Become a Keyword Champion with Google’s Bard as Your Guide

You want to conduct Keyword Research for your blog or website, but don’t have access to a Keyword Research Tool like Semrush or Ahrefs? This is where AI can help you! With Google’s Bard you now can create a viable Keyword list & strategy, within minutes! In this blog I will show you a couple of helpful prompts that you can use.

So let’s get started!

Want to use ChatGPT instead? Read this article.

(Update: Google’s Bard is now called Gemini! )

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is a fundamental practice in digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), where marketers and content creators identify popular words and phrases that people enter into search engines. The goal of this research is to understand the specific terms that are frequently used by the target audience when searching for information, products, or services online.

This understanding enables marketers to tailor their content, marketing strategies, and advertising campaigns to align with the actual search behaviors of their intended audience, thereby improving their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Effective keyword research not only reveals what terms are being searched for but also provides insight into the searchers’ intent, helping marketers to create more relevant and engaging content that meets the needs and interests of their audience.

Wether you own a small blog, niche website, professional website or a large webshop, Keyword Research is one of the pillars of your overall SEO and Online Marketing strategy.

A Simple Keyword request

To get started, let me first give you a simple prompt that will help you quickly find some keywords for your topic. Whatever niche topic you want to research.

These are mostly general keywords, but they are excellent starting points for your keyword strategy

This prompt is:

Generate X keywords for [your topic]

In this example I want to start a blog for cooking for beginners, so I type in:

Generate 10 keywords for [cooking for beginners]

And get these results:

*Bard will also add images of competing websites, a nifty feature*

Finding High Ranking, Low Competition Keywords with Bard

If you own a blog or niche website you want to target keywords with a High Ranking, but Low Competition.

This means that you can expect a high number of visitors from a certain keyword, but you also know that the competition is low. ( one caveat: remember that expected number of visitors is still a forecast and no certainty. The final traffic you will see on your website may vary)

For this I use the following prompt:

Find me the top 10 high ranking keywords with low competition on the topic [your topic]

Again I use the cooking for beginners topic as an example.

So in Bard I type in:

Find me the top 10 high ranking keywords with low competition on the topic [cooking for beginners]

And these are the results. By the way, Bard give you the option to see other results, if you click on the view other drafts button.

Finding the Golden Keyword Ratio with Bard

A second and highly effective method to find high ranking, low competition keywords with Bard is finding the Golden Keyword Ratio (also called GKR)

The GKR is the most optimal ratio of a keyword’s potential traffic to its competition.

Marketing expert Doug Cunnington is the inventor of this method and, according to him, the ideal Golden Keyword Ratio is between .25 and below. Anything above that makes it difficult for your content to appear at the top of the SERPS.

The calculation for GKR is: (Number of Google results with keyword phrase in title) / (Monthly search volume)

In order for Bard to provide the ideal GKR, we will first give it some additional info. To do this, I first begin each search with the following prompt:

Do you know what the Golden Keyword Ratio in seo is?

Because this lets Google know exactly what you want from Bard. Only then do you start searching for your topic.

Bard will first show an explanation about the Golden Keyword Ratio. After that we can type in the prompt needed to get the actual keywords.

And that prompt is:

Can you give me a list of trending informational intent keywords for the niche “[topic]” which adhere to the golden keyword ratio and have a keyword difficulty of under 20.

And in this example I will be using Cooking for beginners again. So I type in:

Can you give me a list of trending informational intent keywords for the niche “cooking for beginners” which adhere to the golden keyword ratio and have a keyword difficulty of under 20.

And you will get these nifty results. The great thing is, these are actual search terms people are using online, you know using these keywords will help get you traffic. Next to that, typing in these keywords into Google will show you your main competition as well

(Don’t forget to copy and save these results into a Excel or Google Sheet!)

If you want, you can use these keywords to delve even deeper. Choose one of these keywords and type in the same prompt.

In this example I choose the second phrase: Essential cooking tools for a beginner kitchen

So I type into the Bard prompt:

Can you give me a list of trending informational intent keywords for the niche “Essential cooking tools for a beginner kitchen” which adhere to the golden keyword ratio and have a keyword difficulty of under 20.

And look at these nice results, all can be used, either in separate articles or to combine them in a larger landing page.

Creating Long Tail Keywords with Bard

The Golden Keyword Ratio method is great for getting Long Tail keywords. Long phrases that are perfect for getting different kinds of traffic.

An example of a Long Tail Keyword Phrase would be: how to prepare your kitchen as a beginner cook

Or something completely different: what kind of shoes are great both walking in cities as well as mountains.

With blogs and niche websites the key to succes is to focus more on Long Tail Keywords. While ecommerce websites and web shops also need to focus on general short term keywords.

So, if I want to find the Long Tail Keywords of a certain topic I use the following prompt:

generate X long-tail keywords for the topic [your topic]

And to stay on topic, let’s use the Cooking for beginners again.

I type in:

generate 10 long-tail keywords for the topic [cooking for beginners]

Of course, you’re free to research your own preferred number of keywords. Use 20 or 50 or even a 100.

Finding Keyword Questions with Bard

You also want to know what kind of questions your audience is asking online (by the way, looking at the People also ask section in Google is a great way to find these as well).

Because if you know these questions and know how to answer these in your content you are well on your way to getting more traffic.

Bard can help you with this by typing in the simple prompt:

Generate a list of questions on the topic of: [your topic]

Again, we’re going with the topic Cooking for beginners.

So I type in:

Generate a list of questions on the topic of: [cooking for beginners]

And you get a great and nifty list of questions:

Using Bard to Research Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Terms

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a technique in natural language processing and information retrieval that helps in identifying patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text. LSI is used to improve the accuracy of information retrieval and can help in understanding the latent (hidden) structure of the term-document associations.

In short, it is a method in which Search Engines can recognize the connections between different keywords, like a normal human would. And also recognize spelling mistakes and still generate a viable answer.

For instance, if you search for ‘best smartphones’, Google will also show results for ‘mobile phones’, ‘cell phones’ or even ‘handheld phones’.

And LSI will try to give results based on context. If you search for “apple,” Google uses LSI to discern whether you’re interested in the fruit or the technology company. If your search query includes additional words like “recipes” or “orchards,” LSI helps Google infer that you’re likely looking for the fruit. Conversely, if your query includes “iPhone” or “MacBook,” Google leans towards technology-related results. LSI helps Google comprehend the context and relationship of terms within documents across the web, leading to more accurate and contextually relevant results.

Using Bard you can conduct a search on LSI keywords to help you get additional results. It’s quite easy, you just use the following prompt:

list LSI keywords for the topic: [your topic]

Again, we’re using Cooking for beginners

Type in:

list LSI keywords for the topic: [cooking for beginners]

And get these results:

Finding Keywords from your competitors content

You can start in another way by getting the right keywords from your competition. You can do this either by copy pasting a piece text into Bard and asking to get you the keywords from this content.

Use the following prompt for this:

generate keyword ideas from the following text: “your text”

For this example I copied the text from a competing blog article called: 10 Dishes Every Beginner Cook Should Learn

And got these results:

Getting Keywords from the URL

Instead of copy pasting the whole text into the Bard Prompt you can ask this AI tool to directly analyze the URL of your competition.

Simply type in the prompt:

generate keyword ideas from the following page “url”

In this example I used the URL: https://www.escoffier.edu/blog/value-of-culinary-education/learning-how-to-cook-a-guide-for-beginners/

I typed in:

Can you generate keyword ideas from the following page: https://www.escoffier.edu/blog/value-of-culinary-education/learning-how-to-cook-a-guide-for-beginners/

And got these results:

What is the Search Intent of your Keywords?

Knowing the Search Intent of your audience is just as important as the actual keywords themselves.

If you know the Search Intent you know when and to focus just on giving out usual information in your content. And when and where to place the CTA’s (Call To Actions) to get your audience to buy or order something from you.

Search Intent of your audience can be:

Informational
Transactional
Navigational (looking for a specific location)

You need some keywords in advance to research this.

Use the following prompt:

Classify the following keywords based on search intent in a table with the first column for keyword and the second for search intent “list of keywords”

I want the list to be orderly, hence my request that it be delivered in a table.

In this example I have used different types of keywords, to make it as clear to you as possible what types of search intent there are.

These are the results:

Sorting out your Keywords into different groups

AI can help you to separate your keywords into different groups as well, if you so wish. For instance, if you want to create subcategories.

Use the following prompt in Bard: Group related keywords together “list of keywords”

In my example I used different movie titles. And got these results:

Creating a complete Keyword Strategy from scratch with Bard

Now we’ve learned how to get simple keywords, long tail keywords, Golden Keyword Ratio results and search intent with Bard it is time to create a complete keyword strategy, from scratch. For this we need to give Bard as much information and instructions as possible, in order to get results that you can work with. It is a bit of a long prompt, so feel free to copy paste to your hearts desire:

Use the following command (props for Meetanshi.com for creating and testing this prompt):

Prompt: Pretend like you are a market research specialist having accurate and detailed information about available keywords. You are also capable of developing a full SEO content plan.

Create a table with a list of keywords for content SEO plan for “TOPIC”.

Categorize the keywords according to top categories, and enter the name of super category in the first column named ‘Keyword Cluster’. Next, add second column named ‘Long-Tail Keyword’ containing a long-tail keyword for each super-category. Add third column ‘Search Intent’ for the human search intent of the keyword (commercial, transactional or informational). Add fourth column ‘Title’ suggesting that a catchy and SEO-friendly title for the post about the keyword. In the last column ‘Meta Description’ write a compelling meta description optimised for high CTR for the topic, with a maximum length of 155 characters. The meta description should mention why the content is helpful to the reader in a very concise manner, do not make it generalised. I want the response in table format only, do not return anything else. The table should contain the following columns: Keyword Cluster, Long-Tail Keyword, Search Intent, Title, and Meta Description.

In this examples we’re going back to Cooking for beginners

So I type in (or copy paste):

Create a table with a list of keywords for content SEO plan for “cooking for beginners”.

And got a clear and excellent table with Keyword Results:

Conclusion

With these tips you should now be able to conduct extensive keyword research on your own, using Google’s Bard. As I’ve said, don’t forget to copy paste your results in either an Excel Sheet or Google Data Sheet (or whatever app works for you).

And while my prompts do work, I also would advice to experiment a bit to change them to fit your own marketing efforts.