How 2019 Has Changed Keyword Research For SEO Marketing in Australia And How To Do It Correctly  
                     How 2019 Has Changed Keyword 
Research For SEO Marketing In Australia 
And How To Do It Correctly
WWW.NEWPATHWEB.COM.AU
The way we conduct keyword research when it comes to SEO marketing in 
Australia is always changing. Whether it’s the Penguin update in 2012 to 
target manipulative link building or the Maccabees (also known as Fred) 
update in 2017 to improve the relevancy of search queries, Google is always 
changing and improving its algorithms. Google also loves to be incredibly 
tight-lipped when it comes to revealing information around their updates and 
making it harder to access keyword data from programs such as Google 
Keyword Planner. This means that businesses need to be at the forefront 
when it comes to keyword research and SEO marketing in Australia in 2019.
Most of the keyword research processes that businesses use are identical. 
They mostly involve using Google Keyword Planner, using various tools to 
generate a competitiveness score and sorting by volume. It can be a very 
uniform approach, meaning that if you are following the crowd when it comes 
to keyword research; you will always be needing to adapt to a new Google 
update. So, what’s the solution? Changing how you are prioritising and 
selecting your keywords. Simple, right?
The method for creating a unique and effective process for keyword research 
in 2019 involves common sense and is rather straight-forward. This method is 
broken down below into the following basic factors which will then will be 
explained in more detail:
• Start your research by selecting relevant keywords using the correct data to then 
confirm your choices
• Using relevant websites to create your index of targeted keywords
• Using modifiers to drive a higher search volume
• Expanding the index of seed keywords so they include relevant themes
• Collecting all related economic and search volume data
• Sorting and filtering your keyword index
• Gaining an advantage over your competitors by using GA and collecting 
competitive data
• Creating ranking timelines, selecting high-value keywords and identifying easy 
victories by building multi-layer filters
Beginning The Keyword Research
This is where common sense first comes into play. When thinking of and 
selecting keywords that best describe and relate to the topic of what you are 
targeting, for example: ‘SEO marketing in Australia’ or ‘organic animal food’, 
be sure to choose more than just one word. Choosing a phrase or a long-
tailed keyword is going to yield much better results than just targeting a single 
word. Basically: it is easier to rank higher for a keyword with 3 or 4 words 
such as ‘SEO marketing in Australia’, rather than just ‘SEO’.
Using Data To Confirm Your Keywords
• Once you have your list of keywords ready, it’s now time to validate those keywords 
with some analytic data. SEMRush is ideal and does require a paid account, but you 
can still have access to basic search functions with a free account, meaning that you 
can dip your toes in the water before opening up your wallet. There are many tutorials 
online on how to use SEMRush, but to get started, simply type your head keyword 
(the main keyword that best describes your targeted topic) into the search bar at the 
top of SEMRush.
• Next, look at the left-hand side at the bottom of the dashboard for a blue coloured 
button titled ‘view full report’. Once clicked, you will then be brought to the ‘phase 
match report’ screen (NOTE: using a free account will only allow access to the first 10 
results). Now, look to the right-hand corner at the top of the page and click the ‘export’ 
button on your desired keyword terms.
• You will then be presented with the export file choices of Excel, CSV and CSV 
Semicolon. After choosing your desired export file type (Excel being the preferred file 
type), click on ‘related keywords’ from the left-hand side of the menu and export the 
keyword data from there also. Once all the required data has been exported, create 
one sheet that combines all the exported data to create your keyword index.
Fine-Tuning Your Keyword Index
• Now begins the fun task of cleaning up and clearing out the data which 
isn’t going to serve much purpose to you. In your sheet you should see two 
columns labelled ‘trends’ and ‘number of results’; you can delete these 
columns. It’s now time to introduce some filters into your keyword index. To 
do this, select the first row and then click on the ‘data’ and ‘filter’ tab from 
the top menu.
• You will then need to sort column B, which should be labelled ‘search 
volume’, from largest to smallest. Then simply filter column D, which should 
be labelled ‘CPC’ (Cost Per Click), and untick any boxes that have a lower 
value than $1.00. This essentially clears out the lower-end keywords that 
don’t justify the cost of a $1.00 or under click price.
Adding Modifiers To Drive A Higher Search Volume
• Your keyword index should now have all the important data such as 
monthly search volumes, the suggested CPC price, AdWords competition 
data and your keyword list. Now you will need to reduce this list even 
further down so it shows all the root keywords. These are considered the 
foundation keywords that aren’t changed by modifiers. For example: if the 
search term is again ‘SEO marketing in Australia’, then the root keyword is 
‘SEO marketing’.
• You can then begin adding your modifiers. Modifiers are phrases that are 
attached to the beginning or end of a root keyword. For example: if the root 
keyword is ‘travel’, then a modifier would be ‘Australia’, ‘trends in 2019’, 
‘where to’ and so on.
Expanding Your Keyword Index
There are many tools and websites such as SERP’s Keyword Research 
Database which can provide numerous keyword suggestions that relate to your 
root keyword. They do this by ‘scraping’ (collecting) data from the variety of 
platforms that people use to search such as YouTube and Google. Once this 
has all been completed, you can then begin the fun task of compiling all the 
competitive and search volume metrics for each keyword.
Sorting And Filtering Your Keyword Index
• Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as simply selecting the keywords that have 
the lowest competition or the highest search volume. Because Google is 
always improving their search algorithms and users have different search 
patterns, sorting and filtering your keyword index requires a tactical 
approach. A great way to do this is by labelling your modifiers into their 
own individual pillars corresponding to the purpose of each keyword, as 
according to the popular marketing model AIDA (Attention, Interest, 
Desire & Action).
• Separate your modifiers into four pillars labelled Informational, 
Navigational, Commercial Investigation and Transactional. The overall 
idea is to create a ‘conversion funnel’ so as each keyword gains a 
modifier from a particular pillar, it will indicate which stage the user is at in 
their search journey.
Here is a quick example of the types of modifiers you would 
have in each pillar:
Informational
• Who
• When
• Why
• How
• What
• Specific words such as shirts, hats, bags, pants and so on
Navigational
• Names of services and products
• Brand names
• A particular company name or website
Commercial Investigation
• Location words such as Melbourne, Australia, Sydney and so on
• Best
• Top
• Words relating to sizes such as large, small, medium and so on
• Words relating to colours such as blue, red, yellow, green, black and so on
• Words relating to age or gender such as girls, boys, womens, mens, childrens, kids 
and so on
Transactional
• Cost
• Cheap
• Price
• Sale
• Discount
• Buy
• Pricing
Taking Advantage of GA
When it comes to keyword research for SEO marketing in Australia, data is 
king. This means collecting every piece of data possible regarding your 
website, so it’s best to start with the keywords you are already ranking for. 
This is best done through GA (Google Analytics) after you’ve verified your 
website with GSC (Google Search Console). GA is ideal for locating and 
exporting all your important and relevant data into Google Sheets, TSV, CSV 
and Excel.
To get started, simply sort ‘descending’ by ‘clicks’, then sort ‘results’ to the 
highest number possible and click ‘export’ and select your desired file type.
Collecting Competitive Data
Once you have compiled all your data, you now need to collect your 
competitive data with the help of various tools. TermExplorer is one of the 
most popular tools available for finding and gathering competitive data. It 
doesn’t provide the search volume data but does provide important data such 
as the number of links to the domain and page, the age of the domain, the 
word count on each page, the difficulty, link strength and relevancy score and 
the keyword use on each page, domain, page title and URL.
To get started, create a bulk keyword run by starting a new job and enter your 
main root keyword, the list of seed keywords (keywords that have modifiers) 
and set the result size. While it’s performing the search, go back to SEMRush 
as you will need to obtain the search volume data on your keywords. As soon 
as TermExplorer has finished collecting all the competitive data, look to the 
bottom of the screen and ensure you have set ‘all’ where it says ‘display 
records’. If you don’t, it will only show what is currently displayed on the 
screen.
Creating Accurate Search Volume Data
Because you are using Google Sheets, you can utilise SEMRush API 
(Application Programming Interface). In Google Sheets, delete the data that 
is in ‘column C’ which should be titled ‘average monthly searches’. Then 
insert a new column at the left of ‘column C’ and call the new column 
something you can easily reference, such as ‘API call’. Now, head over to 
SEMRush API.
To import the data into Google Sheet, you will need a business plan 
account with a SEMRush API key and the following syntax: [snippet 
slug=semrush-api-google-sheets lang=vbscript]. The first step is to paste 
the script syntax into ‘cell C2’ which is below the header that you named 
‘API call’. It will display ‘loading…’ for a couple of seconds and then will pull 
back all search volume data and will fill in ‘column D’.
Selecting High-Value Keywords
Here is where you will now prioritise each keyword from the list and begin 
selecting high-value keywords to finalise a list of target keywords. This 
begins by making a new column with the title ‘search intent’. You can then 
begin mapping search intent with a keyword intelligence tool such as 
Keyword Tool, which is also free to use. Once you have integrated the 
search intent to your keywords and keyword file, you can now use some 
extra filters to identify more opportunities.
Identifying Easy Victories With Multi-Layer 
Filters
To get started, select ‘row 1’, then click ‘data’, then ‘filter’ and switch on 
‘column filtering’. You will now need to filter the ‘page links’ in order from 
‘lowest to highest’. Now, remove all checkboxes under ‘informational and 
navigational’ by using the filter in the column labelled ‘search intent’. You 
should now see a filtered list that displays the least number of links that are 
required in order to break through and start ranking highly.
‘Column A’, which should be called ‘position’, will display the rank potential 
that you can focus on for any of your keywords based on achieving the 
process in that particular row. You can also search for pages that are ranking 
for keywords where the targeted keyword isn’t being implemented in the title, 
domain, meta attributes, the on-page content or the URL. All you need to do is 
stand up a basic page and target the keyword that contains the page title.
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