Point of diminishing returns for keyword research?

[BrianAlpert78]

Hey, something I've been thinking about lately is "where is the point of diminishing returns for keyword research detail?" I get that keyword research is important for finding out stuff like "people generally search for 'doctor' way more often than they search for 'licensed medical professional'", but what about after that? Is there much useful information to be found by sifting through spreadsheets of stats about "doctor" vs "dr" vs "doctors" vs "physician" vs "physicians" etc? Especially when Google seems to treat a lot of those as interchangable?

Or another example: If a remodeling company did basements, do you think there's much to be gleaned from AdWords data comparing "basement remodeler", "basement remodelers", basement remodeling", "basement remodeling contractor", "basement remodeling contractors", "basement renovation", "basement renovations", "basement renovators", "finished basements", "basement finishers", "basement finishing", etc.? Should those variations be analyzed and each targeted by their own sets of pages and pieces of content (e.g. a blog post that specifically targets "basement remodeler" and a blog post that targets "basement finisher" and a third blog post that specifically targets "renovated basement")

Or should the takeaway be "there aren't any combinations that people overwhelmingly prefer to use, so let's just make content about basements and topics relevant to basements. Keyword research complete."

[jasongmcmahon]

Generally use as many keywords as you can, as long as it's relevant to the business  & meets searcher intent. Also factor in search volumes & competitiveness too.

[Mat_C]

When you write a good and complete blog post about 'basement remodeler', it will be automatically quite difficult to write another one with good and unique content about 'basement finisher' since these or more or less synonyms.

Concentrate on writing good and fluent copy about a topic. Your keywords will appear naturally throughout the text. Google is smart enough to recognize synonyms, plurals, small variants etc., so don't worry too much about having to use all of these a minimum amount of times.

As Joe said, search volume and keyword SEO difficulty are important factors you should take into consideration.

[BrianAlpert78]

So if I understand what you're saying correctly (and please correct me if I don't), once you get to the point where you're dealing with words that Google treats as synonyms and variants,  then you're generally safe to use any/all versions  interchangeably as a single "topic"? And by extension, continuing to dig into the numbers of these different variants (assuming there aren't any huge discrepancies in things like competitiveness or search volume), isn't especially useful?

[KaneJamison]

Hey, something I've been thinking about lately is "where is the point of diminishing returns for keyword research detail?" I get that keyword research is important for finding out stuff like "people generally search for 'doctor' way more often than they search for 'licensed medical professional'", but what about after that? Is there much useful information to be found by sifting through spreadsheets of stats about "doctor" vs "dr" vs "doctors" vs "physician" vs "physicians" etc? Especially when Google seems to treat a lot of those as interchangable?

I wouldn't worry too much about "doctor" vs "dr" vs "doctors" - those are synonyms and the intent of the user doesn't change much.

Or another example: If a remodeling company did basements, do you think there's much to be gleaned from AdWords data comparing "basement remodeler", "basement remodelers", basement remodeling", "basement remodeling contractor", "basement remodeling contractors", "basement renovation", "basement renovations", "basement renovators", "finished basements", "basement finishers", "basement finishing", etc.?

Should those variations be analyzed and each targeted by their own sets of pages and pieces of content (e.g. a blog post that specifically targets "basement remodeler" and a blog post that targets "basement finisher" and a third blog post that specifically targets "renovated basement")

This example is different. The intent behind "basement remodeler" and "basement remodel" are rather different. The first is looking for local businesses, the second is looking for general information about remodels. To confirm this, all you need to do is look at the search results. Remodeler has a big local pack and list of local companies when I search it. When I search for the "remodel" version, I get a big photo pack, then local businesses, then People Also Ask questions, so there is clearly multiple search intent scenarios behind that example.

I wrote a bunch more about viewing the SERP closely to measure and classify intent here: https://www.contentharmony.com/blog/classifying-search-intent/ in case you're interested in diving deeper on those approaches.

To your point regarding targeting separate pages for it, yes and no. A local business should try and rank for one but may not be as focused on the second one. But it is worth creating a page that captures one overall intent and then figuring out which other keywords match it.

Or should the takeaway be "there aren't any combinations that people overwhelmingly prefer to use, so let's just make content about basements and topics relevant to basements. Keyword research complete."

Nah you need to be more specific or intentional about it than this.