Google Keyword Research Advice for Article Writers?

[Danielle Clarke]

Hello Warriors! I've had a month-long break from my two niche sites and article-marketing endeavors as I landed what I thought was my dream job ghostwriting a biography (be careful what you wish for ).

So, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things - with only a limited amount of time available to work on my sites and articles. In my somewhat rusty state, it occurred to me that I could use a crash course in identifying which keywords I should be targeting with Google's keyword tool.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'm a writer with limited knowledge of IM, so I'm really just looking for a concise explanation of Google keyword research mainly for my article titles.

Thanks so much.

[Newboyontheblock]

Danielle,

Can you be a bit more specific in terms of what you mean by identifying the keywords to be targeted using Google's keyword tool?

[Danielle Clarke]

Yes, I realized as I posted this thread (in haste) that my question might appear vague.

When writing for marketers, it's not my job to come up with keywords. But now that I'm making the transition to write for myself, it's something I need to address.

Say for instance my site was about green energy (it isn't, just an example). If I'm writing 20-30 articles on such a broad topic, I'll want to get the proper keywords in my title - and the narrower, the better (right?).

But I've been playing around with Google's keyword tool and feel I must be missing something. I'm really just looking for a concise explanation on how to get the best out of Google's keyword tool - but when I Google that, a lot of vague explanations come up.

I guess it's because vague question. Now I'm feeling silly for asking. (I did admit I'm rusty. )

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

now that I'm making the transition to write for myself, it's something I need to address.

Yes indeed.

But first and foremost, many congratulations on the transition, which is a very important and decisive one.

It's to be celebrated!

The importance of keywords, for article marketing, is grotesquely overrated. Some people imagine that you need to research hundreds of them before you write anything at all, but this is obviously silly.

They're terribly important for "article directory marketing" for people (unlike you) gullible enough to make the mistake of trying to use article directories for their own traffic and/or their own backlinks; for people (unlike you) absolutely determined to ensure that their entire business model is completely dependent on Google for all its traffic; for people (unlike you) who want a business which is only ever one algorithm-change away from a potential disaster; for people (unlike you) who want to send their "organic" traffic to article directories instead of to their own sites, and so on. For you and me, they don't matter so much.

Yes, they're still relevant and we need to know something about them.

Google's free external keyword research tool is something I use very, very occasionally, but to be honest I've always found Google's "Wonder Wheel" more helpful, useful and user-friendly. Ok, it doesn't quite exist any more under that name, but its "findings" are still available through a little gadget called "related searches".

This is all you'll need, Danielle, to get off to a flying start.

In deciding which keywords to target, the most important thing to assess is the SEO-quality of the top 5 sites for the keyword on the first page of Google's SERP's, when you put the keyword into Google between "inverted commas". You have to decide whether or not you can eventually compete with them - that's all.

And you decide that, overall, according to how relevant their backlinks are to their own niche. Not according to how many backlinks they have. And not according to the page ranks of their backlinks. Just the relevance.

Sites with 100 backlinks from reasonable-looking relevant sites in their own niches may be a problem to beat.

Sites with 500,000 backlinks all of which appear to be from article directories, forum profiles and non-relevant garbage they've probably "bought" are sites you can displace quickly and easily: these sites belong to people whose SEO is quantitative in aim, not qualitative: you can often beat them without knowing much at all.

If you're thinking about a keyword (e.g. Google "related searches" suggested it) and the top few listings in the SERP's for that keyword belong to marketers with quantitative approaches to SEO, that's about the best sign you can have. With a bit of article syndication to relevant niche sites, you'll destroy them for SEO, because they're in the majority who still "haven't quite worked out" that Google cares about quality and relevance, not about numbers of backlinks. Fortunately, there are many long tail keywords whose top-ranked sites belong to these marketers.

There's no big secret about it: we can all see it for ourselves from (among many other things) the regularity with which lower-PR pages with fewer incoming backlinks outrank higher-PR pages with more incoming backlinks in Google's SERP's, but still, unaccountably, many people who imagine that what they're doing is "article marketing" (usually it's only "article directory marketing", really) have not yet learned or acknowledged this, and it's dead easy to take advantage of that: to put it bluntly, that translates into money in the bank.

It makes no difference how many "competing sites" there are.

If anyone ever gives you any advice on this subject which includes any references to "the number of competing sites", I urge you strongly to ignore their advice on that point and on anything else to do with SEO about which they offer you any advice (because the chances are that all their "information" comes from the Urban Myth School of internet marketing).

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

I'll want to get the proper keywords in my title - and the narrower, the better (right?).

Right.

More than that, in fact.

You need your major keyword to be at the start of the title.

This is the advice Chris Knight (owner of Ezine Articles - and I hope he won't mind my quoting his sage advice here) gives for article titles. And he's right.

I'm paraphrasing his example from memory, but he explains why, if writing about "fractional jet ownership", something like "5 Things You Didn't Know About Fractional Jet Ownership" is a pretty bad title, whereas "Fractional Jet Ownership - 5 Things You Didn't Know About It" would be very much better.

I've always found, with my own articles on my own sites, that they'll rank more highly, more quickly, if I follow his advice on that point.

All the people who are using titles like "3 Things To Know About XYZ" and "5 Mistakes To Avoid When Doing Whatever ..." are going badly wrong.

There's not much else that matters, for the sort of article marketing (as opposed to "article directory marketing") a serious writer like you will be doing.

My other little tips (though less important) are ...

(i) Count "keyword density" for your first 4 or 5 articles, make quite sure that it's under 1% (which it will be), and then forget about it and never count them again;

(ii) If anyone starts giving you advice/suggestions about anything to do with "latent semantic indexing keywords", don't just close your ears to it: hit them hard on the head with something unpleasant, to try to discourage them from doing it to anyone else.

And don't hesitate to ask for help. When I decided to stop writing for others and become my own full-time client, I had a couple of trusted, experienced, successful article marketers I could ask for help and advice, to avoid some of the frankly dreadful misinformation and misguided opinions so routinely dispensed in the forum (I'm still wincing from this thread, earlier today! ), and very helpful they were to me, too. Happy to "pay it forward".

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

(I did admit I'm rusty. )

I strongly advise you to stay that way, on the subject of "keywords". It will work to your advantage, mostly.

Those of us who appreciate that turning words into traffic has very, very little to do with SEO need to concentrate on other, better, more important things which will get our articles syndicated directly in front of already-targeted potential customers, without needing our Google traffic to swan off to an article directory where we'll lose three quarters of it.

[Kurt]

Here's what you want to do, contrary to much of the more popular advice. My advice is how to get serious traffic. Most advice is how to get "trophy rankings".

3 criteria for good keywords:
Get traffic
Low Competition
Have value

Of course, these values are relative to the other keywords you have researched.

The first thing you do is research thousands of keywords related to green energy, such as "solar", "Wind power", "geothermal", etc.

Primary Keywords
Find the "best" 10-25 keywords that do well for all 3 criteria above. These are your primary keywords. You want to use these keywords as many times on as many pages/articles as possible.

Secondary Keywords
Next, select your secondary keywords. Out of the thousands of keywords you researched, you should find the "best" 25-100 keywords, other than your primary keywords. These will have good numbers in one or two of the criteria above. You want to have a good mix of keywords that are easy to rank for, have great traffic, and have value.

Money Keywords
These will be relevant brand names and models, as well as words such as cheap, discount, wholesale prices, etc.

Bang away at your primary keywords, constantly mixing in your secondary and money keywords, using them in as many combinations with your primary keywords as possible.

Your goal is to create as many keyword combos as possible...Then link to those combos.

What SEO experts never tell you, probably because they don't know, is that more than half of the searches are for unique, one of a kind, very long tail keywords NO SITES are optimized for. This means that Google can't find ANY truly relevant pages for more than half of their search queries.

By using keywords in the way I suggest, you are trying to be the MOST relevant for as many possible searches as possible. This is how to get traffic.

Many article writers may write a sentence such as:
Good obedience training is needed for aggressive dog breeds.

Good SEO for traffic would be:
Good obedience training is needed for aggressive dog breeds such as dobermans and rottweilers.

This allows for far more possible long tail, one of a kind, search queries, such as:
obedience training for my shy doberman

And it's these combos of keywords that bring serious traffic.

[Danielle Clarke]

You know, I think I'd confused my jet-lagged mind with all my random Googling, hoping to figure out how best to approach keyword research. Do this. Don't do that. SEO this. LSI that. I'm not an internet marketer, and I'd started to think I was in waaaay over my head with my little projects.

But, Alexa, you responded in a language that I can understand. Every single word you wrote makes total sense to me as a writer. I no longer feel like a headless chicken (or, more accurately, a fish out of water).

The "thanks button" is but a wildly inadequate indicator of my gratitude. You rock. You rule. You're my WF girl-crush.

I've printed out your reply, and I'll get to work. Thank you.

Edit: Kurt, I just saw your reply. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. I can at once appreciate the potential value of this trick here: "Good obedience training is needed for aggressive dog breeds such as dobermans and rottweilers" - and I thank you so much for such a generous and hugely helpful reply.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Yes indeed.

But first and foremost, many congratulations on the transition, which is a very important and decisive one.

It's to be celebrated!

The importance of keywords, for article marketing, is grotesquely overrated

But it can be very important for any number of reasons. Even EZA has a search box. Picking the best keywords can improve one's chances for having their articles found, then published.

It would be interesting to know the percentage of articles that are found by browsing catergories vs. the search box on EZA?

absolutely determined to ensure that their entire business model is completely dependent on Google for all its traffic; for people (unlike you) who want a business which is only ever one algorithm-change away from a potential disaster; for people (unlike you) who want to send their "organic" traffic to article directories instead of to their own sites, and so on. For you and me, they don't matter so much.

Which is why your advice below about having all titles using high prominence for keywords in page titles isn't optimal. I'll discuss it more there...

In deciding which keywords to target, the most important thing to assess is the SEO-quality of the top 5 sites for the keyword on the first page of Google's SERP's, when you put the keyword into Google between "inverted commas". You have to decide whether or not you can eventually compete with them - that's all.

And you decide that, overall, according to how relevant their backlinks are to their own niche. Not according to how many backlinks they have. And not according to the page ranks of their backlinks. Just the relevance.

Sites with 100 backlinks from reasonable-looking relevant sites in their own niches may be a problem to beat.

Sites with 500,000 backlinks all of which appear to be from article directories, forum profiles and non-relavant stuff they've probably "bought" are sites you can displace quickly and easily: these sites belong to people whose SEO is quantitative in aim, not qualitative: you can often beat them without knowing much at all.

This is only important if one is after trophy rankings and not traffic.

If you're thinking about a keyword (e.g. Google "related searches" suggested it) and the top few listings in the SERP's for that keyword belong to marketers with quantitative approaches to SEO, that's about the best sign you can have. With a bit of article syndication to relevant niche sites, you'll destroy them for SEO, because they're in the majority who still "haven't quite worked out" that Google cares about quality and relevance, not about numbers of backlinks. Fortunately, there are many long tail keywords whose top-ranked sites belong to these marketers.

This may be true, but only for less than 50% of Google's actual search queries, were Google struggles to find any relevant results.

It makes no difference how many "competing sites" there are.

If anyone ever gives you any advice on this subject which includes any references to "the number of competing sites", I urge you strongly to ignore their advice on that point and on anything else to do with SEO about which they offer you any advice (because the chances are that all their "information" comes from the Urban Myth School of internet marketing).

Sure it does...Although not totally accurate, it is a metric that can and should be used, especially when analyzing a lot of keywords.

It is a mistake to think there are only 10 "Top 10" sites. With personalized and local search results, there can be any number of Top Ten Results.

A search for "Las Vegas" by someone living in Las Vegas and another for someone living in Baltimore can result in totally different SERPs.

You need your major keyword to be at the start of the title.

This is the advice Chris Knight (owner of Ezine Articles - and I hope he won't mind my quoting his sage advice here) gives for article titles. And he's right.

I'm paraphrasing his example from memory, but he explains why, if writing about "fractional jet ownership", something like "5 Things You Didn't Know About Fractional Jet Ownership" is a pretty bad title, whereas "Fractional Jet Ownership - 5 Things You Didn't Know About It" would be very much better.

Here's the problem...If a person were to write only a single article on the subject, then I would agree. However, the way to get real traffic isn't to merely write a single article.

As I pointed out above, this advice about ALWAYS using the keywords in high prominence (at the beginning) is faulty.

What if Google changes their algo as Alexa suggested above? Wouldn't it be better to have a VAREITY of formulas for the title, giving extra "weight" to early prominence instead of having all titles use early prominence?

A big noob mistake is to base SEO strategy on a single article. Again, if I were only planning on writing one article, I would follow Alexa's advice...But what if you write more than one article?

(i) Count "keyword density" for your first 4 or 5 articles, make quite sure that it's under 1% (which it will be), and then forget about it and never count them again;

Every word on a page is a keyword (other than stop words like "the" "and" etc). Google doesn't know which words are "keywords" and which words aren't.

Because of this, every word (other than stop words) can bring traffic to a page via the search engines. And even more important is the concept of combinations of words on a page. It's the unique combinations that can bring a lot of extra traffic.

(ii) If anyone starts giving you advice/suggestions about anything to do with "latent semantic indexing keywords", don't just close your ears to it: hit them hard on the head with something unpleasant, to try to discourage them from doing it to anyone else.

While Google has likley only used LSI for determining the theme of a page for displaying Adsense ads and not for ranking, the concept of "themes" is a very important one. I suggest you read "SEO for Dummies" to see their viewpoint on the issue..Remember Alexa's own advice that SEO tips found on the Net aren't as accurate as those found in "textbooks".

However, if you use Adsense on your own pages, and aren't getting targeted results, adding LSI related keywords to the page will often improve the relevancy (and profitablity) of Adsense.

Those of us who appreciate that turning words into traffic has very, very little to do with SEO need to concentrate on other, better, more important things which will get our articles syndicated directly in front of already-targeted potential customers, without needing our Google traffic to swan off to an article directory where we'll lose three quarters of it.

And those of us that have used words and word combinations to get traffic from search engines for 15 years know the value of spending a single afternoon doing some basic keyword research and implementing a basic stragegy in our writings can result in lots and lots of free traffic from the SEs.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

You know, I think I'd confused my jet-lagged mind with all my random Googling, hoping to figure out how best to approach keyword research. Do this. Don't do that. SEO this. LSI that. I'm not an internet marketer, and I'd started to think I was in waaaay over my head with my little projects.

But, Alexa, you responded in a language that I can understand. Every single word you wrote makes total sense to me as a writer. I no longer feel like a headless chicken (or, more accurately, a fish out of water).

The "thanks button" is but a wildly inadequate indicator of my gratitude. You rock. You rule. You're my WF girl-crush.

I've printed out your reply, and I'll get to work. Thank you.

Edit: Kurt, I just saw your reply. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. I can at once appreciate the potential value of this trick here: "Good obedience training is needed for aggressive dog breeds such as dobermans and rottweilers" - and I thank you so much for such a generous and hugely helpful reply.

Hi Danielle,

Think of it like this...You spent an afternoon QUCKLY going over 1000s of keywords to come up with your best 100 or so, plus your money words.

You write an article that has 6 paragraphs. If you can work 4 of your keywords into each paragrph, that's 24 more "keywords" in your article that has the potential to work with all the other words in the content to product combinations of words that bring traffic.

And...Remember the and/or trick...It's a good way to sneak in extra keywords:

1 I'm looking for solar panels.

2 I'm looking for used or inexpensive solar panels and green energy ideas.

Simply making the minor changes above, the sentence went from having one "keyword" that could potentially bring traffic, to having 4. And when you add even more, the number of potential keyword COMBINATIONS grows exponentially.

Instead of simply "solar panels", that single sentence now can potentially get traffic from:

solar panels
green energy ideas
used solar panels
inexpensive solar panels
used green energy ideas
inexpensive green energy ideas
used solar panels and green energy ideas
inexpensive solar panels and green energy ideas

...As well as interact with all the other words (keywords!) on the page.

I suggest you write naturally, then go back and see where you can add keywords from your list work them where they "fit".

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

The importance of keywords, for article marketing, is grotesquely overrated. Some people imagine that you need to research hundreds of them before you write anything at all, but this is obviously silly.

Originally Posted by Kurt

The first thing you do is research thousands of keywords

Hi Danielle, as you can see both from the above and from countless other, similar discussions here, sometimes people with their own vested financial interests in selling software and services which are based on an SEO-intensive approach to what they think of as "article marketing", like to suggest approaches such as starting by "researching thousands of keywords".

Like so many others here, it was when I finally turned my back on this approach that I actually started earning a living as my own "writing client" (and regained some of my sanity). Any time you need advice/help from someone successfully making a living through article marketing, rather than through selling SEO-based software and services, you know to whom to come, and you'll be welcome. But with apologies, Danielle, these conversations are not for me.

For now, please excuse my not posting here again, after the unnecessarily offensive and directly personal criticisms expressed above.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Hi Danielle, as you can see both from the above and from countless other, similar discussions here, sometimes people with their own vested financial interests in selling software and services which are based on an SEO-intensive approach to what they think of as "article marketing", like to suggest approaches such as starting by "researching thousands of keywords".

Like so many others here, it was when I finally turned my back on this approach that I actually started earning a living as my own "writing client" (and regained some of my sanity). Any time you need advice/help from someone successfully making a living through article marketing, rather than through selling SEO-based software and services, you know to whom to come, and you'll be welcome. But with apologies, Danielle, these conversations are not for me.

For now, please excuse my not posting again, after the offensive and directly personal criticisms expressed above.

Alexa,

You have attacked me over and over, claiming that my advice is merely to sell something and has no merit on it's own. Basically, you have continued to try to discredit me by calling me a thief and a liar, whose only purpose for posting is to sell something.

I have told you about ad hominem attacks multiple times, yet you refuse to accept the invalidity of them.

Instead of crying and pretending to be a victim, when you are actually the one at fault, focus on my points and explain what is wrong with them. Telling people I am only posting to sell something doesn't help others, is incorrect and a lie.

In this last post, you have DIRECTLY questioned my credibility of my advice based simply on me having sold SEO related projects. My objections with your posts have to do with the points you made.

You bring up SEO for Dummies as the end-all expert when you disagree with someone, yet I read SEO for Dummies and it often gives quite different advice than you give. You can dish it out but can't take it?

You won't debate the strategy of my research techniques, that BTW I've used for 15 years and other very successful SEOers have used for many years. You didn't even bother asking what my research methods are for those 1000s of words. If you did bother, you'd know I don't spend a lot of time on them. I do spend an afternoon doing keyword research for every niche I enter, and use that research for a very long time.

However, it's more convenient for you to insult me and my motives, even though it's illogical and without merit.

BTW, the OP was asking for keyword advice, with a slant on article marketing. It wasn't about article marketing in general. You put words on a page, it doesn't matter whether that page is a blog post or syndicated, and my keyword advice will help any writer/content publisher increase their SE traffic. And my advice has NOTHING to do with linking, writing articles for directory submission or for syndication. But it does directly apply to getting addititional FREE traffic to that content despite the prefered marketing strategy used.

[FraserC]

Awesome advice Alexa. It's very cool to see a Skepchick here...

My method is even simpler. I've discovered that it's impossible to predict, in advance, which keywords are going to be easier to rank than others. Just like monkeys pick stocks at random as well as experienced stock brokers.

Instead of wasting my time trying to figure out which keywords are doing to perform better than any other, I just target them all, slowly building up my website with valuable content that matches what people are searching for.

I understand people are going to disagree with me, that they've got a super secret method for picking keywords, but I think that's just confirmation bias. Lottery winners think winning the lottery is easy.

So, find keywords, write articles. That's it.

[Nicola Lane]

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

Alexa, you responded in a language that I can understand. Every single word you wrote makes total sense to me as a writer. I no longer feel like a headless chicken (or, more accurately, a fish out of water).

The "thanks button" is but a wildly inadequate indicator of my gratitude. You rock. You rule. You're my WF girl-crush.

There are many of us who feel the same way

PS Hands off - I saw her first!!

[charlso1]

Thank Alexa for your post, there are things we take for granted but is the best option for success.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by FraserC

Awesome advice Alexa. It's very cool to see a Skepchick here...

My method is even simpler. I've discovered that it's impossible to predict, in advance, which keywords are going to be easier to rank than others. Just like monkeys pick stocks at random as well as experienced stock brokers.

Instead of wasting my time trying to figure out which keywords are doing to perform better than any other, I just target them all, slowly building up my website with valuable content that matches what people are searching for.

I understand people are going to disagree with me, that they've got a super secret method for picking keywords, but I think that's just confirmation bias. Lottery winners think winning the lottery is easy.

So, find keywords, write articles. That's it.

So how do you find the keywords? For a topic like "green energy", it probably has 50,000 keywords that are relevant.

And there's money words, like product names and the word "cheap". What does the word "cheap" mean?

It means the person using it in the search box is:
1. Looking to buy

2. Shopping for price

If you are using Adsense on your pages, getting traffic that searches using "cheap" means you are more likely to get clicks on your Adsense ads, as people will likely be shopping for the best price and will visit multiple sites to do so.


I do agree that keyword research isn't an exact science and shouldn't be taken literally, especially personally knowing SEOers that inflate the popularity of some keywords in their niches to throw the competition off.

However, a little research can increase the odds of getting traffic.

The keywords selected should depend on a person's own ability. If you're new to SEO, slant your selections to the easier keywords to get traffic.

Experts should concentrate more on traffic and value. However, noobs shouldn't ignore these, and select some of each to use in their campaigns.

It isn't hard and you don't have to buy anything to do it. And my technique is much faster than most conventional advice. It isn't meant to be perfect, only to improve the chances of success as well as weed out the "worthless" keywords, which make up the vast majority.

Good keyword research is also beneficial for suggestions of topics to write about that you may not have thought of...

[FraserC]

I would collect and target all 50,000 keywords, grouping them together into semantic concepts. So, "green energy types" and "types of green energy" would be targeted by the same keyword. It might take a lifetime, but I'm a patient man. And honestly, it only takes a couple of years to really see some momentum.

I just don't think there are any short cuts.

At the same time, the world is filled with people looking for shortcuts, so if you're patient you can really succeed.

[BennyTheWriter]

Alexa--thanks for the awesome advice, which I asked for in the earlier thread. Even though there are some differences of opinion expressed in this thread, I'm a big believer of taking the advice that makes the most sense to me and applying it.

You've made some excellent points, and I'll be taking them into careful consideration along with some of the other good stuff I've gleaned here.

[dofollow]

I agree with Kurt here. The basics for all sites remain the same as is the case with the keywords for any other site. You should make sure that the keywords you would want to rank for have high search volume and low traffic competition.

[DonConrad]

Originally Posted by Danielle Clarke

Yes, I realized as I posted this thread (in haste) that my question might appear vague.

When writing for marketers, it's not my job to come up with keywords. But now that I'm making the transition to write for myself, it's something I need to address.

Say for instance my site was about green energy (it isn't, just an example). If I'm writing 20-30 articles on such a broad topic, I'll want to get the proper keywords in my title - and the narrower, the better (right?).

But I've been playing around with Google's keyword tool and feel I must be missing something. I'm really just looking for a concise explanation on how to get the best out of Google's keyword tool - but when I Google that, a lot of vague explanations come up.

I guess it's because vague question. Now I'm feeling silly for asking. (I did admit I'm rusty. )

Hello Danielle, I just found your post. I write articles about Green energy and Renewable Energy, daily. I use the Google's keyword tool to find the best keywords. if you need help pm me