Keyword Research 101 : Fundamental Keyword Strategy
It amazes me how little people really know about keyword research; how hard they try to achieve the impossible, and how fast they give up.
When you think about it, it’s really a vicious cycle.
- Their lack of keyword research knowledge leads them to target the wrong keyword, which is either too difficult to achieve, or has too little traffic.
- Then, convinced that early retirement is only a stone’s throw away, they work hard to archive top search engine rankings using whatever “new” method the guru’s claim will end their misery fast
- Then, after a few months they realize that they will never beat the sites that appear on Google’s first page, they give up, pack up, and leave.
Keyword research is a real tricky thing. It can make or break your Internet home business dreams. If you target keywords that are too competitive, you end up chasing dreams of grandeur that will never materialize. If you target keywords that are too easy to achieve, you’ll end up on the first page of Google and realize that your no. 1 position means squat.
The secret is in finding a balance.
The most profitable online market is not the general market, but the niche market. Therefore when targeting keywords, you must target niche keywords. A niche keyword is usually smaller, two to four words long, and is a subset of the larger general keyword.
Confused? Lets take a step-by-step approach to keyword research using a free toll called the Yahoo Keywords Suggestion Tool. Open up this site in a new browser window so you can do your own hands-on training.
This tool is not 100% accurate when it comes to the numbers, but relatively it gives you and idea of what keywords you should target for your blog or website.
Step 1 : Finding a General Market
You must know the general keyword for your blog or website. If you don’t, bang your head to the wall and ask yourself what you’re doing trying to make money online.
Newsflash: Your website cannot be about everything. It must be about something.
You can’t build a site and say “Oh, my website is about everything that happens in my life, and I don’t want to limit myself by sticking to one topic”.
The truth is that with a few exceptions, such “do-it-all” personal-ranting type of sites are doomed to failure right from the start. It’s ok to have a site where you talk about your everyday life, but there must be a main theme; a main niche; a main keyword for that site.
In the example here, I’m going to choose guitar as my main keyword. Mentally, I am going to tell myself that my blog is about guitars, so no matter how much unrelated stuff I throw into my site, the majority (80% or more) of my blog posts or content is going to be about guitars. That would give my site a theme and a reason for people to visit. If I have too much unrelated stuff to talk about, it’s best to put it into a new site.
Right, now you have a general keyword. But that’s only the beginning.
You cannot possibly dream about getting ranked number 1 in Google or other search engines when someone types in the word guitar. It’s way too competitive. Likewise, never try to rank for a general keywords like health, money, home, insurance etc unless you can meet some / all of the following criteria:
- Your site features a revolutionary new idea / software / service that will change the entire industry forever
- You are the undisputed, established offline industry leader and you are taking your business online
- You are a millionaire can you can spend hundreds of thousands in advertising every month
- You can hire a team of smart, highly-trained SEO experts (people who specialize in search engine optimization) to monitor the progress of your site and the ranking for your general keyword.
No? I didn’t think so..
Yet I see some many people try to rank their blogs for general keywords. They add 5-10 new posts a month, have no credibility, spend zilch on advertising and have absolutely nothing revolutionary going on.
It’s just never going to happen.
So, from your general keyword, you need to select a more targeted keyword based on your interests, and your own capability. The size of your keyword should depend on these few things:
- How much time can you spend on SEO?
- Are yo willing to spend money in advertising, buying links etc?
- Are you capable of writing credible information for that topic, or can you find people who can?
Step 2: Find Your Niche Keyword
From the general and utterly useless keyword guitar, I found a niche market I can focus on. I choose electric guitar because I love the electric versions as compared to the acoustic guitars, and I know a great deal about them. It’s also something I’m passionate about and I know that I can make money from.
Note: to see if a niche is profitable see (1) how many affiliate programs you can find and (2) how many people are using Google Adwords to advertise those affiliate programs.
But, this keyword is still highly competitive, and while it’s not impossible to rank highly for this search term, it’s just not feasible if you’re just getting started in your own Internet home business.
Yes, you can listen to your ego, have a gung-ho attitude, and just go for it. You might just make it. But I think, if you’re new to SEO and Internet marketing, this is not a safe bet.
Instead, you need to go one level deeper into the third-tier keyword range. To understand this concept, just count how many clicks you need to make from the original search term guitar till you get to one you can target. If it takes you 4 clicks it means you’re already into the fourth-tier keywords.
Step 3: Find Your Primary Keyword, Secondary Keywords and Long Tail
Now I’ve clicked on guitar > electric guitar > cheap electric guitar.
This is my primary keyword, and is the main keyword I will target on my blog or website.
All the other keywords contained under these keywords, are my secondary keywords.
If you click further from cheap electric guitar or any of the contained keywords you’ll find a lot of lesser keywords, usually ranging from 5 to 500 searches per month, called the long tail keywords.
These long-tail keywords are usually too small to become the main keyword for your blog, but when you add them up they usually become bigger than your primary keyword.
Some of these long-tail keywords cannot be discovered by any keyword research tool, because they are too random. For every keyword someone types into the search engine that is tracked, there is another keyword searched that is either too long or too rare to be tracked. The only way you will discover these long-tail keywords are by looking at your site statistics over time.
For this reason alone, you need an entire master list of long tail keywords. It will be easy to rank for these keywords, but they bring in very little traffic. However, add the amount of traffic each keyword brings, and soon you’ll have a very popular blog.
How to Use Your Keywords Effectively
So now you know which keywords you want to use, but how do you use them? Here’s a simple guide:
Primary Keyword
- use it as the main title of your blog, or website
- use it as the domain name of your site
- whether you realize it or not, his primary keyword will also be used on most of your other blog posts (if you keep to the topic), which will help your blog or site to rank for the primary keyword
Secondary Keyword
- use it as an optional tagline for your blog / site
- use it as the category name for your site or blog
- create new pages (or posts) with your secondary keyword
Long Tail Keywords
- use it to create individual posts, for example I create a new post called “cheap gibson les paul electric guitar” which comes under the keyword category “cheap gibson electric guitar”
- there are no limits to the sheer number of posts you can create, because there are way too many long tail keywords you can target, each with a tiny search figure every month
- you can also create articles with these long-tail keywords, and submit them to article submissions sites like www.myarticlemarketer.com and let the articles rank on those high-authority sites instead, and at the bottom of your article you can have a link back (traffic) to your site
Limitations of Keyword Research
There are some severe limitations to keyword research. The main one is that it tells you what the user typed into the search engine, not what the user is really looking for or the state of mind the user is in.
For example, the user typed in “cheap gibson electric guitar” into the search engine and found your site. But, what is the user thinking when he is reading you page? Is he:
- Looking to buy a product - if yes, then your site should be primarily monetized by affiliate programs that pay you per sale. You can find a lot of physical products and digital products that you can sell from your website just by typing in “your keyword + affiliate program” in search engines
- Looking for more information - if yes, then your site should be monetized by an advertising program like Google Adsense or Chitika, since the user is more likely to click away for more information rather than buy something
- Looking for bargains - if yes, your site should be monetized by Ebay or Auction Ads, which is based on Ebay but works like Adsense
- Looking for freebies - if yes, your site should be monetized with CPA (Cost Per Action) programs that you can find on networks like www.shareasale.com or www.linkshare.com
Unfortunately, no one can tell you what works best for your site. The only way to overcome this limitation is to first have an understanding of the market you’re targeting. Keywords are just numbers, they tell you how much search traffic you can get, but they don’t tell you how to turn that traffic into cash.
This is the reason most people fail to make money on the Internet. They devote so much time into SEO tactics that they don’t spend enough time studying the market. These people rejoice when they make $50 from Adsense, when they could have been making $500 a month using other money-making methods.
Advanced Keyword Research Tools
The Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool is not something you should swear by. It works to give you and overall understanding of the market and the keyword structure, but if you want to bring your research to the next level, you can (and should) use these tools:
- Wordtracker - Gives you better, more accurate keywords using their own keywords database. It also give you an indication of how competitive each keyword is, which is another important metric we didn’t discuss here. You can get a free trial account, and see how it works
- Good Keywords - A keyword research tool that you can download and use for free. It works great and if very user friendly, but for the sake of accuracy my opinion is that you’ll need to pay for a service like Wordtracker above.
- Keyword Elite - A keyword research cum keyword analysis tool. It basically automates all the processes I mention in this article, and more that I don’t. It allows you to find related keywords based on one keyword, so you can end up with a massive keyword list using this tool. It also allows you to group keywords together, and mix-n-match between different groups. As I said, this is one heck of a tool to invest in
- SEO Elite - This tool only makes sense after you have decided what keywords you want to target, and your overall keyword strategy. It helps you analyze the websites that are ranking for the keywords you target, and how to beat them to the top.
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Gobala,
You have written a very good and comprehensive article. I felt inspired after reading your article. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Gobala,
Actually there are 2 more software that you can use for keywords research. I am a internet marketing newbie and I am still testing them but it seems ok. One is call theDowser and the other is call kwexplorer. Both are freeware (there is a upgraded version which you have to pay).
http://www.thedowser.com/
http://www.mytoolpad.com/open/kwexplorer/
And it seems webCEO can also do the job for finding keywords as well.
Hi Andrew,
Yes actually there are much, much more including Keyword Avalanche and Keyword Analyzer. But I haven’t personally tried those so no comments..
Simply awesome. This article really do the trick!
Thx a lot man!
ps: Yes, i`m your die hard fan!
Truly, an amazing read. And I thought I was going to end up sitting here at my pc for hours staring at random splurges of mental diarrhea when I found your blog and this particular article.I must say it is a breath of fresh air, and what’s more, a well executed and thoroughly inspirational article. I would really like to thank you for putting so much time and effort into it. Cheers.
Thank you, it’s part of the overall cornerstone content I’m trying to develop for this blog.
How come the Yahoo Overture still showing January 2007 result? Is it accurate?
Btw, I am using google Adword keyword tool to analyze the traffic for each keyword.
Thank you for the great niche research article. I just wanted to add that it was a good thing to brainstorm FIRST without any tool at all.
Plus, I like to surf on websites who already made the research for me…
wow, you’re simply great… you have a new reader
…actually the first site where i subscribe