Long tail keyword research

[devplan]

I am a bit stalled on doing long-tail keyword research and wonder what others do in such a situation.

Let's say, I want to promote an offer on "healthy dog food".
So - I head over to Google and start typing: healthy dog food i... and look at the suggested search terms and I pick for example: healthy dog food ingredients and a search returns 69,700,000 results.
A exact match (in quotes) returns 49,900 results and using intitle prefix returns 225 results.
I then head over to Wordtracker and search for healthy dog food ingredients and it finds zilch.
Then I check the keyphrase in the External Keyword Tool and it returns 110 broad or 58 exact searches per month which doesn't make sense and it appears, that this keyphrase wouldn't be lucrative.

And if I check the popularity of "healthy dog food for puppies" I get only 16 per month!!! (Broad and "not enough data" for exact.)

How is it, that Google suggests "healthy dog food for puppies" and Google's KW tool doesn't return any results.
Basically I either end up with a too broad keyphrase that has a bizillion competition or (per the search term popularity results) only trickle results.

Some insight here would be very helpful!

rgds, devplan

[Nick Roberts]

Perhaps you should consider changing your method a bit. I will take you through a quick example of what I mean.

I took the term "dog food" and typed it into the google adsense keyword tool. Then switched the match type to "Exact" and clicked on the "Global Monthly Search Volume" (to sort through the keywords by traffic data) and scrolled down a bit.

What I found very quickly was the keyword "high fiber dog food" which has 342,000 results, with 5,150 in quotes, and 539 intitle.

The top ranking sites actually look pretty easy to beat for this particular keyword. Most of them seem to be ranking solely because they are using the exact keyword in the title tag, and some of them in the url and description. Most of the pages have a low pagerank with little to no backlinks built to the page.

Try finding a niche, then searching and narrowing that niche down a bit. For example I may have typed in "dog" first to find "dog food" before I went on to find the keyword "high fiber dog food." Try typing in something broad at first and letting the keyword tool narrow you down until you have found a smaller niche with less competition.

-Nick

[GeorgR.]

Why dont you use REAL tools like market samurai?

I just did a run on this KW and there are some really nice KWs, those all for PHRASE searches and global, below 66.000 sites with phrase in title:

wellness dog food 1332 DAILY searches
homemade dog food
natural balance dog food (730 daily searches, REALLY low nr. of sites using this)
holistic dog food
best dog foods
vegetarian dog food
cheap dog food

hypoallergenic dog food
wellness pet food <-- this has 400 DAILY searches and really low competition!

organic dog treats

low protein dog food <- 145 daily searches, literally zero competiton (306 sites with this in title only)
low residue dog food <- barely 250 sites with this in title

low fat dog food

all natural dog food

and the list goes on..

those are not even long tail, but looking pretty good to me.

I am sure i could dig out way, way more running this a few times with "organic dog food", "organic puppy food" etc..etc.....no reason to go extreme long tail, IMHO. If you go long tail with this you will enter the realms of 5/searches a month

And yes, "healthy dog food for puppies" has indeed NO searches at all...example that its already way too long tail to have any significant search volume.

[devplan]

Why dont you use REAL tools like market samurai?

Don't see where to buy this at the moment.

rgds, devplan

[hotlinkz]

Hi devplan,

I agree with Franco; with longtails you are looking at quality over quantity. GeorgeR makes a good point also. Get a good keyword tool. It will ferret things out much quicker and much more efficiently than manual keyword research.

Google Market Samurai and it will guide to their home page.

Regards

Calvin

[Steller]

I'm new to this whole thing as well, and I have a question along the same lines. When I look at the results from Keyword Tracker and the results of google keyword they are vastly different....Why?

Also, one of the clues I look at, to see if the keyword I am researching is good or not is if it has any google adwords competing in the search. Is this a good indicator of a quality keyword even if it only gets a few searches?

Kind Regards,

~S

[ARVolund]

Yes and no, go to spyfu and see if they have been running the ads for long periods of time and how much they are spending on them. Chances are it someone has been running the same ads for multiple months then it is worth the money.

[Shoaib]

Originally Posted by devplan

Don't see where to buy this at the moment.

rgds, devplan

Download the trial version for Niche Marketing Product - Market Samurai. The keyword research part of it is always free (thanks Market Samurai ), unless you want access to the more advanced features.

[rockstar99]

I agree - if you are serious about keywords you need market samurai. This program is really great. It will show you so many details about not only keywords, but also about your competition.

If your not using it, your at a true disadvantage.