing ₹5L/month. What’s the best logistics option with low return rates?” Then reverse-engineer content from that scenario. 👉 Add a chatbot or WhatsApp extension to your site. Because people now “search” on your site, not just Google. They’ll type: “Which of your products works best for oily skin in humid weather?” If you can’t answer that in-chat, you’ve already lost them. 👉 Write for micro-intent, not mass keywords. Not “students.” But: a broke college kid who edits reels, games at night, and needs a ₹30k laptop that doesn’t overheat. This isn’t just a content shift. It’s a psychology shift. In 2025, SEO isn’t about ranking. It’s about relevance in conversation. And the brands that understand intent - not just traffic - Will be the ones that actually grow.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) isn’t just about inserting keywords—it’s about understanding your audience’s intent and structuring your content to address their needs effectively. By focusing on keyword intent, clustering, and topical relevance, your law firm can improve search engine visibility and attract the right clients. 1️⃣ Keyword Intent: Align Your Content with Client Needs Understanding the intent behind a client’s search helps you create content that meets their expectations. >> Informational Intent: Clients seeking answers or guidance: “What are my rights after a workplace accident?” “How does probate work in the UK?” Strategy: Publish blogs, FAQs, and educational resources addressing these queries. >> Navigational Intent: Clients looking for a specific service or firm: “Best family law solicitor in Birmingham.” “Smith & Partners legal advice contact.” Strategy: Ensure your website is optimised with clear service pages and detailed contact information. >> Transactional Intent: Clients ready to take action, such as hiring a solicitor: “No-win, no-fee personal injury lawyer near me.” “Book a legal consultation online.” Strategy: Provide strong calls to action, online booking systems, and client testimonials. 2️⃣ Topic Clusters: Build Content Hubs Search engines prioritise websites that demonstrate topical authority. Instead of individual, isolated keywords, focus on clustering related topics under one umbrella: Example Topic Cluster: Divorce Law in the UK >> Pillar Content: “The Ultimate Guide to Divorce Law in the UK.” Cluster Content: > > >“Understanding the Divorce Process.” > > >“How Child Custody is Decided in England and Wales.” > > >“Divorce Mediation vs. Litigation: Which is Right for You?” Strategy: Link all related content back to the main pillar page, reinforcing its authority and creating a seamless user experience. 3️⃣ Focus on Topics Over Keywords Google’s algorithms are increasingly prioritising the overall relevance of content rather than exact keyword matches. Shift Your Focus to Questions Clients Might Ask: Instead of targeting “probate solicitor,” write a guide like “Everything You Need to Know About Handling Probate in the UK.” Instead of “employment lawyer,” address specific pain points, like “What to Do If You’ve Been Unfairly Dismissed.” Strategy: Create comprehensive, client-focused content that answers multiple related questions in one place. 4️⃣ Tools and Strategies for Success >> Use platforms like Google Search Console, inLinks, Dragon Metrics, and AlsoAsked to identify questions, intent, and related searches. >> Monitor which queries drive traffic to your website. >> Optimise internal linking to guide users through relevant content, keeping them engaged on your site longer. By focusing on the bigger picture—client intent, interconnected topics, and a well-structured content strategy—you can better establish your firm as a trusted authority. #lawfirmmarketing #digitalmarketing

Every time you scale a campaign's budget, you should know exactly what you're scaling. A lot of brands don't. I recently audited an account where a campaign was running at 15% ACoS. The brand looked at it and said, "This is one of our best campaigns. Let's increase the budget." But here's what was actually inside that campaign: Someone searches their brand name + "driving gloves" — they already know you. They click, they buy. ACoS on that keyword: 6%. Someone else searches "winter gloves for drivers" — they're shopping around. They click, maybe they buy, maybe they don't. ACoS on that keyword: 45%. Both keywords are in the same campaign. The 6% branded ACoS drags the average down to 15%. Looks great. The brand scales the budget. Amazon pushes more spend toward the unbranded terms. ACoS balloons. The brand pulls back and calls the campaign broken. It was never working the way they thought. The branded keywords were the safety net. Here's the problem with putting branded and unbranded in the same campaign: You can't control how Amazon splits the budget between them. And when you scale, you don't get to choose where the extra dollars go. Same thing happens with auto campaigns. Branded search terms sit inside your auto, inflate the numbers, and when you scale, you're just feeding more budget into branded traffic you were already getting. Separate them. Branded keywords get their own campaign. Their own budget. Their own benchmarks. Unbranded stands on its own. No safety net. That's how you know if your growth campaigns can actually grow. Stop scaling blended averages. Start scaling what's actually working.