With your list of topics in place, it’s time to look at how you can turn them into keywords.
We do this by looking for keywords related to your topic along with other important metrics, like:
- Search volume
- Keyword difficulty
Then we can use that as a basis to form the most efficient plan of attack possible.
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How To Turn Topic Into Keywords
There are two ways to turn your list of topics into keywords:
- The free way: using tools like Google Keyword Planner
- The paid way: using advanced tools like Ahrefs (how you should do it)
Let’s take a closer look at both approaches but honestly just use Ahrefs, it will save you hours of time while giving you the data you need to make decisions.
The Free Way
Google Keyword Planner enables you to:
- Search your topic
- Generate a limit amount of keyword ideas
- See exact search volumes
But it won’t return important metrics like ranking difficulty nor does it go that deep in it’s searches.
So if you must, then inside Keyword Planner choose “find new keywords” and enter the first topic from you list:
Next you’ll be shown a page with all of the keywords Google feel is relevant to the topic:
To see the exact search volume of a keyword we’ll need to do some tinkering.
Just select all the keywords and choose the “exact match” option from the drop-down menu:
Then select the “Keywords” option on the sidebar and you will see a breakdown of the keyword data:
Here you’ll need to set you CPC to the highest possible.
You can do that by clicking the arrow on the right-hand side of the box and selecting the top of the graph:
Once done you’ll be able to see the number of impressions increase.
This is how many searches the keyword receives each month:
Now it’s worth pointing out:
This method is as good as useless.
Why?
Because you:
- Can’t see the true keyword difficulty
- Will lose days of your life sorting your keywords into topics
Which means you’re employing a hit-and-hope strategy which is far too inefficient. I like to create precise SEO strategies that keep costs down and results high.
Plus, in the next lesson I am going to give you access to our awesome topic research sheet that is unlike anything you’ve seen before-
Not only that:
But it will tell you which topics and which keywords within those topics are the quickest and easiest for you to rank for.
All you need to make it work is the $7 Ahrefs trial.
Which brings us to the next method of transforming your topics into keywords…
The Ahrefs Way
Ahrefs is the most effective way to turn your topics into keywords.
They have a database of 7.4 billion data-backed keywords to help you make informed and strategic decisions.
We are building an SEO strategy after all!
If you enter the first topic from your list into their Keywords Explorer tool:
It will give you a comprehensive breakdown of that topic along with all of the various keywords and questions within it:
You can already see how:
- Hard keywords for this topic are to rank for
- Many searches this broad topic receives
- How many backlinks you’ll need to rank
But to help you turn this topic into specific keywords you’ll need to look at the “Having same terms” section.
Click to view all of the keywords in that section and you’ll see a page like this:
Just one topic – “drone photography” – returned 821 related keywords.
You can also filter those keywords based on their:
- Keyword difficulty (KD): how hard the term is to rank for on a 0-100 scale
- Search volume: exact amount of searches each month
- Clicks: how often people click keyword related links
And when you find a keyword worth using you can add it to a topic-specific list in just two clicks:
You can also filter out any low-volume keywords which you don’t want to use in your strategy by using the “volume” filter and setting it to 300 (or more):
Once you’ve compiled your list you can use the export feature to download them to your computer:
Ahrefs is well worth the money if you want to get real SEO results.
And who can argue with a $7 trial?
Final Thoughts…
If you’ve been following along, don’t export your data just yet.
Because in the next lesson:
I am going to knock your socks off with the custom tool we built for topic and keyword research that is powered by Ahrefs data.
See you over there!