I admire the Golden Era of the Stone Age. I mean I understand the 20th century and tech advancements, but those really were the days. The time when we tilled the hard earth with our blunt stone instruments. The future generations will never know the real hardship. Just like the time I used to work with Google Keyword Planner. Looking at the world with no idea of Organic Difficulty and no SEO tips to optimize. SEO was really hard, unlike today. When I walk into the Znbound office and open my system to a keyword report and a comprehensive analysis of my campaign, I am only left with one thing to say. There is a god!Till now we have used Google's Keyword Planner for Keyword Research which has its own limitations. HubSpot Keyword Tool, however, is an alternative to Google's Keyword Planner but without its shortcoming. In the last 10 months, I developed the understanding of SEO is a key driver of success. You can drive thousands of visitors free of cost if you know what they are searching. You just need to write the right article.
Using this tool for last 6 months has proven to be tremendously beneficial. It will give you a whole world of insights at a single place like which keyword is ranking and which isn't. To add to that, the HubSpot Keyword Tool provides SEO tips to boost your keyword ranking such as focusing on long tail keyword opportunity, link building, CTA suggestions, On Page SEO tactics etc to generate more traffic to a website. Let us look at how the tool helps us to find new ways to develop keyword strategies. What is HubSpot Keyword Tool?An alternative to Google Keyword Planner but with advanced features, HubSpot's Keyword Tool helps you to:
- Find keywords that will be easy for you to rank for, so you can get more traffic.
- Compare your keyword ranking to that of your competitors.
- Get SEO tips for each keyword.
4 overview metrics at the top of HubSpot Keyword Tool Dashboard
- Keywords rank in Top 3 - It means total no. of keywords that you are tracking in your keyword tool that rank in top 3 positions of SERP (Search Engine Result Pages)
- Keywords rank in Top 10 - Total no. of keywords that you are tracking in your keyword tool that rank in top 10 positions of SERP.
- Contact from Organic Last 30 Days - Total no. of contacts that you capture in last 30 days from organic.
- Organic Traffic last 30 Days - Total no. of organic Traffic that you had in last 30 days.
Within the data table of the Keywords report, you can view the following metrics:
- Rank - It gives you the ranking status of a particular keyword in google. If any keyword rank increases in the last 7 days then a green upward arrow appears next to rank or if keyword rank falls then a downward red for it. If you hover your mouse over the green or red arrow, it will tell you the exact increase or decrease in number.
- Visit - The keyword tool tells you how many visits you got after the user searched for this keyword. It is updated every 24 hours and shows results for the past 30 days. Note: Google doesn't share the keyword that the visitor used to find your site. So this column only includes the number of visits from other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, AOL etc.
- Difficulty - It indicates how hard it is to rank a particular keyword on a scale on 0-100. Ideally, we should target low difficulty keywords (0-40), after that medium difficulty keywords (40-60). Any keyword with more than 60 is extremely hard to rank.
- Contacts - It means how many leads you captured after the user searched for this particular keyword. This is updated every 24 hours and shows the past 30 days.
- Monthly Searches - Number of monthly searches for a particular keyword provided your location is set and information localized. At times it shows "Low", for a low search volume and fewer data to show for.
- Campaign - Number of campaigns a keyword is assigned to.
- Created on - The exact date on which you added the keywords in HubSpot Keyword Tool.
Change how the data is sorted
You can use "sorted by": from the drop-down menu to change any metric. Using the cursor you can sort any metric either in ascending order or by descending order.
Filter by campaign
Using this feature, you can filter the keywords to only see keywords related to a particular campaign by selecting the campaign from the drop-down menu. See the image below:
Set Location
Click on the Set your location link to choose a geographic location for calculating keyword metrics. Select a country for calculating rank data. whether it is the difficulty, visits, contacts, CPC etc.
Now using this option you can select any country whether it is United States, United Kingdom or India.
Note: Initially India was not in the present geographic location. We requested HubSpot Team to add India to a location which was promptly done. Pat on our backs, maybe?
Features I like the most about HubSpot Keyword Tool are:
- Ranking Opportunities
- Conversion Opportunities
- Long Tail Opportunities
- Competitors
Let us talk about them.
1. Ranking Opportunities
This feature helps you decide which keywords you should focus on. Click on All Keywords drop-down menu and choose ranking opportunities. This will give you some keywords that you rank for but not on the 1st page of Google.
How do we select these keywords?
Choose a keyword where;
Rank is greater than 10 andRank is less than 70 and Difficulty is less than 70
How do you Boost your ranking?
- Get Inbound Links - One way of improving your page authority is by getting inbound links. Forgetting inbound links you should generate remarkable content so that people will love it and share it on their social media.
- On page SEO Tactics - Keep a Check on your targeted keyword should be in SEO Title, Meta, URL, Content, Heading, Alt tag etc.
2. Conversion Opportunities
Conversion opportunities are those keywords which get traffic but do not drive visitors to lead conversion.
How do you determine these Conversion Opportunity keywords?
Choose a keyword where;
Visits are greater than 10 and Searches are greater than 1,000Contacts is equal to 0
How do you boost your conversions?
Add a CTA - But how will you convert a visitor into a lead? Give him a smart Call to Action in your page and prompt him to take one.
Launch a Landing Page - Your CTA should be connected to a corresponding landing page so that it will capture the best traffic.
3. Long Tail Opportunities
Long tail Opportunities are short tail keywords which have high difficulty. But, only a high authority site can rank these type of keywords.
How do you determine which keywords are too difficult?
Choose a keyword where;
Rank is equal to 100 and Difficulty is greater than 70 and Searches are greater than 10,000
How do you drive more traffic?
Find Long Tail Keywords - Use Keywordtool.io to find long tail keywords.
Grab Low Hanging Fruits - Target long tail keywords because LT keywords are easy to rank.
4. Competitors
Just select competitors Filter from All keywords drop-down menu and it will give you keywords which give you the best opportunity to beat your competitors. This filter display how your competitors are performing for the keywords you are tracking.
Determining which keywords are competitive:
Choose a keyword where;
Competitor's Rank is less than 100
How do you beat your Competitors?
Create a Good Content - Make sure that you have one page or blog for 1 dedicated keyword. Go After those keywords whose rank difference (Difference between your rank and competitor's rank) is minimum.
Get Inbound Links - Try to get more inbound links from authoritative sites so that you can boost your ranking in SERP.
Final Words
Admittedly I am not saying that you shouldn't use Google's Keyword Planner.
But if you are getting more for less, then why not?HubSpot's Keyword Tool is very efficient. And certainly deserves a shot.
Why don't you go ahead and try it out for 30 days?
If you have any doubts while using HubSpot Keyword Tool then feel free and drop your question in the comment section.
All the very best for your Keyword Research :)
