Keyword Research Techniques
Keyword Research Techniques How to find usable keywords!
OK we discussed in the previous page Picking a Domain and the fact you can choose a keyword rich website name instead of a brand-able one. So how do we come up with a keyword in the first place and what is it?
What is a KEYWORD anyway?
A keyword is a word or phrase that is being searched for on the search engines. When someone searches on the internet with a term the search engine provides that person with a set of results. It is these results that you as a marketer want to target. To get traffic to your site you need to be positioned on the first page and the closer the top position the better.
In fact in a recent survey its estimated that 75% of searchers only click on the No 1 position so if you are sitting on position 2, 3 or lower your chances of traffic are very low. There are a few methods in searching out these fruitful keywords and here we will discuss these as well as give a few examples of searching.
There are a few tools out that provide good help when finding keywords but most of these are on a subscription basis or at least a one off payment. As you are starting out capital is of a premium so you may not want to spend any money at this point. However there are a few FREE tools available and I would recommend using these to get going.
Google has a keyword tool!!
Google keyword tool, to use this tool you need to set up an AdWords account with Google. You don’t need to do anything else with the account at this point but later on when you start to get conversions you can use the AdWord account to target keywords and Pay for Clicks and send traffic to your sales page. More later….
At this point you should have a grasp of the niche you are working on so we will start there. Lets say you have decided on dog training as your niche and specifically the training of puppies. Log into your keyword tool and put in the search you are after, in our case “puppy training” tick the radio button for exact and search.
You will now be presented with loads of terms that Google associates with this search term. You will see tabs for competition, global, and monthly searches along with a few other stats. We are not really concerned with the information at this point but I will say that the top ten in high competition are usually very full for both website and Adword campaigns so I would usually avoid these. However I would suggest you don’t take these results as gospel as they are in fact set for Google’s Adword campaigns and not exactly searching users.
What you are seeing though is a good idea for keyword terms etc. You will see an option to download these keyword terms. On our search we were given 800 which I ordered into highest global searches first then downloaded. Now I have a good list to work from.
By the way these terms that Google has given you are referred to as LSI keywords or Latent Semantic Indexing which basically means Google has indexed them to be relevant to your chosen search. So that long list you downloaded is associated to “Puppy Training”. Here is a great article on the importance of these and how to use them to benefit writing.
I think that writing naturally you will drop a few of these into your article anyway so over researching can be counter productive but if you are struggling to get an article to hit the top spot it can make the difference to include a few more.
Click on image to zoom!
OK so we have picked up a list of relevant topic keywords but with 800 where do you start so lets break it down a bit? If we go into our downloaded list making sure to filter by global searches. Highest at the top. Then look at competition. We want high traffic but medium- low competition so start looking for that combination. You want to pick out about 10-20 keywords to take to the next step. By the way here is a great affiliate program for the puppy niche if anyone is interested in taking this forward.
Now open Google and enter your term with quotes “” around the phrase and hit search. Scroll to the bottom and click on page 10 if there is one there. Then keep doing this until you get to the end. The number displayed is the total number of competition websites that Google has indexed for this search term. So if we put “puppy training blog” we get 487 websites. Now that’s not bad and could be worth trying to buy that domain but we want to try and get the number below 400 and the lower the better for article titles and posts.
Want to know a faster way to find keywords?
OK that’s the slow way to get a keyword list, here is the quicker route. This is when owning a keyword tool like Jaaxy can save a lot of time for providing you with 20 keywords to start writing about in a couple of minutes. With Jaaxy you can enter in your terms and it will give you the competition along with the monthly searches all from one button press. If you value your time and as a marketer and you should, an hours time searching would cost say $10. You can own Jaaxy for $19 per month so two hours of searching a month would pay for the tool.
I think its a no brainer but if you are starting out that $19 may be hard to get however consider this, how many luxury items do you indulge on in a given month. Say coffee, cigarettes, chocolate bars etc. Count them up and be honest what would you spend over the month. I know if I counted coffee I would have enough to pay for Jaaxy twice over easy. Now is that a trade off you can consider, cut down on the luxury and subscribe for a month you will not be disappointed? Try it for FREE below.
Any questions please leave me a comment and I will get back to you.
The thing about most free tools like Google Adwords tool is that they are designed to SELL you a keyword. They want you to fall in love with keywords and BUY advertising for them. This can often result in slightly distorted results. Additionally, the “competition” tab is referring to paid advertising competition, so Google’s tool doesn’t tell you anything about ranking organically for keywords in search results. Long story short? Go with Jaaxy.
That is true Dom some tools give you inflated results making you think you are getting good keywords for your campaigns when in fact they are not for organic searching but paid advertising. Jaaxy does not give these inflated results but gives a more accurate figure that you can work with.
Good information, Mark. I’ve bookmarked this for future reference. I like your ‘pay for one month and do a lot of research’ idea. Thanks!
Yes Bill you don’t need to keep subscriptions up every month. If you can’t afford it you can sign up for one month search your fingers off then cancel. Then when you can gather up another payment go again. It is a bit frustrating if you think of something to search for and you are in between signups. The waiting can be unbearable. 🙁
I started out using the Google free keyword tool and found it confusing to say the least…not very straight forward at all…at least for me it wasn’t….
I bounced around a bit and used various free tools that I found and they too were a bit confusing and they never really had a great training tutorials for them…
The imporatance of keywords cannot be overstated this is how folks search the net….so having the best keywords you can get for your campaigns is essential for your site…and success….it does take some time to get good at picking your keywords or keyword phrases…
Jaxxy at $19.00 a month….yeah well worth it….now I have it I can’t live without it…..keywords are to important to use bad ones no one is searching for….
Thanks for stopping by Tim, yea there are a few FREE tools out there and as you say some are really confusing. The simplicity of Jaaxy makes it so appealing. Type in your keyword phrase and hit the button, Jaaxy loads up a couple of dozen related terms. Click on the ones you like to see the competition figure and if its lower than 300 (lower the better) then you are good to go.
A simple combination is to find a KW that has more than 50 monthly searches, less than 300 competition and makes grammatical sense. For example. “how to fish salmons” would not be as good as “how to fish for salmon” the first one has probably got searches given against it but to write an article or blog post under it may not be ideal and quite awkward for your readers. Whereas the second how to fish for salmon is good English, makes sense and will throw up other combinations as you write.
The magic figure is if you can find a keyword that has a few thousand monthly searches and less than 10 competition. These are not easy to find but they are there and if you do then write a post, pop it up and you are on the first page of Google right away, great. If you can get it to no 1 spot then you will get approximately 75% of that traffic. Awesome!
Finding that kw with thousands of searches and low competition is like the holy grail for IMer’s…..agreed not easy to find but when you do….make good use of them……
That was a lot of information about something I didn’t even realize I was using on the internet. Which keyword tool do you prefer? Is one really better than the other? Has this process worked for you? Seems to easy to be true.
Ryan I do really like Jaaxy, to be fair I have only tried a handful of others but the ease of use, speed and quality of the results makes Jaxxy head and shoulders above the rest for me when researching for new keywords.
This process has worked for me I have many posts and articles on page *ONE* in the search engines and quite a few on the number *one* spot. This would be difficult to do without researching for keywords first. There is so much competition out there trying to guess a good keyword would be like looking for the holy grail near impossible.
With a tool like Jaxxy you can find ones within minutes of hitting the search button.
IT REALLY IS THAT EASY. 🙂
I too Ryan find Jaxxy to be a great indicator of good kws and most of the time they do work just the way they are supposed to work…and you can get your kw up to first page in time….ok I have found some that did not work out perfect but as a percentage it is like 95% that work out fine….and for $19.00/month it is a great deal….I find Jaxxy a must for my campaigns…..try it you will see for your self how useful it is….my two cents….
Tim $19/month is really great value when you consider the time it would take to try and find these Keywords on your own. Less than a dollar a day is really for nothing.
For a beginner it can be really hard to see the value in having a paid keyword research tool. In fact, I hesitated about paying a monthly fee for it even when I was already running an internet business. It seems like, “hey, they’re just keywords, I can think of them on my own”. But the truth is that it can save you a lot of time, and give you ideas that you never thought of before. When you are running a real online business, $20 is a drop in the bucket long term. I’m not saying you NEED this to succeed, but I am saying that I use this tool and I will continue to pay for it.
It is a real concern for new people starting out having to pay out $19 a month when the are not getting anything in return financially.
However if you can pay for even one month and do a load of research. You can download your results then cancel your subscription until you need to do more research or are making enough to cover the cost.
I would also say that the time saved in trying to do research yourself is well worth the $19. I used to do manual researching myself and it would take hours and even then you were not sure if the ones you found were up to it.
With Jaaxy an hour can produce 100’s of quality keywords that will keep you going for months. For example I have a list of over 1000 keywords for my fishing niche that I still have to use. When I do a new search I come up with new ones its incredible.
Jaaxy is all I use. I don’t have the new more expensive version but I’m very happy with the one I have.
Yes John Jaaxy is a great keyword researching tool. I too have not upgraded to the enterprise version although I do see the advantage of having instant results visible rather than having to click on the link to get them each time.
Would you recommend using the google tool if people are short on money and can’t afford a monthly subscription?
Hi David, the Jaaxy tool at the bottom of this post will give you 30 FREE searches before you need to pay for a subscription. If you put in a keyword that is something you are interested in and put in your details you will get 29 more searches that you can do.
Jaaxy is that good I would be surprised if you couldn’t come up with a couple of dozen keywords with these 30 FREE searches. Then if you can afford at least one month you can pay $19 and search away till you have loads of keywords to use for the complete month download your data and build your site.
You can cancel your subscription at that point and come back when you need to or have the funds to do so. In all honesty I wouldn’t bother with the Google tool it is way too confusing for a beginner.
Very nice job on this article Mark. Very informative!
Thanks Shawn I am trying to get the knowledge out there that Jaaxy is a great tool for finding keywords quickly and not that expensive when you think about how much we spend on luxuries.