9 Advantages You Only Get When Doing Keyword Research with Similarweb

If you’ve visited our homepage, you’ve read our tagline: Similarweb is the fastest, easiest way to discover what’s really happening online.

That’s quite a bold statement. You may be asking yourself: How does this help me for keyword research and what does Similarweb have that others don’t, making keyword research faster, easier, and more accurate?

We’re here to answer that. In this article, we’ll show you nine things you can only achieve with Similarweb. You’ll discover ways to simplify your keyword research and get more granularity and accuracy in your results.

What’s a keyword research tool and why do you need it?

Keyword research is a pillar in search engine optimization (SEO). Applying the right keywords gives your content the power to climb higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) and get found by the people who need what you offer.

To identify the relevant search terms you need up-to-date, accurate and reliable data.

Keyword research tools provide data to get to the bottom of these questions:

• What do people search for?
• How many people search for x?
• How do people search for x?

The answers build the foundation for your SEO strategy.

So, what else does Similarweb give you? That’s what you’re about to find out.

How is Similarweb keyword research data different?

The Similarweb platform collects web traffic data from a variety of sources, including website and app owners, contributor’s networks, public data, and partners. This enables the Similarweb platform to deliver an unbiased, objective view of real-world web and app performance.

Our unique combination of data collection and modeling methods allows us to present more accurate and timely metrics than other tools.

Similarweb is more than a keyword research tool. It measures what’s happening everywhere on the web at any time, and delivers the most relevant insights.

The data and insights we provide help digital marketers, researchers, sellers, buyers, and investors reach better decisions when building their strategies. The tools help website and app owners meet the challenges of a competitive environment.

But enough about us, let’s talk about your keyword research.

9 unique ways Similarweb ramps up your keyword research

1. Keyword research with the freshest data on the web

Obtaining a list of keywords for your domain is no big deal for any keyword research tool. The question is, how fresh is the data you receive? When the Covid pandemic hit markets in 2020, many analytics tools were slow to gauge the impact. Sudden changes in online behavior and traffic patterns could only be detected a few months into the new situation.

Similarweb data was the first to detect traffic drops or spikes and which new, Covid-related keywords popped up on the web. That’s because we obtain data in real time and rely less on accumulated averages.

In fact, other tools never picked up on certain traffic shifts as the below graph shows.

But why go back in time when we can look at how recent events impact traffic? The world was shocked by the assassination of the former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and most of us wanted more info.

At Similarweb, we checked if keyword research tools were able to show how much the traffic volume grew for related keywords.

As you can see, Similarweb picked up immediately on the surge in searches for the former Japanese Prime Minister’s name.

Why is this valuable for you? Data freshness allows you to be the first to catch on to trends and adapt your SEO strategy. Be the first to know and act, rather than react and let others lead.

2. Combined data freshness and granularity

In addition to the standard monthly view, with Similarweb you can apply a weekly filter on your keywords view and get the measure of the previous week. This allows you to view how competitors’ campaigns perform and what new keywords they get traffic for as a result.

You can view data from only the past week and the freshest insights, or you can select any week in the past to get high granularity for historical data. The screenshot below was taken on June 29th. You can see data from the week between June 20 – 26th.

What do you gain from this? Detect microchanges in search behavior in a snap. Instead of comparing Month-over-Month to see major trends unfold, you can uncover and take advantage of temporary fluctuations momentarily.

Another advantage is that you can hone in on past events and campaigns for specifically.

Let’s say you are getting ready for Cyber Monday. You want to know how the event impacted search behavior and keyword performance in previous years. However, It falls in the same month as Black Friday and/or Christmas, making it hard to isolate the event’s effect. Narrowing down the span to a week helps you gauge the impact of an event and reduce the noise of other events happening within the same month. See the keywords that generated traffic to a site in one specific week, including Keyword Difficulty, CPC, percentage of change, etc.

3. Supremely slice and dice existing keyword rank data

With the ranking distribution view, you can easily and quickly cut down the data set to what really matters. It lets you filter keyword groups according to relevant parameters and shows you the top-ranking sites.

If you are after inclusive yet detailed research, you keep slicing and dicing your data into small sub-sets of data with a different focus.

Big publishing sites cover a wide variety of topics. The graph shows how you can narrow down the ranking distribution per topic and features.

How do you benefit from this? You can view the SEO landscape from different angles and play out different scenarios. Find pinpointed insights that answer highly specific analytics queries.

4. Data measures within a given time slot

Similarweb shows traffic-driving pages within a given time frame. If you select May 2022, the organic pages view only shows URLs that got traffic in May 2022. If you choose January 2020, you get data for that one month to the relevant pages.

Competitors generally keep adding more and more data to their equivalent features. The Organic Pages feature shows the specific pages that received organic traffic within the defined time frame.

Why is this good for you? Because Similarweb data is time sensitive, you get a much more accurate and reliable view of organic pages within a set period. None of the needle and haystack effect you get from competitors mixing everything together.

5. More convenience with predefined industry sectors

Competitive benchmarking is critical on various levels. You need to gauge the success of your keyword strategy compared to your closest competitors and you need to benchmark against the entire industry average.

Keyword research tools usually let you measure and compare yourself to a small selection of competitors. Similarweb enables you to benchmark against the entire industry. Assess your positions in the market and easily identify your closest competitors.

Why is this valuable to you? You get to see the relevant competitive landscape for your business and where everybody fits in.

The function is excellent for finding the keywords with the highest potential for your specific industry sector. It shows you who gets the highest traffic share in the selected segment and also which keywords drive the most traffic. You will get a more accurate understanding of companies similar to yours. Select an industry sector and see which keywords drive the most traffic and where.

6. Higher precision with customized industries

If you are operating in a small and highly specific industry, Similarweb offers an even better solution: Create your own niche industry. The tool allows you to select up to 200 competitors, create a new market inside the Similarweb tool and view the data in context.

How does this help you? You can do keyword research at a mass scale and analyze how you’re doing among a group of similar competitors. You can keep monitoring your own niche market, keep adding relevant sites, and benchmark against a highly relevant industry segment.

It’s best explained with an example. Let’s say your site specializes in equipment for a little-known sport such as Pickleball. You could research keywords for all sites listed under Sports- general, but that won’t be very useful. And narrowing it down to only five top competitors won’t give you a comprehensive picture of Pickleball-related keywords.

Similarweb lets you custom-create a Pickleball industry. You can preselect 10, 20, or 150 websites that do what you do. Analyze keywords, traffic, and engagement. Keep adding to the list, monitoring, tracking, and benchmarking in the most relevant competitive environment. You can also choose from predefined industries. The Lifestyle industry has 9 sub-industries.

7. Better detection of upcoming threats

The organic competitors section also lets you see who’s gaining traffic fast and may turn into a threat to your growth. The Rising Competitors view displays sites that gained organic traffic volume in the last three months compared to the previous three months.

Why is this valuable for you? You can spot sites whose traffic surged unexpectedly. Identify threats early on and investigate what these sites are up to. How do they grow their share so quickly? What’s their keyword strategy? Identify sites that gained traffic in the recent quarter and see if their keywords overlap with yours. The competitor who gained the most in traffic, shares only a few keywords with you.

8. More value from keyword gap

The Similarweb keyword gap tool is unique. Typically keyword research tools show keywords that other sites rank for, but yours doesn’t. Similarweb Digital Marketing Intelligence platform goes further by evaluating keywords according to the actual traffic they drive to competitors’ sites.

The display shows the traffic-receiving sites for keywords you aren’t receiving traffic for and indicates the ranking position – This is your keyword gap. This means you get to evaluate whether the ranking pays off. You can also compare how traffic-driving keywords overlap and which you are missing out on.

What’s the added value for you? When you want to increase click-through and conversion rates, ranking alone can be misleading. For example, you may rank in the first position on the SERP for a zero-click keyword, but it will hardly generate traffic. The uniqueness of this feature helps you build your keyword strategy on successful, traffic-driving keywords instead of high-ranking ones.

9. Elevated level of granularity

Most keyword research tools rely on data from Google. The search engine combines similar keywords for the convenience of searchers. For example, you don’t get separate results for the singular and the plural form of a keyword. Google views them as the same search term.

With Similarweb, you get an exact measure of traffic generated by each variant. Here’s an example, using Similarweb keyword comparison you clearly see the difference in traffic volume for kitchen vs. kitchens

Why is this helpful? You can carry out your entire keyword analysis with a high level of granularity and accuracy. Find the exact terms that drive traffic without having to test different versions or jamming your content with all possible variations.

From good to excellent research

In a world overflowing with data, the need for precise measurement and analysis is more important than ever. Your keyword research tool needs the capabilities to achieve that, so you can keep getting the best results and scale. Similarweb’s unique keyword research tool helps you move towards excellence.

Oh, and it makes your keyword research easier and faster.