I need help with keyword research, any advice appreciated!

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As per post really, i shall show what ive done so far and am very open to suggestions. I use (and have really only ever used) market samurai, as i heard and learned via the 30 day challenge, and i hear it has a good reputation so that is what i thought id use. My niche is anxiety, my domain is managinganxiety.co.uk - Not sure if it is that wise to post my niche and ideas here but to be honest even if someone saw this as a good niche and (probably very easily) took over me!, if i get decent advice here then it would be worth it, plus hopefully help people reading this- and so far ive had nothing less than fantastic advice!
Ok need advice as to where in going wrong - anxiety is a massive area and i think quite lucrative with the right site and audience. ranging from, well im sure throw most topics in front of it - exam anxiety, job anxiety, etc, so big area im thinking. Site is around 1 year old now, well domain is, but since getting a rocket up my ass/motivation from this forum in the last week, it may well be all over the place with different themes, making a few banners and graphics, chopping and changing etc.

I want to expand on the theme, find some low competition and decent level of traffic (obviously!). can anyone tell me what i am doing wrong here, as i am struggling to find terms, using market samurai?


I have added screenshots to show the results market samurai has shown - if this is not clear or good enough can someone suggest a better way to attach?

Market samurai searches without filters or with - ie - no more than x competing pages or a minimum of x searches per day. My settings are set to uk - as the site is .co.uk - something i may need to revise but even so i thought that with the field of anxiety there could easily be some heavily searched words?

When i started 30 day challenge some 3 years ago (i have since left it and refound a spark of interest, in case you are thinking '3 years bloody hell..!!') the minimum was 70 searches per day, and 30, 000 competing pages. ive watched their vids again recently and they have changed to 50 searches per day and 100,000 competing pages. ive shown a screenshot with the latter implemented - only one, and this is a 'broad' match. with a term so vast as anxiety i thought there would at least be a few to try and target?

Hope i can get some guidance here, and am i missing something as plain as the nose on my face?? going about it wrong?

Thanks for any help here!

Alan

[Sohel Parvez]

What's Your Keyword Research Method?

Advice for you SEARCH FIRST on http://www.warriorforum.com/search.php search box if you unable to find out then POST for get answer from Warrior.

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Thanks for the reply, ill look at that link.

Alan

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My confusion though, lots of people advise to look for long tail low competition high search phrases - in market samurai it is set to look for words between 1-10 in length, yet it only brings up one with 50 searches per day, and competition at 100,000 - is this normal? what would people view as high search numbers or low competition numbers?

thanks

Alan

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Just realised this is in the adsense sub-section. anyone any ideas how i move this to the general forum? Or a mod do it?or should i just copy/paste and start it again? sorry!!!

Alan

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Its ok, ill just copy in main section, thanks for reply though!

Alan

[Rough Outline]

Originally Posted by 36burrows

I cover some great keyword research in my new WSO! Check my sig for more info

Man, that is absolutely shameless!

In other news, check out my keyword research guide in my sig too.

[simonbuzz]

Keyword tools are not 100% accurate..use your brain to find profitable keywords...but there is one good tool I would like to share is SpyFu with this tool you will get details about others people website and you can also look for their keywords and how many searches the keywords are getting...all for free

[asc]

Ok first time ive been stung with sales pitches rather than advice here! Any other takers? (exclude you simonbuzz!) Yes thanks and ill check out the free tools, but just as ive paid for market samurai then i guess i want to use it -plus im guessing that a lot of the information should be the same, but market samurai just puts it together nicer as you have paid for it.... but should all be the same? ie competition or searches etc?

Anyone any advice other than to buy their wso???

thanks in advance (remaining positive!!)

Alan

[RayW]

Type in anxiety in the google keyword tool, select 'broad searches' and filter local searches to be less than 50,000 (or don't set this filter if you get less than 800 keywords in the results) and place a check to every result by checking the box at the top of the keywords labeled "keyword". After you've checked all of them (shouldn't take too long if you have it displaying 100 results per page), click on view as text and highlight/copy all the keywords. Go to Market Samurai, click on new keyword, type in a keyword associated with your niche, click update, then click on keyword research. Paste all the keywords you copied under "add a new keyword" and click keyword analysis (or generate results, w/e). Then the only filter you should have on is SEOC < 100,000 (or any number you want). When you get the list of keywords that pass this filter, sort them by SEOC, and go through them. If you find any that you like, look them on google keyword tool to find out the amount of local/global EXACT searches/seasonal trends/etc. If you find one that you think has a decent amount of searches and acceptable SEOC, proceed to doing SEO Competition analysis on it in Market Samurai.

[trishseo]

Use market samurai to get a ROUGH idea of what keywords you want to go after. Before you actually dedicate your SEO efforts to a single keyword, install the free plugin SEOquake and manually check the top competitors for age, PR, inbound links, etc. As a general rule of them, you're going to have to do better than them.

[MikeFriedman]

I will tell you one thing. You shouldn't bother at all with the SEOC column. That is absolute garbage. It tells you nothing. The keyword research method that MS teaches is flawed because of this.

Your competition is the top 10. Anyone that tells you to analyze your competition by seeing how many results show up in Google is giving you advice that is going to really limit your options.

I mean, if I search in Google for "purple anus odor" it tells me there are over 11 million results in the index. Do you really think that 11 million people are optimizing their website for "purple anus odor"?

"beating up midgets" returns over 2 million results. Who would want to do that?

"eating green fingernails" gives me over 116 million results.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

The first 10 listings, and more importantly even top 5 are all that matter. The rest is just white noise.

[RayW]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

I will tell you one thing. You shouldn't bother at all with the SEOC column. That is absolute garbage. It tells you nothing. The keyword research method that MS teaches is flawed because of this.

Your competition is the top 10. Anyone that tells you to analyze your competition by seeing how many results show up in Google is giving you advice that is going to really limit your options.

I mean, if I search in Google for "purple anus odor" it tells me there are over 11 million results in the index. Do you really think that 11 million people are optimizing their website for "purple anus odor"?

"beating up midgets" returns over 2 million results. Who would want to do that?

"eating green fingernails" gives me over 116 million results.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

The first 10 listings, and more importantly even top 5 are all that matter. The rest is just white noise.

You're supposed to type those keywords in with quotes... But even then, you're right, a low SEOC doesn't guarantee low competitioin, but it does imply low competition.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by raxr

You're supposed to type those keywords in with quotes... But even then, you're right, a low SEOC doesn't guarantee low competitioin, but it does imply low competition.

No it doesn't imply anything. It is a foolish metric to use when picking keywords.

I hope you continue to use it though. I really do. It will be one less person finding some of the really good keywords.

[RayW]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

No it doesn't imply anything. It is a foolish metric to use when picking keywords.

I hope you continue to use it though. I really do. It will be one less person finding some of the really good keywords.

You weren't even measuring SEOC correctly because the result numbers you gave for your example keywords were way off. You're supposed to type the keyword in the search bar WITH QUOTATION MARKS. Here's a picture:

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by raxr

You weren't even measuring SEOC correctly because the result numbers you gave for your example keywords were way off. You're supposed to type the keyword in the search bar WITH QUOTATION MARKS. Here's a picture:

Either way you want to do it... with quotes, without quotes... it is a completely FOOLISH metric to use. You need to analyze the top 5. That's it. That's all you need to worry about.

Like I said though. PLEASE keep using SEOC to guide your choices.

[John F Kennedy]

Alan

Sounds like you need to go right back to the beginning. MS is a great tool but if you don't understand what it is doing and why then you are wasting your time.

I would suggest you first understand how this all comes together . i.e You’re looking to narrow your keywords down so as to highlight keywords that have global monthly searches above 2,000, with the competition around 30,000. I like to keep a record of around 50,000 but ideally look to target keywords up to 30,000.

Long Tail Keywords
This is a specific search that is topic related. Optimizing a website for log tail keywords can result in up to 60% of a site search traffic. A more specific search can often result in a site reaching top of search engines that they would find otherwise impossible using more general niche search phrases.

I have a free report that explains this in more detail, PM me if you think it could help and I'll send you a link.

Good luck

[RayW]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

Either way you want to do it... with quotes, without quotes... it is a completely FOOLISH metric to use. You need to analyze the top 5. That's it. That's all you need to worry about.

Like I said though. PLEASE keep using SEOC to guide your choices.

You need to analyze the top 10 but filtering long keyword lists by SEOC is a good way to filter out the really competitive keywords. You will never find keywords with a high SEOC and weak top 10 competition...

[mikelmraz]

Use the Contextual Tool instead of the Keyword Tool. It gives a better estimation of CPC for your sites ...

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Thanks for the replies. John F K - i cant pm yet by around 5 posts, but would love to take a look at that report - if you want to pm here or alan_whitfield@hotmail.co.uk is my email and you could send there? And yes you are right i need to go back to the beginning. Not just in keyword research but all aspects really, but im doing this bit by bit and posting it all here to make sure im along the right track this time!

Thanks again

Alan

[RayW]

Another tip I'd add is that the keyword you choose should be a "buyer keyword", meaning people that are searching for it are likely to spend money. For example people searching for "buy software online" are much more likely to spend money than people searching for "free software online". You can check whether or not it is a buyer keyword by putting it into Google keyword tool - if the green bar is full/advertiser competition is high, that means it is a buyer keyword. You could successfully do CPA with non-buyer keywords though, but always better to have a buyer keyword.

[enni]

You can find keywords from the Adword keyword research tool. It is the best tool.

[mikel.perez.01]

Hi, Alan!

Well, I think using UK as the setting in Market Samurai is making it harder for you to find keywords. It may be logical to do so if you have a UK domain, but it's making things harder nevertheless, have you thought of buying a .com? Maybe the complications associated with the .uk are not worth the time it will take you to find keywords etc. Just saying...

If you take a look at this keyword in the Google Insight for Search (Google Insights for Search), you'll see that for every 100 searches done for "anxiety" in the US, 85 in Australia, or 80 in Canada, only 60 are done in the UK.

So, when they suggest the criteria of 50 searches a day in the challenge, I guess they mean global searches. If you apply the same number (50) to local searches in the UK, you are making it much much harder for yourself as you are ignoring most of the traffic from other parts of the world and thus discarding keywords you wouldn't discard for a plain ol' .com.

For instance, just looking at some data in the google KW tool, "anti anxiety meds" has 22.200 global searches (740 / day), but only 1300 local searches in the UK (43 / day), so it would meet the search volume criteria if you use global data, but it wouldn't if you use local data. And there are hundreds like this one, of course.

Second, just one question, as I'm not familiar with the Challenge criteria: do they ask you to look for keywords with minimum 50 searches a day, or SEO Traffic per day? Because the SEOT in MS is calculated as 42% of the search volume, so if they meant searches but you are using SEOT you are making it even harder for yourself to find viable keywords. Make sure you are using the correct filter.

And third, thousands of people are using MS (or similar KW tools), and anxiety is a very lucrative niche, as you said, so I'm sure thousands of people have researched "anxiety" already, and squeezed most of the keywords you get at a first glance; it will be very hard for you to find keywords with low competition if you use only on the keyword list MS returns for the general term for such a huge niche (I mean "anxiety", just as if you typed "weight loss", "golf" or "dog training").

I would recommend you to start with a slightly longer tail keyword, and drill down from there.

For instance -there are countless ways to go on this one, but this is what I just did- as I told you I looked for "anxiety" in the Google Insight for Search tool, I clicked on UK to see what keywords are searched for there, and got the most searched for terms in that country. One of them was "anxiety in children".

I entered that keyword in Market Samurai, selected "ignore additional" below it, and run the keyword research. Even for the UK only, and even using 50 as a SEOT filter instead of a search volume filter, I got 14 keywords that meet the criteria, for instance "anxiety in child" (178 local SEOT daily for the broad term, and only 31.700 competing pages). Read on before you go after this keyword, though, as all that glitters is not gold :-)

That's what I can tell you regarding Market Samurai, here are a few additional thoughts:

• I completely agree with MikeFriedman, the SEOC data by itself means nothing. It may just give you an broad idea of how competitive a keyword is, but nothing else. There are keywords with 5000 SEOC I would never be able to rank for, and others with 100.000+ that I'd be able to rank for much more easily. Above all make sure you check the strength of the top 10 in Google before you choose a keyword.
• Just in order to double-check your keyword, look at what the search volume is if you select "phrase" or even "exact" in the combo. Remember that "how can I get pregnant" and "pregnant I can how get" have the same broad search volume, but optimize your site for the second one and you'll have a hard, hard time competing for any real traffic
• For instance, as I said, "anxiety in child" had 178 broad searches a day, but it has 0 exact searches a day, so it doesn't look like a good keyword to me... But don't despair, there are others
• And finally, make sure you choose a buying keyword. Yes, "anxiety definition" meets the criteria recommended by the Challenge guys, but you won't make much money out of it.

Hope all this helps!

[jollydutta]

i am agree with John F Kennedy..

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by raxr

You need to analyze the top 10 but filtering long keyword lists by SEOC is a good way to filter out the really competitive keywords. You will never find keywords with a high SEOC and weak top 10 competition...

That is completely untrue. And how would you know? You've filtering out all the ones with a higher SEOC. You are following some "guru's" outdated advice, and that's fine for you.

But this is how so much bad advice spreads in IM. One person hears some "guru" say something and then regurgitates this information every chance they get without testing it for themselves.

I just want other people who are new to internet marketing to know the truth and that using SEOC is an absolutely foolish way to filter keywords. If you filter out by SEOC, you will filter out some keywords where a top 5 ranking is absolutely attainable.

[John F Kennedy]

Alan,

Emailed you report, hope it helps...

Originally Posted by asc

Thanks for the replies. John F K - i cant pm yet by around 5 posts, but would love to take a look at that report - if you want to pm here or alan_whitfield@hotmail.co.uk is my email and you could send there? And yes you are right i need to go back to the beginning. Not just in keyword research but all aspects really, but im doing this bit by bit and posting it all here to make sure im along the right track this time!

Thanks again

Alan

[RayW]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

you will filter out some keywords where a top 5 ranking is absolutely attainable.

Haha oh really? Mind giving a few examples?

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by raxr

Haha oh really? Mind giving a few examples?

Yeah, I'm going to give away good keywords for free. I don't think so. Nice try though.

Look, honestly, just take a look at those keywords with the higher SEOC. I am telling you that there are keywords to be had there. You are only hurting yourself by just filtering them out. See it for yourself though. Don't take my word for it.

If you were going to judge the competition by any metric like that, the only one I would even remotely consider is allintitle. Sites with your keyword in their title tag, might be competition for you (but MS doesn't let you do this). SEOC is just filtering out good keywords. Again though, I wouldn't even use that. The first page. That's all that matters.