We've just published a major overhaul of our "Beginner's Guide to Keyword Research" at Ahrefs Blog, and I thought it might be useful to give you folks a brief TL;DR here at BigSEO.

Chapter 1: Keyword research basics

Nothing to see here.

You already know what keyword research is and why it is such an important part of SEO, right? :)

Chapter 2: How to find keyword ideas

We believe this process should be boiled down to the following 4 steps:

1. Brainstorm ‘seed’ keywords - these are words and phrases that define your industry and would likely appear in most searches that your prospective customers will perform online. So if you sell coffee machines, some good seed keywords to start with are "coffee machines," "coffee equipment" and simply "coffee."

2. See what keywords your competitors rank for - your seed keywords would help you to identify your competitors. These are websites that already rank in Google for the keywords that you want to rank for. Once you have a list of competing websites, you can see all the keywords that they rank for in Google and the pages that bring them most of their search traffic by using a proper SEO tool. (I recommend to use Ahrefs... for obvious reasons.)

3. Use keyword research tools - while your competitors are probably the best source of keyword ideas to get you started... You might also get a lot of value by discovering keywords that none of your competitors have covered yet. Just put your seed keywords into your keyword research tool of choice (I still recommend Ahrefs btw) and it give you a HUUUGE list of search queries that contain your seed keywords in them (or somehow relevant to them).

4. Study your niche - while your competitors and keyword research tools will likely give you enough keyword ideas to keep you busy for years to come... You might want to discover emerging trends before they appear in keyword research tools and before your competitors will cover them on their websites. And for that you'll need to study your niche. This means hanging out on places where your target audience is hanging out and learning what bothers them. For example, there's a subreddit r/Coffee where people are discussing stuff that you won't necessarily find in any keyword research tools.

Chapter 3: How to analyze keywords

Let's talk about keyword metrics and some of the things that (hopefully) you didn't know you don't know.

• Search volume - First and foremost, it's the number of searches of a given search query per month, not the number of unique people searching for it. Also, it's a rounded annual average, which can't possibly match the "impressions" number that you see in Google Search Console for a given search query. And, finally, not all searches will result in actual clicks on the search results.

• Clicks - Tells you the average number of monthly clicks on the search results for a given keyword. Those clicks will be distributed between organic search results and ads. Sometimes the number of clicks might be bigger than the number of searches. That happens when people click multiple search results, rather than clicking just one (or not clicking on anything at all).

• Traffic potential - Pages don't rank for just a single keyword. Whatever keyword you rank for, there likely are many more other search queries that mean exactly the same. And your page will likely rank well for all (most?) of them, and get some clicks from each (most?) of them. And while search volume would often correlate with total traffic to a page, the cases where it does not are much more common than you might think. Here's a good example from my recent tweet.

• Keyword Difficulty - There's absolutely no way that a simple two-digit number will magically predict your chances of ranking for a certain keyword. Don't trust any tool that would advertise their KD metric this way. There's no better way to assess keyword difficulty than a manual review of the SERP. What a KD metric can do is give you some information about the SERP before you even look at it. In Ahrefs' case - KD refers to an average number of referring domains among the top-ranking pages. Simple and straightforward.

• Cost Per Click (CPC) - If you really care about this metric you'd rather use AdWords. Any third party tool will show you CPC metrics that are pretty outdated. That is because of the nature of this metric. Unlike search volume, the CPC can go up and down pretty much any minute, if someone decides to bid (or not bid) on a certain keyword.

Chapter 4: How to target keywords

Let's say you have a bunch of search queries that are very similar in nature or belong to the same topic. Should you create a dedicated page for each of them? Or should you target all of them with one page?

And what kind of page is likely to rank for a given keyword anyway?

To answer these questions you need to do two things:

1. Identify the parent topic

2. Identify the search intent

Here's how you do this:

1. Parent topic

Put your similar keywords in Google one by one and see if there's an overlap between pages that rank for these keywords:

• If you search in Google for "how to make whipped coffee" and "what is whipped coffee" you'll see that the top-ranking pages are basically the same. So you don't need to create a dedicated page for each of these keywords, both can be targeted with one page.

• But if you search for "how to make whipped coffee" and “whipped coffee without sugar” you'll suddenly notice that the SEPRs are quite different. So each of these keywords will require a dedicated page of its own.

2. Search intent

Most articles about search intent teach you about "informational/navigational/transactional" grouping of keywords by search intent. And while it does make certain sense, it is not particularly actionable.

When trying to rank for a certain keyword you should review the pages that already rank there and answer the following three questions:

1. What is the right content type? (blog posts, product, category, landing pages, videos, tools, etc)

2. What is the right content format? (how-tos, listicles, news articles, opinion pieces, reviews, etc)

3. What is the right angle? (this one doesn't have set categories unfortunately)

Nailing the search intent is extremely important for ranking well.

EXAMPLE: We used to target the keyword "backlink checker" with a simple landing page with a "sign up for $7 trial" button, and we never ranked above position #8. But then we turned that page into a free backlink checker tool and our page shot up to #1 in a matter of weeks.

Chapter 5: How to prioritize keywords

Keyword prioritization isn’t exactly the final step in the keyword research process. It’s more something that you should do as you go through the steps above. As you’re looking for keywords, analyzing their metrics, and grouping them, ask yourself:

• What is the estimated traffic potential of this keyword?

• How tough is the competition? What would it take to rank for it?

• Do you already have content about this topic? If not, what will it take to create and promote a competitive page?

• Do you already rank for this keyword? Could you boost traffic by improving your rank by a few positions?

• Is the traffic likely to convert into leads and sales, or will it only bring brand awareness?

That last point is a particularly important one. While search volume, traffic potential, difficulty, and search intent are all important considerations, you also need to consider what traffic from that keyword will be worth to your business.

Here at Ahrefs we came up with a simple "business potential score" on a scale from 0 to 3, where:

3 - Our product is an irreplaceable solution to the problem;

2 - Our product helps quite a bit, but it isn’t essential to solving the problem;

1 - Our product can only be mentioned fleetingly;

0 - There’s absolutely no way to mention our product.

As a general rule we try to avoid targeting keywords with business potential 0-1 and only focus on keywords in the 2-3 range.

One other mistake that lots of newbie SEOs make when doing keyword research is they focus on low-difficulty keywords only.

You should always have short, medium, and long-term ranking goals. If you only focus on short-term goals, you’ll never rank for the most lucrative keywords. If you only focus on medium and long-term goals, it’ll take years to get any traffic. You need to find the right balance.

Let's wrap this up

As you can probably tell, most of the ideas and concepts that we're sharing in our "Beginners Guide" aren't new to most seasoned SEOs.

But if you need to train a new employee, which resources do you send their way, to make sure they will get the RIGHT frameworks for performing a proper keyword research?

Hopefully our guide will become your go-to resource for these cases from now on.

PS: I didn't put a link to the full guide published at Ahrefs Blog, and I think you folks know why. ;)

Last year I published a TL;DR version of our “Beginner’s Guide To Keyword Research” here on r/BigSEO and it received plenty of upvotes and quite some positive feedback. (Huge thanks for that!!)

So I thought you folks might enjoy the TL;DR version of our “Beginner’s Guide to Link Building” too.

The original version of that guide was published at Ahrefs Blog a few years ago and we regularly update it to keep it fresh. But it is freaking 7000 words long, which is 30+ minutes at average reading speed.

This condensed version is ~4x shorter and (hopefully) contains all the most important ideas and takeaways from the original.

So let’s dive right in!

Chapter 1: Link building basics

If you want to rank high in Google - you need to have links!

(good luck with your SEO if you think otherwise)

And yet links aren’t the answer to everything. In many cases merely getting more links than your competitors won’t guarantee that you will outrank them. There are many other factors besides links that can influence where you rank in Google.

Chapter 2: How to build links

Conceptually, most link building tactics and strategies fall into one of the following four buckets:

1. Add - manually add links to websites;

2. Ask - reach out to website owners directly to ask for a link;

3. Buy - pay for them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯;

4. Earn - get organic links from people who visited your page.

(these come together into a totally un-memorable acronym - AABE*)*

1. Adding links

We’re talking about link building tactics that allow you to manually add your link to some website, without asking anyone’s permission. Some examples would be:

• Business directory submissions;

• Social profile creation;

• Blog commenting;

• Posting to forums, communities & Q&A sites;

• Creating job search listings;

• etc.

These kinds of links bring very little value for one simple reason - anyone can easily get them.

So you should only bother with such links in the first few weeks of your website going live. After that, it'll be better to switch your focus to acquiring higher quality links.

2. Asking for links

This is when you reach out to some website directly and try to negotiate a link. Some of the most popular tactics that SEOs use to persuade website owners to link to them are:

• Guest blogging — create useful content for their website.

• Skyscraper technique — show them a better resource than the one they’re linking to.

• Link inserts — show them a resource with exhaustive information on something they mentioned briefly.

• Ego bait — mention them or their work in your own content in a positive light.

• Testimonials (& Case studies) — give positive feedback about their product or service.

• Link exchanges — link exchanges (duh!).

• Resource page link building — show them a good resource that fits their collection.

• Broken link building — help them fix a broken link on their page.

• Image link building — ask to get credit for using your image (or actually offer them to use your image on their page).

• Unlinked mentions — ask to turn the plain-text mention of your brand into a link.

• Link moves — ask to make changes to an existing link.

• HARO (& journalist requests) — give an “expert quote” for their article.

• PR — give them a killer story.

The tactics listed above seem quite reasonable, but once you actually try them out, you’re quickly going to find out that:

• Bloggers don’t want your guest article.

• Your “Skyscraper” isn’t that good after all.

• Your mention of their work in your post has led to just a brief “thanks.”

• etc.

Asking for links is always an EXCHANGE OF VALUE!

You get value from their link. What do they get?

The answer usually boils down to just three options:

1. They already know and respect you. They’ve benefited from your work somehow in the past, so they’re happy to help you back;

2. Your content is so mind-blowingly awesome that linking to it would simply make them look (and feel) good;

3. They want something from you in exchange.

The first two are generally a prerogative of big brands and eminent individuals. So more often than not your case would be #3.

3. Buying links

Google is strongly against buying links.

This means that buying links is risky and might get you in trouble. Especially if you're a newbie and you don't know what you're doing.

But the truth is, many people in the SEO industry do buy links. Some do it in greyhat/blackhat ways and still manage to fly under the radar. While others manage to "negotiate" perfectly legitimate links from reputable websites and minimise risks: via partnerships, co-marketing, etc.

That said, here at Ahrefs we never paid for any links. The risk is just not worth it, given that there's plenty of opportunity to get high-quality links for free.

4. Earning links

This is when people link to your content without you having to personally ask them to do it.

To make this happen, you need to create content of exceptional quality and promote it hard to reach as many people as you possibly can.

Here are a few tactics and strategies that fall into this category:

• Linkbait (or linkable assets) - data studies, infographics, maps, surveys, awards;

• Podcasts / interviews / expert roundups;

• Content promotion;

• etc.

Two important factors in earning links are your reputation and credibility. Sometimes even the most amazing piece of content might go unnoticed if it is published by a newbie blogger. While a reputable person can get tons of links to rather trivial stuff.

But the way you build your reputation and credibility is by consistently creating high quality work that people enjoy. So while earning links might seem hard when starting out, it should eventually become your primary link acquisition strategy.

Chapter 3: What makes a good link?

I’m sure you’re well aware that Google treats links as “votes.” The more votes a page has, the more Google likes it.

But, unlike with modern democracy, those votes are not equal. There are 6 main factors that determine how much a given link will help your page to rank higher in Google:

1. Authority;

2. Relevance;

3. Anchor text;

4. Nofollow vs follow;

5. Placement;

6. Destination.

[here’s a nice illustration btw]

A good understanding of these factors helps a lot in prioritising your link building efforts.

Let me expand on just the first two:

1. Authority

There’s “page authority” and there’s “website authority.”

“Page authority” refers back to Google's original PageRank algorithm, according to which (in layman’s terms) a page with more votes of its own casts a stronger vote.

That is why SEOs often strive to acquire links from old pages with strong backlink profiles or even build backlinks to the pages that they have acquired links from (also known as “Tier 2 links”).

But a newly published page may very well acquire lots of backlinks in the long run too. So don’t blindly prioritise building links from existing pages over the newly published ones. Prioritise building links from pages that are link-worthy.

As for “website authority” - folks at Google have consistently denied that it even exists. But at the same time it feels quite intuitive that a link from The New York Times should have more value than a link from your neighbour’s website (unless of course your neighbour is Jeff Bezos).

But then again, maybe “website authority” is nothing else but a high concentration of high-authority pages on a given website? Unfortunately, no one can give you a definitive answer to that question.

Here at Ahrefs we measure website authority with a metric called Domain rating (DR) and it is based solely on the strength of the backlink profile of a given website. Think of something like PageRank, but for entire domains, rather than individual pages.

A common SEO rookie mistake is to neglect link opportunities from low authority sites, as if they’re somehow detrimental to your SEO success. They’re not. Just like a newly published page can acquire backlinks over time (boosting the value of a link from it) a low-authority website can become a big deal in a few years time.

So the right way to use a website authority metric like DR is for estimating the relative amount of effort that it makes sense to invest in acquiring a link from a given website.

For example, if an owner of a DR20 website is asking for a short quote for their article - go for it! But if they ask you to write a 5,000 word long guest post - you might want to save that for a DR60+ website.

2. Relevance

Let's say you have a blog about dogs. Would you rather get a link from TechCrunch (high authority) or some popular blog about dogs (high relevance)?

There's no "right" answer. In fact, there's quite a bit of debate in the SEO world on which one is more important - authority or relevance.

Whichever side you're on, most SEOs agree that the relevance of a linking website is a very strong factor in the eyes of Google. So if you want your website to do well in Google, make sure that many other websites from your industry are linking to it.

Chapter 4: Best link building tactics

So what are the best and most effective ways to get links?

Arguably, it’s these ones:

1. Pursuing competitor’s links.

Competitor link research is not really a “tactic” per se, but rather a way of uncovering the exact tactics and strategies that work well in your niche. If they managed to acquire those links, then you too should be able to do it.

But don’t merely follow their footsteps. Your goal is to figure out how to acquire links faster and more efficiently than they do.

• Do they get most of their links from organic product reviews?

• Did they create a killer linkable asset?

• Do they exchange links with other bloggers?

• Did they publish a ton of guest articles?

Whatever works for them, you have to find ways to execute it more efficiently.

2. Creating linkable assets.

“Linkable assets” are noteworthy pages of your website that people naturally want to link to.

The most common types of such pages are:

• Studies & research;

• “How to” guides & tutorials;

• Definitions & coined terms;

• Online tools & calculators;

• Infographics & “Map-o-graphics;”

• Awards & rankings.

I’m sure even in the most boring industries there’s a way to create an interesting piece of content that would attract links. And then you can use internal links to send some of that “link juice” to the pages that you want to rank well.

3. Content promotion.

Even the most link-worthy content won’t get any links unless people discover it first.

That is why promoting your content is absolutely essential for link acquisition.

The most proactive tactic would obviously be email outreach - finding relevant websites & pages and reaching out to their authors asking to get mentioned.

But other than that, any conventional content promotion method might very well result in some organic links. The more people discover your content, the higher the chance that some of them will mention it on their website sometime later.

4. Guest blogging

Websites need to publish quality content if they want to get traffic. For that reason many of them employ writers and pay them handsomely to create high quality content that will bring visitors.

So if you reach out to such a website and offer them a high quality piece of content for free - there’s a very good chance that they’ll bite.

Here are two tips that will make your guest post pitches more effective:

1. Work your way up. - The editors behind the top websites in your industry won’t waste time talking to you, unless you can show them examples of high quality content published on other reputable websites. So start from writing for smaller blogs and flaunt your best work while pitching bigger blogs.

2. Do keyword research. - Website owners want traffic. So if you do a bit of keyword research and offer them a few relevant topics that they can rank for in Google, it will be harder for them to say no to your pitch.

Chapter 5: Link building tools

There are many tools that might be useful for link building. But as a beginner, you only need two: a link prospecting tool and an email outreach tool.

• For link prospecting I honestly believe there’s no better tool than Ahrefs’ Content Explorer (I’m biased though). Just search for a keyword and the tool will spit out hundreds of thousands of pages that have mentioned this keyword in their content. These would be your link prospects.

• For email outreach we ourselves use Pitchbox, but I know many other SEOs are happy with Buzzstream or MailShake.

Let's wrap this up

1. If you can manually add a link to some website it has little to no SEO value.

2. Asking for links only works if your content is truly exceptional.

3. More often than not website owners would want something in exchange for linking to you.

4. Buying links is very risky, so you better refrain from that.

5. Quality content DOES attract links organically. But for that to happen you have to promote it hard.

These five takeaways alone should form a solid foundation for building up your knowledge of link building.

That’s it!

I hope you enjoyed this trimmed and condensed version of our “Beginner’s Guide to Link Building.”

Here’s a link to the full guide, which in its turn links to a ton more resources for further reading to help you expand your knowledge of the topic.