What’s the most critical part of improving your SEO performance?

Discovering new and better keywords is a foundational element of SEO and SEM. If you can find profitable keywords (and target them appropriately), you’ll rank higher on the SERP and make more money.

It might not be the most challenging part of the trade, but it can get time-consuming, and many find it hard to get the ball rolling. They don’t have tried-and-true methods to discover keywords, so their progress stalls.

With ProRankTraker, all you need is ONE keyword to unveil a massive bank of keywords with significant search volume for you to choose from. Most importantly, it will save you valuable time on keyword research.

In this article, we’ll show you how to execute this method. We’ll show you how to use ProRankTracker’s tools to discover powerful keywords in ANY niche.

Let’s get started!

We’ll cover:

• The Basics of Keyword Difficulty
• Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Value of Long-Tail Keywords
• The Basics of Local and Mobile Keywords
• Different Ways to Discover New Keywords
• How to Find Keywords With ProRankTracker’s Rankings Discovery Tool
• How to Find Keywords With ProRankTracker’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

The Basics of Keyword Difficulty

Before we can understand how to find the best keywords, we need to look at the concept of keyword difficulty.

Keyword difficulty refers to how hard it is to rank for a given keyword. For example, the significant keywords will be challenging to rank in a highly competitive field like retail.

Not only is it important to rank for your keywords, but it’s essential to rank high on the SERP (in the top 3 is best) to increase your CTR. For example, the top position has a 28.5% CTR, while the 10th position has a lousy 2.5% CTR.

If you can get in the top 3, your traffic will grow drastically, so keyword difficulty is a core issue for SEO. 

In this section, we’ll discuss keyword difficulty and how to assess the difficulty of a keyword using ProRankTracker’s keyword tools.

Search Volume

One of the key indicators to gauge how much interest a keyword has is monthly Google search volume. It’s vital information for SEM as well as SEO.

Finding the perfect keyword means typically finding something with a balanced search volume. In other words, more search volume doesn’t necessarily mean a better keyword.

For example, a keyword with a monthly search volume of 10,000 will have the most prominent companies fighting for the top 3 spots on the SERP. However, a keyword with 3 searches per month might not be worth your time.

If you’re able to find something with a fair amount of search volume that hasn’t yet caught the attention of larger companies, that’s where you’ll make your gains.

When you add your URLs and keywords in ProRankTracker, you can check the search volume for your tracked terms in the URL View or the Term View (use columns and sorting at the top to rearrange your data columns to your preference).

Keywords like “automated sales funnel software” may only have 20 monthly searches, but they are highly targeted. So if you can rank for those keywords, you will be getting access to searchers who are ready to buy.

Competition

We briefly mentioned competition in the last section, but let’s take a closer look.

Generally speaking, keywords with more search volume will be more competitive. That means that larger companies with more resources will target them.

What does that mean for you?

You need to find keywords that solid competitors aren’t yet targeting. One simple way to do this is to just do a Google search for your keyword. Make a note of the companies in the top 10 positions. The keyword is very competitive if they’re much larger than your business.

If you have ProRankTracker, you can quickly discover your opponents’ entire keyword strategies using the Rankings Discovery tool. It will reveal ALL the keywords that your opponents are tracking. Later in this article, we’ll go into depth on using the Rankings Discovery tool to assess your competition.

Keyword Golden Ratio

One of the easiest ways to determine whether you should target a keyword is using the keyword golden ratio (KGR).

To find a keyword’s KGR, determine the number of search results with your keyword in the meta title divided by your keyword’s total monthly search volume. Keywords with a KGR of 1 or lower are easier to rank for.

To find out the number of search results with your keyword in the meta title, just do a Google search for your keyword in this format:

alllintitlte: [your keyword here]

Then look at the total number of search results.

ProRankTracker’s Keyword Suggestions tool will help you quickly discover keywords with the perfect amount of competitiveness!

• Scroll through the list of keywords
• Check their search volume
• Do an allintitle search
• Plug your numbers into the formula to determine competitiveness

So if we wanted to find the KGR for the keyword “keyword competition checker,” we will do the following equation:

124 (total allintitle results) /  390 searches per month = 0.318 KGR

0.318 is well below 1, so we now know that this keyword would be fairly easier to rank for.

Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Value of Long-Tail Keywords

Some people make the mistake of selecting only high-volume keywords for their keyword strategies. They get distracted by the giant search volume, but they forget to consider the difficulty of those keywords.

Instead of focusing on any 1 type of keyword, your strategy should consist of various keywords. You should include long-tail keywords (3 words or more) in your plan.

Long-tail keywords come with many benefits that you can’t get with shorter, high-volume keywords, so don’t let their low search volume discourage you!

Let’s look at 3 of the main benefits of targeting long-tail keywords.

Increased Traffic

Long-tail keywords account for 70% of all web searches, and more than half of all searches are of 4 words or more.

Even though short-tail keywords get more search volume PER KEYWORD, long-tail keywords get more than DOUBLE the overall traffic. In other words, the majority of all web searches are for long-tail keywords.

If you ignore long-tail keywords because they have lower search volume, you miss more than HALF of all online searches.

More Targeted Traffic

Let’s say you’re a dentist selling dental implants. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes at each step in the process.

• Someone who’s just starting to think about implants might search “dental implants.”
• Someone considering buying implants might search, “dental implants cost.”
• Someone ready to buy might search, “dental implant clinic in Toronto.”

Did you notice how the keyword gets longer as the customer gets closer to the purchase?

Long-tail keywords can bring high-quality, targeted, organic traffic since they’re often specific and goal-oriented. Ranking high for just “dental implant”, for example, will most likely bring very little traffic of value as opposed to “dental implant clinic in Toronto.”

If you want your keywords to make you money, you should not be leaving out those keywords that people are searching for when they’re ready to buy!

The difficult part of this process is finding the right long-tail keywords buyers are searching for. However, ProRankTracker’s Keyword Suggestion tool makes finding super-specific and targeted keywords easy. We’ll show you how to do that later in this article.

Lower Competition

Ranking for a keyword like “dental implants” will be HARD. It has a massive search volume, and tons of huge companies fight over that keyword.

However, there may only be a handful of clinics that offer dental implants in your city. Furthermore, there are probably even fewer as SEO-savvy as you are.

That means that the long-tail keywords that target buyers also get far less competition.

When you start to target long-tail keywords, you can quickly get into the top 3 on the SERP. You can probably rank high for several long-tail keywords with less effort than it would take to get to the front page for a single short-tail keyword.

Combine that with the fact that 70% of all searches are long-tail, and it’s easy to see how quickly you can start bringing traffic.

The Basics of Local and Mobile Keywords

Hopefully, you’re seeing that more specific keywords lead to more targeted traffic.

More targeted traffic leads to more buyers.

More buyers lead to more money.

Since making more money sounds pretty good, let’s keep talking about using specificity to your advantage.

46% of all Google searches include local intent, meaning the searcher wants to visit a physical location. So if you’re going to access that half of Google, you have to target the keywords that include local intent.

This section will talk about how to use ProRankTracker to target local and mobile searches.

Location-Specific and Device-Specific Keyword Tracking

In the example above, we would be promoting a dental implant clinic servicing the Toronto area. The only ranks for our website that we would need to care about are those people from Toronto would see.

In this case, it’s irrelevant what search result a person in New York would get and how your website will rank in their search results.

At the same time, a keyword’s mobile rank might be different than its desktop rank, depending on how well optimized for mobile the site is.

When you add the dental clinic website to ProRankTracker, you need to consider that. Every keyword you add for tracking should include information about the device and location (unless you’re not promoting a local product).

ProRankTracker allows you to precisely track your ranks based on several different factors:

• Location (not just country or region, but even down to specific suburbs)
• Language
• Google TLD
• Search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Amazon)
• Device type (iPhone, Android, desktop, tablet)
• Snack pack (which we’ll talk about next)

If you’re trying to bring people to your physical location, neglecting these ranking factors is a huge mistake. When looking for new keywords, you should also be looking for keywords that will specifically target mobile and local ranks.

For example, the Rankings Discovery tool will show you the location AND device type of each keyword it discovers for you. This helps you select keywords to fill gaps in your strategy.

Location and device type can have a massive effect on your rank, so consider what searchers you’re targeting when putting your URLs and keywords into ProRankTracker.

Snack Pack

ProRankTracker can also help you track Snack Pack and Local Finder. The reason for that is simple. Notice Snack Pack is featured on top of the SERP:

Did you know that you can rank in the Snack Pack (top 3 on Local Finder) even if you don’t rank very high for that keyword organically?

In other words, your business can get featured at the TOP of the SERP even if you don’t organically rank for that word. However, you must target and track the Local Finder Results.

This gives you a distinctive edge and can drive real physical traffic straight to your location.

In our example above, the person searching for dental implants immediately sees where the clinics are in his city. He can examine reviews and see immediate practical information, such as contact details and working hours. 

Don’t ignore the Snack Pack and Local Finder tracking options on ProRankTracker! They can push serious traffic to your physical location!

Different Ways to Discover New Keywords

Now that we’ve talked about theory let’s talk about how to discover keywords that will help launch your business to the top of the SERP.

As with most things in SEO, there’s no straightforward answer to the question of how to find SEO keywords.

However, there are 3 primary strategies that you should use when looking for new keywords.

Additionally, any keyword tool you use should help you accomplish all 3 of these keyword discovery strategies. We’ll be showing you exactly how ProRankTracker helps you throughout the rest of this article.

Competitor Research

One of the best ways to discover gaps in your keyword strategy is to look at your opponents’ strategies.

After all, you’re all fighting over the same customers. If they’re finding customers from keywords you aren’t targeting, you need to compete with them on those words.

Competitor research starts with a simple Google search for a keyword you’re targeting. For example, let’s try, “Car wash in Austin.”

This helps us get an understanding of who our competitors are. We can then input those competitors into ProRankTracker to track them (and steal their keywords).

We’ll talk about how to do this in the next section of this article. For now, make sure that you’re prioritizing keyword research so your competitors don’t leave you in the dust.

Strategy-Based Keyword Discovery

You should never use a keywords research tool that doesn’t consider your current keyword strategy.

For example, let’s say that you’re a coffee company that focuses on decaf coffee. How much good would a keyword like “coffee with extra caffeine” do for your business?

None! You need keywords that fit your current strategy.

The best way to do this is with the Keyword Suggestion tool on ProRankTracker. When making a keyword list for you, it takes your current keywords into account.

In other words, it helps you EXPAND your strategy rather than trying to force you to CHANGE it.

We’ll show you exactly how to use this tool in the next section.

Hidden Keyword Discovery

This is where it gets really fun.

Let’s say your website already has some ranking presence in your niche.

Did you know there might be keywords you’re not actively promoting that might already be ranking top 100 on one of the major search engines?

These are called “hidden keywords,” and every website has them. If you never discover your hidden keywords, you can’t leverage them to get even more traffic.

ProRankTracker’s Rankings Discovery tool excels at finding those hidden ranks for you. It scours the SERPs to find ANY keywords that you (or your competitors) are ranked for, then shows them to you along with other crucial information:

• Device type (remember, users won’t get the same ranks depending on what device they use)
• Search engine (Google isn’t the only place where you can get serious traffic)
• The current rank range (top 100, top 10, top 3, etc.)
• Other critical information like search volume and TLD

You might be pleasantly surprised when you put your website through the Rankings Discovery tool!

How to Find Keywords With ProRankTracker’s Rankings Discovery Tool

While we’re on the topic of the Rankings Discovery tool, let’s talk about how to use it in the best way possible. Then, we’ll show you how to discover HUNDREDS of keywords with the Keyword Suggestion tool.

There are 2 basic ways to use the Rankings Discovery tool:

• Search for new keywords using a competitor’s keyword
• Search for hidden ranks using your own keyword

We’ll talk about both, but we’re going to focus on finding new keywords by using one of your competitor’s keywords.

Step 1: Research the Competition

Let’s go back to our “car wash in austin” example.

The first thing you need to do to discover new keywords in the Rankings Discovery tool is to find out which of your competitors are ranking for any keyword you’re also targeting.

To do this, just do a quick Google search for the keyword that you’re interested in:

Make a note of the top 3-5 competitors. You’ll use this data to discover all of their secret keywords.

Step 2: Add URLs and Keywords to ProRankTracker

Now we add the chosen websites and the keyword to PRT by using Advanced Add.

In the first step, input:

• The Tracking Type – Select which types of search results you want to track
• Mobile Device – Select a device or all if you wish to see specific mobile ranks

In the second step, input:

• The URLs of the competitors you found
• The keyword you’re interested in

In the third step, input:

• Select the search engines you want to track
• Select a location if you’re trying to discover local keywords

In the fourth step, input:

• Groups & Tags – Add Groups and Tags to easily filter and find your results later.
• URL Note – Add a note to remind yourself why you’re tracking the competitor URLs

By adding a group name for the websites you’re researching, you’ll have immediate and easy access to that data in one click. For example, we’ll call this group “carwash kr” (short for keyword research):

Click ‘Save’ when you’re done.

If you’re using the Rankings Discovery tool with your website, just input your URLs and keywords.

Step 3: Discover Keywords with the Rankings Discovery Tool

Our Ranking Discovery Tool will show you what other terms these websites rank top 100 for, and not just on Google:

The RD tool discovered 179 terms that these websites rank top 100. You can browse the found terms and add some or all of them.

Any terms you add will then show up in your main rankings views to analyze.

You might’ve learned all you need already. If so, that’s great, but why stop there? You can go deeper than that and discover even more!

Let’s look at how to discover even more keywords with ProRankTracker’s Keyword Suggestion tool.

How to Find Keywords With ProRankTracker’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

After you’ve added any of the keywords you want from the Rankings Discovery tool, you’ll be ready to generate literally HUNDREDS of keywords using the Keyword Suggestion tool.

Unlike other tools on the market, ProRankTracker’s Keyword Suggestion tool considers your current strategy, then makes keyword suggestions that fit. 

Now that you have a list of all the keywords your competitors are tracking, it’s time to take your strategy much farther.

Step 1: Select Your URL/Keyword Combo in the Keyword Suggestion Tool

Go to PRT’s Keyword Suggestion Tool and select one of the websites (either one of your competitor’s websites or your own URL):

The Keyword Suggestion Tool will then analyze each of the keywords being tracked for that URL and suggest possible related keywords for each. For the keyword “car wash detailing,” ProRankTracker produced a list of 202 related keywords!

Many of those keywords are long-tail with low volume and good KGR, which means they’re an ideal target for your website.

Step 2: Repeat With New Keywords

Consider that the list above is generated from a SINGLE keyword! Using the Rankings Discovery Tool, we discovered 179 keywords. ProRankTracker can generate a similar list based on each of those keywords.

You could potentially find THOUSANDS of great, long-tail keywords if you repeat this process with all the keywords you discovered with the Rankings Discovery tool.

Depending on how many times you want to repeat this process, you’ll have a practically unlimited supply of super-specific, highly-targeted keywords.

Conclusion

15% of the searches made on Google today have never been made before.

What does that have to do with anything?

It means that the keyword field is constantly evolving. Many of the keywords you’re targeting today may not be helpful next year.

The most important thing you can equip yourself with to prepare for those changes is a tool that enables you to do new and better research constantly.

In this article, we’ve shown you how to use ProRankTracker to discover keywords extremely quickly. Now, it’s up to you how far you’ll let the tool take your keyword strategy.

If you’re not already signed up for ProRankTracker, try out a 30-day free trial and get FULL access to the tools we talked about in this article. 

Now it’s time to go discover some keywords!