How to use the Matching terms report

In this report, we show keyword ideas that contain your target keyword or phrase.

Toggle for “Questions” to see keywords phrased as questions or “All” to see all keyword ideas.

You can also choose between two modes:

• Terms match - Shows you all keyword ideas that contain all the words from your query in any order. For example, if your seed keyword is “lose weight”, then “how much weight can you lose in a month” would appear here.
• Phrase match - Shows you all keyword ideas that contain your target keyword or phrase in the order it’s written. For example, if your seed keyword is “lose weight”, then “how to lose weight” would appear here.

Below are some actionable ways to use this report.

Find high-volume, low-competition keywords

Set the search volume filter to a minimum value of 500 and the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to a maximum of 10.

Here are some potential weight loss-related keywords that may be worth targeting.

Find low-competition keywords where non-authoritative sites rank in the SERPs

Let’s go with the same example from above: “how to lose weight”. Only this time, set a Lowest DR filter with a DR value of 30 and SERPs ranking in the Top 5.

This will show us keywords where a website with a DR of 30 is ranking in the top 5. Keywords that have varying keyword difficulty scores.

And if we expand one of the SERPs, you’ll notice there is a website there with a DR value below 30.

Find keywords for which your site doesn’t rank for

Type in your seed keyword. Then set the Target filter to show only keywords where your target doesn’t rank in top 10.

This setting will show you two types of keywords:

• Keywords for which you don’t rank at all and
• Keywords for which you rank in low positions

For the first type, you’d typically create new content. For the second type, you can improve existing content.

To prioritize which pages to improve, export the keywords and sort them using the “Position” column.

You can also use the Target filter where your target website doesn’t rank in the top 100, to avoid topics that you’ve already covered.

Find keywords with SERP features

SERP features are anything in the search engine results pages that are not traditional search results. They provide additional and related information on the search query.

Depending on your goals, you can filter for different types of SERP features. For example, you can filter for featured snippets, knowledge panels, people also ask boxes, and so on.

Find informational keywords

Informational queries are those that searchers use to gain more knowledge on a topic. Typically, they have modifiers like:

• how
• what
• who
• where
• why
• guide
• tutorial
• resource
• ideas
• tips
• learn
• examples

Enter these modifiers in the “Include” box. Select “Any word.”

Click “Apply” to see queries that include one or more of the modifiers in your list.

Find transactional keywords

Transactional keywords are queries where searchers likely have purchase intent (i.e., they're looking to buy something). Typically, they have modifiers like:

• buy
• coupon
• order
• purchase
• cheap
• price
• pricing

Enter these words in the Include box. Select “Any word.”

Click “Apply", then hit “Show results”.

Cluster keyword ideas by parent topic

Let’s say you own a camping website and want to find topic ideas for a blog post.

Enter a few seed keywords like: “camping”, backpacking”, “hiking”. Then click on “Cluster by Parent Topic”.

Parent Topic determines if you can rank for your target keyword while targeting a more general topic instead. To identify the Parent Topic, we take the #1 ranking page for the keyword and find the query responsible for sending the most search traffic to that page.

You can now see keyword ideas listed by these Parent topics in a treemap format. The larger the rectangle, the larger the search volume for the parent topic.

If we scroll down and look at the cluster topic metrics, a topic worth considering here is "camping essentials”.

Clicking it shows us a cluster of 608 long-tail queries with the same Parent Topic, which could be used as subtopics for our blog post.

Cluster keyword ideas by terms

Looking for keyword ideas with particular modifiers or terms? You can find them easily in the “Terms” column.

Click on the modifier that best fits what you’re looking for.

If we take a closer look at the cluster table, it looks like “park”,”trails”, and “rails” might be lucrative modifiers.

See SEO metrics for the top-ranking pages

Click the “SERP” button beside any keyword to see the SERP Overview. This shows the first page of search results for your keyword along with important SEO metrics.

Analyze these metrics to assess the ranking difficulty of your target keyword.