Adding keywords to a project

Keywords (or search queries) are search terms that consist of a word or a phrase that people type into search engines to find the necessary information. By properly selecting keywords, you can potentially drive more of your target audience to your website.

How to find and choose keywords for SEO:

1. Manually. Using Google Ads, you can select the keywords that will help your SEO efforts. Create a semantic core for your site by analyzing Google’s data, giving priority to the most popular keywords in the target region.
2. Automatically. Using SE Ranking’s Keyword Suggestions tool, you can add similar, related and long-tail keywords to your site’s semantic core.

When creating a project in SE Ranking, you must indicate the website along with the keywords you will use to track the website’s rankings in the selected search engines. Every possible way of adding keywords to a project is described below.

Adding keywords manually

Enter a single search query (keyword or phrase) per line. For convenience purposes, you can also add search queries to different groups.

Under the free trial account, you can add up to 250 keywords to a project. If you have a monthly subscription plan, the number of keywords you can target depends on the chosen plan.

Importing keywords from Google Analytics

This option is offered during project creation right after the previous step is completed.

SE Ranking will provide a list of all the search queries people use in Google to find your site. After that, you can checkmark the keywords you want to add to your project.

At this stage, you can skip the integration step and connect to Google Analytics later.

Importing keywords from CSV and XLS

You can import keywords from .CSV and .XLS files, as well as from other systems that you have used in the past.

In order to do this, press the “Import keywords” button.

You will see different options and prompts when importing keywords.

You can also import keywords with groups, target links, and tags. 

To do this, specify the column headings and order in the first line, using the ; separator. The column containing keywords must be named Keyword, those with groups—Group, those containing target URLs—Target URL, and the column with tags must be named Tags. To separate tags, use a comma. The order of columns is not critical, however, it is important to use only the column names indicated above. 

Then, choose “CSV / Text with additional columns (; separator)” from the drop-down menu and upload the file.

If the importing file contains target URLs, you can check rankings only for the specified target URLs. For this, put a checkmark in the corresponding field.

Adding keywords using keyword suggestions

This feature is especially useful if you don’t have a keyword list for your site or if you want to expand your current list.

Once you click the “Suggest keywords” button, you will see the keywords that the site ranks for in a given region. Plus, the search volume is indicated next to each keyword. In order to add keyword suggestions to your project, checkmark the necessary ones and they’ll be automatically moved over to the section on the left.

Using the search box, not only can you indicate your own site, but that of a competitor as well. On top of that, you can enter a keyword and select another region. Follow this process to handpick relevant keywords.

Access Competitive Research when adding keywords to the project

To access Competitive Research when adding keywords to the project:

1. Go to a project’s settings and open the Keywords tab.
2. Click on the “Competitive Research” link above the “Add manually” field.