What is a keyword and how to find a keyword [step-by-step]

Finding keywords is the first step in SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is very important because it helps to understand what terms the target audience uses to search for information and what type of information they need. This allows online marketers to plan what content to present and how to promote products to achieve their goals.

In this article, I would like to share a comprehensive guide on finding keywords (one post covers everything), explaining from the basics of what keywords are, the types of keywords, keyword finding programs, and finally, techniques for finding keywords that suit you. I believe that if you read from start to finish, you will fully understand keywords in every aspect and be able to find money-making keywords on your own for sure.

Keyword (คีย์เวิร์ด) คืออะไร

Keyword is a word or phrase that people use to search for information from a search engine. It reflects people’s problems or needs.

For example, if we want to know information about accommodations in Chiang Mai with a good atmosphere and affordable prices, we go to Google and search for information using the phrase “accommodations in Chiang Mai with a good atmosphere.” The phrase “accommodations in Chiang Mai with a good atmosphere” is the keyword.

For website owners Keywords are words or phrases related to the products or goals of a website, which reflect what the target audience wants and the terms they use to search for information.

How important is a keyword?

A keyword is a bridge connecting customers to the website.

If we choose the right keywords on the website, it will filter visitors who are genuinely interested in the website’s content or our products. Therefore, there is a high chance that they will follow the brand or become customers in the future.

In the online world, quality is as important as quantity. What good is it to have 100,000 visitors to your website each day if no one buys your products? Finding the right keywords will bring quality traffic to the website because they already have a need and are searching for it.

2.  Keyword refers to the location of a store on the online world.

Imagine that we open a restaurant with affordable prices and excellent taste, but it is located far away and as desolate as a graveyard. No one walks past the restaurant. Before long, the business will be in crisis.

Keywords are like the “location” of an online business. If we find good keywords with a high search volume and our website ranks well, it’s like our website or storefront is in a prime location.

3. A keyword is an indicator of the likelihood of success.

The Art of War says, “A great general knows he will win before going to battle, not goes to battle to find victory.”

Each military campaign requires time, money, supplies, and the lives of soldiers. Therefore, a general must clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy, analyze the situation thoroughly, to ensure that when engaging in battle, they will not be defeated and lose resources for nothing.

Finding and analyzing keywords is like considering the chances of winning or losing in a war. It helps us understand the strength of the competitors, the costs involved, and the chances of success. If you choose the right keywords and the competition isn’t too strong, there is a high chance that optimizing the website will yield the desired results. However, if you choose the wrong keywords, the chances of success are slim, and you risk wasting both money and time.

Know the types of keywords to choose the appropriate ones.

To find the right keywords for your website or marketing campaign, the first thing you need to understand, and it is very important, is to know the “types of keywords.”

Why is it important to understand? Because when you start looking for keywords, the first thing you will encounter is a long list of words related to your product (as shown in the picture below). You will need to identify which type of keyword each word belongs to, as each type has different usage methods. Understanding this will help you use keywords correctly and appropriately.

By type, keywords are divided into three categories as follows.

1. Seed keyword

Seed keyword is a term related to the “product” or “goal” of the website. It is a broad term, not specific. For example, if you sell men’s shoes. Seed keyword is “men’s shoes.”

Seed keyword is a term with a high search volume because no matter what information people are looking for about that product, it often includes the seed keyword. Whether they are buying, selling, checking prices, viewing pictures, or opening a shoe factory, everyone uses the term “men’s shoes” in their searches.

2. Niche keyword

Niche keyword is a term that slightly expands on the Seed keyword. The key characteristic of a Niche Keyword is that it indicates a group or category of products and articles. For example, a Niche keyword is “selling men’s Adidas shoes.”

Niche keywords are suitable to be used as categories or subcategories of a website because they indicate a “group” of products or content. Regardless of the model, color, or price, they still fall under the term “Adidas men’s shoes.”

3. Niche Longtail keyword

Niche Longtail keyword is a keyword that is specific, clearly identifying the model and price. For example, “selling men’s shoes Adidas STAN SMITH model xxxx.”

Niche Longtail keyword is a keyword that is specific, clearly identifying the model and price. For example, “selling men’s shoes Adidas STAN SMITH model xxxx.”

Examples of each type of keyword

To help you better understand Seed | Niche | Niche Longtail, I would like to provide examples of each type of keyword for different websites as follows.

Website selling car seat covers

Seed Keyword

• Car seat covers (general term, not specific)

Niche Keyword

• Car seat cover set, football pattern (indicate product category)
• Cartoon-patterned car seat covers (indicating product category)

Niche Long Tail Keyword

• Car seat covers, Manchester United football design (specific term)
• Car seat covers with Liverpool football pattern (specific term)
• Car seat covers with a cartoon Kitty design (specific term)

Korean clothing sales website

Seed Keyword

• Korean clothing (a broad term, not specific)

Niche Keyword

• Korean clothing for men (indicating product category)
• Korean women’s clothing (indicating product category)

Niche Long Tail Keyword

• Korean clothing for men, T-shirts (specific term)
• Korean women’s clothing, beautiful dresses (specific terms)
• Korean women’s fashion clothing (specific term)

From the above keyword examples, you should have a better understanding of the types of Seed / Niche / Niche longtail keywords. Let’s move on to the next topic.

A good keyword should have 5 characteristics.

In addition to specifying the type of Seed / Niche / Niche longtail keyword, before choosing any keyword for the webpage, it is necessary to evaluate whether the nature of that word or phrase is appropriate to use, in order to avoid wasting effort and time (which may also include money) on keywords that do not yield real results.

The method for selecting keywords to use consists of 5 criteria.

1. Related

Keywords must be related to the products or the goals of the website, such as product names, models, brands, customer problems, results from using the products, etc. The more relevant and specific the keywords are to your products, the higher the chances that visitors to the website will become customers.

2. Someone is using it

Many people mistakenly think that finding a good keyword means looking for words that directly describe the product’s characteristics in a grammatically correct manner, but that’s not the case.

Keyword is a word that your target audience uses, which may be different words that mean the same thing or even misspelled words. If it has a high search volume, it can be a good keyword, such as

• Words that are completely grammatically incorrect but have high search volumes and low competition, such as “มอไซค์” (motorcycle), “น่ำตาล” (sugar), “แทปเลต” (tablet), etc.
• Different words that mean the same thing, such as “condo, rental room, accommodation,” “mobile phone, smartphone,” “earrings, ear studs, ear jewelry.”

In summary, we need to find out what terms the target audience uses to search for your products and use those terms as keywords.

3. There is a reasonable search volume

A good keyword must have a reasonable search volume because the more there are, the greater the opportunity to increase sales. Keywords that no one searches for or have too low a search volume are like a store location that is deserted. No matter how good the products are, it is difficult to succeed.

4. Competitive

A good keyword must be competitive, meaning that when we choose this keyword and insert it into a webpage, we can make the targeted content appear on the 1st or 2nd page of Google. This allows us to compete with other websites (both in terms of SEO and PPC). The higher the ranking above competitors, the better.

And how much is considered “competitive”?

1. If we use Keyword Research Tools (which will be introduced in the next section), the program will analyze the difficulty of competition, or Keyword Difficulty, and present it as a number or color for us to see. We will then consider whether our website’s strength (Domain Authority) is sufficient to compete with the strength of other websites.

Check the strength of your website at ahrefs.com

2. Considering the cost and return on investment in the competition, for example, you may need to buy ads to increase keyword rankings or purchase backlinks to enhance the website’s authority. If these investments are within the budget set or yield satisfactory marketing results, they can be considered competitive.

5. It is a type of “High Commercial Intent” keyword

We should pay special attention to “High Commercial Intent” keywords because they are money-making keywords that help increase sales. There are two main types of High Commercial Intent keywords:

1. Buy Now Keyword are groups used by people who have purchasing power and urgently need products, such as

• “Book accommodation in Chiang Mai, Mae Rim” (Traveling for sure, so need to book accommodation)
• “Selling an old motorcycle, registered, ready for delivery”
• “Restaurant xxx table reservation” (Definitely going to eat, afraid the table will be unavailable)

2. Product Keyword refers to a group of words that specify the brand, model, and characteristics of a product or service. Although it has less purchasing power than a “Buy Now keyword,” it is still interesting because it is used by people who are already inclined towards the product, such as

• “5 high-return LTF mutual funds” (Of course, there are mutual funds that you market in the article as well)
• “Review of the beautiful aaa room” (Sharing a good experience with a beautiful room)
• “10 Cheap Accommodations in Chiang Mai”

Keyword Research: Finding Keywords for SEO

Keyword Research คือ the process of finding keywords or search terms that people use on search engines and analyzing various factors of the keywords to determine whether they should be used on a website or individual web pages.

For example

• Keyword มีคนค้นหาเท่าไร (Search Volume)
• Keyword is a word with low or excessively high competition rate (Keyword Difficulty).
• There are other related keywords that can be used to replace or complement the main keyword (Related Keyword Suggestion).
• To see the ranking of web pages that use the keyword

Therefore, the benefit of conducting Keyword Research will help SEO practitioners or website developers assess which keywords to use in order to compete for website rankings.

Keyword Research Tools & Keyword Planner

The next question is, how can we find keywords that are suitable for the website?

The answer is to use a keyword finder program (Keyword Tool).

Keyword Tool is a tool that shows what words people use to search for information on Search Engines, along with other important information such as

• Show the search volume for each keyword.
• Tell the difficulty level of doing SEO for each keyword.
• Provide the estimated price for bidding on Search Ads (ads on the search page).
• Analyze websites that use the keywords we initially searched for, such as rankings, shares, website visits, etc.

What are the basic metrics that need to be looked at?

Even though there are many brands of keyword research programs, they share some basic common information that users need to know as follows.

• Search Volume is the number of times people search for a keyword per month. It checks how many people actually search for the keyword we want to use. The Search Volume varies by content type and industry.

• Keyword Difficulty (KD) is a value that indicates the level of competition for an organic keyword (not an ad). The higher the value, the more difficult the competition. Many Keyword Research Tools categorize them by color for ease of understanding: green = easy, progressing to orange/red = difficult.

• Cost per Click (CPC) is the price you pay per click if you buy a keyword as an advertisement for people to find in searches without needing to rank.

• Paid Difficulty (PD/PPD) is a value that indicates the level of competition for keywords in the Search Ad category (when buying an ad, you also have to compete with other ads).

• Estimated Visits per Month (EV) refers to the number of times a webpage using that keyword is visited. We can look at the webpages with high traffic to analyze why people visit them frequently and how we can compete.

Popular Keyword Finder Program with Instructions on How to Use

1. Google Keyword Planner (Free)

Google Keyword Planner is a popular keyword search tool because it provides data directly from Google, making it highly reliable. For detailed instructions on how to use Google Keyword Planner, see

2. Ubersuggest (Paid)

Ubersuggest’s highlight is its incredible value for money because it’s affordable, yet packed with amazing features. You can use this tool to search for keywords, check backlinks of your own and competitors’ websites, and more. For instructions on how to use Ubersuggest, see

3. Keyword Finder

Keyword Finder, another popular tool The advantage is that it is easy to use and has a variety of tools available. For an example of using Keyword Finder, see

What is Keyword Finder? A review of its features.

After understanding the concept of Keywords well, let’s move on to practical implementation. To help everyone visualize and try it out, we will present a case study on doing SEO for a brand of “herbal drinks and stevia products” in four ways as follows.

1. Analyze 4W 2H

Step one: Analyze the 4W2H of the product, which means “What, Who, Why, Where, How, How much,” with the goal of finding the “Seed keyword” for the website.

When the analysis is complete, consider which words are suitable to be seed keywords. The commonly used words are product names, characteristics, highlights, and benefits (or what you get).

In this case, we will choose the phrase “Stevia, herbal water, weight loss, sugar reduction, sugar substitute” as the seed keyword.

2. Use a keyword search program

Next, take the Seed keyword and search for it in keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner or KWFinder. The benefit of these tools is that they will display “Keyword Ideas,” which are words, phrases, or sentences related to the Seed keyword, along with search volume, competition level, and other information.

The raw data above will be loaded as an Excel or CSV file to be used for finding niche keywords and niche longtail keywords.

3. Filter by number

Next, filter the Excel file to find keywords with “high search volume and low competition.” Then, consider which words are related to the products or goals, so they can be used as keywords for the website.

By the initial screening method, we will use a mathematical value called “average,” which I will explain further with the following example.

Suppose you want to buy a dash cam, and you have information on 6 different brands.

The question is, if you want a high-quality camera at a low price, which model should you buy?

We answered the above question using “average,” which is equal to the sum of the data divided by the number of data points. The average is the standard value of the data set.

Acts like a barrier, dividing the data into two groups: those above the average and those below the average.

If any brand has a lifespan longer than the average, it implies that the product has a relatively high lifespan (good quality) compared to all brands.

If any brand has a price lower than the average, it implies that the product is relatively cheap compared to all the brands.

Based on the data, Brand D has a longer lifespan than average but a lower price than average, making it the brand that suits you best.

Once the screening is complete, consider which words are related to your products or goals. When you find them, store them in your word bank to select as niche keywords or niche long-tail keywords later.

From the example, the interesting terms are “Stevia properties” and “sugar substitutes.”

4. Filter by word

From point 3, if you find that the selected keywords are few, which is normal because keywords with high search volume and low competition are limited. The question is, what if you want more keywords or want a “Buy now” keyword? What should you do?

I would like to introduce the “Word Filtering” method in 3 steps as follows.

1. Clear the filter with all numbers.
2. Then, perform a “filter by word” by entering interesting words such as “buy, sell, book, etc.” and click filter.
3. Arrange the words from least to most competitive, and then consider finding interesting words.

The advantage of the word filtering method is that you get the word that suits you without having to compete excessively. Sometimes, you encounter two words with similar meanings, but one is easier to compete for. This way, you can choose the correct word without unnecessary competition.

From the example, we found the keywords as follows.

With these steps, we now have keywords that are suitable for our website.

Summary

Keyword is a word or phrase that people use to search for information on a search engine, which for website owners or online marketers These words reflect what the target audience is looking for and what terms they use to search for that information.

The tools recommended for keyword research (Keyword Tool) are Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and Keyword Finder.

The process of finding keywords consists of 4 steps: 1. Analyze the website using 5W1H 2. Use keyword research tools 3. Filter by numbers 4. Filter by words With the aforementioned steps, we will know which keywords are suitable for our website.