Keyword Analysis

Keyword analysis through products like Google Search Console and Semrush allow you to see what visitors to your site search for in order to arrive on your page. It allows you to see what questions people may have regarding your content, and how you can adjust your content to reach more viewers.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analysis allows you to see where your site ranks on the Google search results page for a specific keyword. SERP analysis can help you identify relevant keywords to strategically integrate into your content to help your SEO.

Helpful Tools and Resources

Google Search Console

Google Search Console allows you to see what visitors type on the Google search page to arrive at your site. It will show you your top keywords, the number of clicks your site received from that keyword search and the number of impressions (overall viewers) that the search query received. Through this, you can see what information is most relevant to viewers based on the number of times it was searched and tailor your content to better answer those questions.

Semrush

Semrush is an SEO tool that can show you statistics for keywords on your site and your competitors’ site. You can see where you are on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and view relative keyword difficulty that would allow you to show up higher on the page. You can compare to other .edu sites and discover what content other universities are prioritizing. Looking at competitors’ content can also show you the best way to lay out information, and what questions may be more relevant to answer.

Things to Explore through Keyword Analysis

Using keyword SERP analysis and related tools can help you answer questions like:

• What words do you want to rank for?
• What do you rank for now?
• What are people asking that’s relevant to you?

Find Keywords Associated with Your Site

You can use Google Search Console to see the top keywords associated with your domain (i.e., tamu.edu). This can help you see what people are searching for when they end up on your site. Using these prompts as a guide, ask yourself “does my site’s content adequately provide answers to these questions? Can I modify the content to answer these questions better?”

Sometimes reviewing queries through organic keyword research can help you get ideas for what content people expect to be on your site. This can help you find content gaps or get inspiration for content to include or prioritize in your site.

Review On-Site Search Queries

You can use Google’s Programmable Search Engine to review what keywords your site users are searching for on your site’s search. This can help you identify areas of content people find important or perhaps are difficult to find. These findings can help you strategize content changes.

Explore Keywords to Target

You can use SEMrush to see how you rank for specific keywords that may not show up on your Google Search Console top 100. You can choose keywords that are easier to target and start strategically integrating those words into your content to improve your SEO.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

The main thing to avoid when making your website content SEO friendly is keyword stuffing. An abundance of certain keywords and their variations does nothing for actual SEO relevance. It is always better to include keywords in full sentences with relevant context to the rest of the page in order to improve your ranking on SERPs or reach a wider audience.