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How to Find Semantic Keywords to Drive Traffic to Your Site

  • Felix Rose-Collins
  • 6 min read
How to Find Semantic Keywords to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Intro

In the current competitive online environment, it is important that you discover the options available to you in order to be able to reach a wider audience. Semantic Keywords are the words that have more than one meaning depending on their usage​. One of the great things about semantic keywords is that they can attract visitors related to their specific meanings, so making them a good addition to improving your website and gaining traffic.

In this article, we will be taking a look at how you can find the best semantic keywords to drive traffic to your site.

Make your list of keywords with the Google AdWords Keyword Planner

The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a great tool for finding semantic keywords. It will allow you to enter the main keyword that you want to rank for and then show you related words that people are using when searching online.

For example, if you are looking for keywords to use in your video podcast website, then plug “video podcast” into the tool and it will suggest related words that could be used.

If you want to target more specific terms then try adding “keyword” or “keywords” to the end of your main keyword. This can narrow down your list and make it easier to find some good ones (although be careful not to add too many).

You can also use this tool to check out how competitive any given keyword is so that you can decide which ones are worth targeting.

Look at what your competitors are ranking for

If you have a website, look at the keywords they're ranking for and determine if they're relevant to your business. If you don't have a website yet, look at the keywords and phrases that other companies in your industry are targeting and see if they make sense for you.

If you can't find anything that makes sense for your business, start by looking at the top three results for a query in Google's search results: You can see what types of phrases are working best, which will help you narrow down the field of possible keywords.

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Identify keyword variations with Moz's Keyword Explorer tool. This tool shows suggested terms based on the search volume associated with each keyword — this is helpful when trying to identify long-tail keywords that are less competitive but more specific to what your audience might be searching for (e.g., "boutique hotel in San Francisco").

Generate ideas for Semantic Keywords with SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb's tool lets you search for keywords based on their popularity and volume, as well as related searches and websites that are ranking for those terms. The tool also shows you the top 10 results for each keyword so that you can see what types of phrases are working best — this will help you narrow down the field of possible keywords.

To get started, copy and paste your website into the search bar and click "Search." This will pull up a bunch of stats about your site, including traffic sources and where people are coming from. Scroll down to find "Keywords" under "Audience," then click "Find Keywords."

The first tab is "More Popular Keywords." This section shows how many people searched for each keyword (in millions). You can filter by country, language or category (such as ecommerce). This data is useful if you want to see which phrases people are using most frequently or are searching for when they visit your site.

The second tab is "Related Keywords," which shows other terms that people who searched for one word also searched for. For example, if someone searches for "paintings," then other terms they might have looked up include "prints" and "artists." You can choose which country to view the results for, as well as filter by category (such as "ecommerce").

SimilarWeb also has an app called SimilarSites that lets you find websites that are similar to yours based on traffic and engagement metrics like bounce rate and time on site. You can also use it to find websites related to any keyword or domain name you enter.

Find Semantic Keywords on Twitter

This is a simple process that can be completed in a few minutes. Since Twitter is a very social platform, adding some humanization to the keyword search will help you broaden the results.

For example, if you want to find semantic keywords for remote interview recording software like Veed.io, try searching for remote interview recording software instead of just remote interview recording.

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The same goes for any other keyword you're trying to rank for - just add "remote interview recording" or "project management software" into the search bar and see what comes up.

The end goal of this process is to find a combination of keywords that you can use in your SEO strategy. The more semantic keywords you can find for your business, the better off it will be.

Find Semantic Keywords Through Ranktracker

Ranktracker is a great tool for finding semantic keywords that you may not have thought of before. You can also use the tool to see how well each keyword ranks in Google and how many searches it gets per month.

The tool is very easy to use, too. Simply enter your main keyword into the search field, click on the "Advanced" tab, and select "Find Semantic Keywords." Then, choose a location and language from the drop-down menus.

The results page will show you hundreds of long-tail variations of your main keyword, along with their current rankings in Google's index.

For example, let's say you're looking for keywords for your "cold sore" product. You could try to find them in Ranktracker by typing "cold sore" into the search box and clicking "Find Keywords." But if you did that, you'd only get back a few variations like "cold sores" and "herpes simplex virus."

The better approach is to expand the search by clicking on the plus sign next to each variation. This will give you more results that are closer to what your customers are actually typing into Google.

So now we're looking at thousands of keywords like:

cold sores treatment, cold sore remedies, how to cure cold sores fast, how to treat cold sores at home, etc

Find Semantic Keywords on Reddit

Reddit is a great place to find just about anything. It's one of the largest, most active online communities in the world, and it's home to thousands of niche communities that focus on pretty much anything you can think of.

If you're looking for semantic keywords, Reddit is an excellent source for finding them. Redditors are always talking about the latest and greatest things in their niche, so if there's something specific you're trying to learn more about, chances are someone on Reddit will have posted about it recently.

To find semantic keywords on Reddit:

  1. Use Google's Keyword Planner tool to find related terms that people search for on Google.
  2. Search for those terms on Reddit by using the search operators listed in this guide
  3. Find the most-upvoted post on the subreddit for that term and read through it to get a feel for what people are talking about.
  4. Look at the comments in that post to see how Redditors use these words in conversation.

Find Semantic Keywords on Buzzsumo

The biggest problem with keyword research is that there's no perfect way to do it.

Keywords are often a mix of the search terms your customers use, the topics they want to know about and the language you want to use in your content.

BuzzSumo has some useful features for finding the semantic keywords you need in order to provide your readers with what they're looking for.

Buzzsumo's Keyword Analysis feature is one of the most effective ways to find semantic keywords. You can use this tool to see which terms are most popular in your niche, and then find other related terms that you can use in your content.

In order to access this feature, you'll need a free BuzzSumo account (which you can sign up for here). Once inside your account dashboard, click on the "Reports" tab at the top of the page and select "Keyword Analysis."

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Once you have entered your keyword into the search bar, BuzzSumo will display all of the terms that are related to it. It will also show you how many people have shared content related to each keyword in the past month and where those shares took place.

In addition to showing you all of the different related keywords for your original term, BuzzSumo will also show you the topics that each keyword is most commonly used in conjunction with. This is a great way to discover new topics for your blog posts or social media updates when you're stuck for ideas!

Use SEMrush to Find Semantic Keywords

SEMrush is another powerful keyword research tool. It allows you to find not just the number of people searching for a particular term, but how many are searching for variations of that term, as well. This can help you find even more keywords that your audience may be interested in so that you have more information to work with when creating content.

The tool also allows you to see which keywords are driving traffic to your competitors' websites, so you can see what they're doing right and replicate it on your own site.

SEMrush also offers a free plan, which gives you access to up to three reports per day, including search volume and organic traffic insights for up to 10 keywords per report.

Conclusion

Selecting which keywords to use on your website is no small undertaking, but hopefully we've given you a few tools to make things run smoother. In the end, it all comes down to picking the right keywords for your site. Fortunately, if you follow the steps above, you can easily do that. The process won't be easy, but that's the price of success in SEO. Good luck!

Felix Rose-Collins

Felix Rose-Collins

Ranktracker's CEO/CMO & Co-founder

Felix Rose-Collins is the Co-founder and CEO/CMO of Ranktracker. With over 15 years of SEO experience, he has single-handedly scaled the Ranktracker site to over 500,000 monthly visits, with 390,000 of these stemming from organic searches each month.

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