1. Choose your keywords wisely – keyword search continues to be an essential part of SEO. You can use Google’s keyword planner or advanced tools such as Long Tail Pro to evaluate search volumes and select the keywords you want to measure.
2. Select a critical keyword for each page. Each page of the site should focus on a single word. Avoid, however, the “cannibalisation of keywords,” meaning do not use the same keyword for multiple pages.
3. Consider the intent of the user. While a keyword may have a bigger search, consider the intention hidden behind the user’s search, what he chose this word, to figure out if the person who used that word would be interested in your product or service.
4. Check the title of the competition – Roll a Google search for all the keywords to discover the number of web pages that already contain the keyword you are targeting in the title.
5. Consider and assess how “prioritised” is the keyword and how many visible organic results it would have. Here are some factors to keep in mind:
How intense is competition – for example, are authoritative sites like Amazon, Forbes, etc.?
How many links they have?
6. Steal the competition keywords. Find out exactly what keywords bring more traffic to your competitors by using Ahrefs Positions Explorer.
7. Follow the ranking. Monitor progress of ranking for your website based on selected keywords. With the Ahrefs Rank Tracker, you can see the historical data, with which you can periodically keep track of progress.
8. Monitor click rate. If the page is positioned based on a targeted keyword, you should expect to see a high click rate.
You can use the Search Analytics report in Google Webmaster Tools to check the impressions and clickthrough rate based on a search catalogue. A keyword positioned on average at position 3.6 receives a clickthrough rate of 1.7%, which is considerably lower than what we would have expected to see for this place (it should have been around 7%).