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Keywords are critical for SEO because they help search engines understand what your page is about.  You need to make sure your chosen keywords are relevant to the page and are used properly otherwise your content may not be found in organic search.  When you choose incorrect keywords with no relevance to your page, visitors will not stay on your page long enough since it’s not the content they are looking for and leave, creating higher bounce rate which negatively impacts your SEO score.  This is why keyword research is critical.  To be effective, you should research keywords using SEO tools that offers numerous data like search volume and competition data to understand what market is open and how you can potentially compete against your competition.  Primary components for keyword research are search volume, competition, and relevancy.  Most popular tools are Ahrefs and google keyword planner.  Ensure you have primary and secondary keywords that are relevant. 

There are two types of keywords, short tail, and long tail.  Short tail keywords are less than three words, have high search volume and competition, and have lower conversion rates.  Long tail keywords include three or more words and have low search volume and competition and have high conversion rates.  Example of short tail keyword is muffin recipe and example of long tail keyword is how to make homemade muffin sprinkles.  Short tail is general while long tail is specific.  Short tail will take long time to rank high on, but once you do, you will generate tremendous traffic.  Long tail may be a way to get started since there aren’t that many competitions.  Once you amassed good number of backlinks and you start ranking high for certain keywords, you can try out short tail. 

Using tool like Ahref keywords explorer, you can search for keywords like “toy dolls,” and sort the results by volume to get a list of keywords. The results at the top will be your short-tail keywords.  To get long tail keyword, you just need to go to matching terms report and select volume filter to be lower.  There are various tools and different ways to research the keywords, but I recommend following the steps below to appropriately research keywords. 

1. Pick out list of keywords relevant to your topics. 
2. Identify your competitors keywords and their ranks. 
3. Use tools like Ahref or google keyword planner to identify keywords with less competition. 
4. Brainstorm ideas and identify LSI keywords. 
5. Get active on other websites like twitter, reddit, quora, and forums. 
6. Stay up to date and identify new jargons which can be keywords. 
7. Repeat and track your progress to see where you are improving or lacking.