Finding Those Highly Valuable Low Competition, High Search Volume Keywords

[Sean Donahoe]

Keyword research is essential part of every marketing campaign whether you are Blogging, Article Marketing or just setting up a PPC campaign.

There are many tools on the market that can generate a ton of relevant keywords for you to target and often times these tools don't give you a real indication of how much competition you are facing without going into great depth and checking phrase matches in Google etc.

So I am going to share one of my favorite "quick" ways to gather a ton of low competition, high search volume keywords to target in your marketing campaigns.

Google has one the absolute best tools available that is often overlooked or many people just don't know about yet and that is their Search Based Keyword Tool available here: http://www.google.com/sktool

Here is the exact step by step strategy I use.

1. Leave the domain as "example.com" as we want to use the entire keyword catalog

2. Enter 3 of the broadest terms for your market. For example if you were in the "Dieting" industry you could enter "Weight Loss","Dieting","Lose Weight" etc.

3. After you hit search you will get a list of 800 (the results limit) keywords found.

4. Go to the side bar and check the categories and select the deepest level category that is suitable to your market that still has (800) results. This cuts out non-relevant keywords to do with Apparel or Finance etc and makes sure your keywords are targeted.



5. Go to the "Filter" and turn off "Medium" and "High" competition. this is the important step that people who use this tool don't even realize is there. Then make sure you set the "Monthly Searches" to at least 1000.



6. If you still don't get a lot of keywords returned that are "High Search Volume" with "Low Competition" you can either :

• Add more generic terms at the start (step 2)
• Go less specific on the categories drill down (step 4)
• Reduce the "Monthly Searches" to 500 or so
• Include "Medium" competition back into your mix

7. Export your list and start making some money with the keywords you can dominate easily.

the reason this technique works so well is that, in general, if there is low PPC competition for that term there is also low natural competition too.

For example in this test with the keywords I used the highest searched term was "Low Residue Diet" which got 5400 searches a month which only had 176,000 results returned (51,000 in quotes).

Now, if you want to verify your exact competition I want to take the usual "Put it in Quotes" method a bit further using Googles built in data mining tools.

1. Obvious a general search
2. Put it in quotes
3. Use inurl such as inurl:"keyphrase"
4. Use intitle such as intitle:"keyphrase"
5. Use both intitle and inurl in the same search: intitle:"keyphrase" inurl:"keyphrase"

The last one is really good for discovering who is laser targeting the phrase you are going after and who actually knows a thing or two about SEO. Those are often the guys you have to beat and gives you a good idea out of all of the results how stiff the competition really is.

That being said, if you hang around the Warrior forum long enough you will have plenty of techniques and tricks up your sleeve for decimating the competition.

Also here is the top 20 list of keywords that are low competition and high search volume for one of the most competitive industries out there:

Keyword Monthly searches
low residue diet 5400
ulcer diet 5400
hallelujah diet 4400
obesity diet 4400
low potassium diet 3500
barf diet 2800
caveman diet 2800
1800 calorie diet 2800
fibre diet 2800
dr bernstein diet 2800
martha's vineyard diet detox 2300
low purine diet 2300
diet calculator 2300
ada diet 2300
bob greene best life diet 1800
2468 diet 1800
500 calorie diet 1800
master cleanse diet recipe 1800
prevention flat belly diet 1500

Total Monthly Searches 55000

Hope you find this simple technique highly useful and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to ask.

Regards

Sean Donahoe
The Manic Marketer

[JayXtreme]

GREAT post Sean

It's funny.. I was writing a .pdf on Friday about this tool for my newsletter subscribers... cool as hell, ain't it

I didn't get a time to mail it yet .... must do that.. thanks for the reminder..

Peace

Jay

[Maria Gudelis]

Wow - didn't now the filter trick - thank you so much and also the "Sunday" morning laugh of the day...

I giggled at the one search term "hallelujah diet"

[Aristocratic]

So many free tools get overlooked because many people think they have to pay to get good keywords. This is an excellent example of one of the many free ways to do your keyword research. Thanks.

[Sean Donahoe]

Originally Posted by Maria Gudelis

Wow - didn't now the filter trick - thank you so much and also the "Sunday" morning laugh of the day...

I giggled at the one search term "hallelujah diet"

I know, I got a chuckle out of that one too. If it loses me a few extra pounds maybe I have to yell a few hallelujah's too.

I expect that when Google takes it out of "Beta" it will become one of the most widespread keyword research tools out there and I certainly use it a lot due to the fact it searches the entire keyword collection in Google which wordtracker, keyword discovery, etc do not.

Sean

[priyankeshu]

This is an awesome tool to find untapped niches and market... even better it tells about the approximate costs to get that keyword.....

Thankss for sharing!

[thomashoi]

cool! looks like most keyword softwares can be dumped for good!

[bwall]

Nice post.
I haven't really used this tool but I am going to start now.

[Sipboy3000]

Originally Posted by Sean Donahoe

Keyword research is essential part of every marketing campaign whether you are Blogging, Article Marketing or just setting up a PPC campaign.

I have been preaching this for some time now. Once I got keyword research right, my business started booming.

I love this little tool as well. Very good for market research if you are servicing businesses offline.

[Chris Hunter]

5. Use both intitle and inurl in the same search: intitle:"keyphrase" inurl:"keyphrase"

The last one is really good for discovering who is laser targeting the phrase you are going after and who actually knows a thing or two about SEO. Those are often the guys you have to beat and gives you a good idea out of all of the results how stiff the competition really is.

Sean,

This was very interesting to me.

Now that I know how to laser target the keywords and see who the real competition is, what do I use to beat them?

In other words, since they know a thing or two about SEO, where do I submit content to that will outrank them for the same keywords and keyword phrases?

I guess I'm really wanting to know the purpose of drilling down that deep using those search parameters and what's the most effective way to have those search parameters work for me.

I know it's asking a lot, but it doesn't hurt to ask, does it?

Thanks a lot!

[Sean Donahoe]

Originally Posted by Chris Hunter

Now that I know how to laser target the keywords and see who the real competition is, what do I use to beat them?

Here is the dirty little SEO secret. Even those that target these terms with "Laser Targeted" titles and urls often ignore link building. So here is how you beat them...

The best way is create a good targeted content then a network of content and focus on linkbuilding.

Good Targeted Content:
Obviously you want to create a SEO focused page for this term, using good SEO techniques such as the keyword in the title, url, 1 H1 tag, around every 150 words and use related words (LSI). This content should lead to an action such as a sign up or progress to a destination you want them to go to. There is no point in having great SEO if it does not convert for you.

Network of Content:
Write and submit articles focused on the same term (even spin your original content) and have it link back to your page with your keyword and related keywords in the anchor text. I like to write 10 articles and distribute them across 30 directories. This sounds like a lot of work but if you spin your orginial article using Power Article Rewriter or similar its very easy. Spread the submissions out to 1 article to 30 directories once a week.

All these related articles and content linking back to your site will greatly boost it's link juice.

Linkbuilding:
You can use many other techniques outside of article writing. For example, Pinging, RSS submission, Angela's Link Building Packages (These are fantastic! Check the WSO section) and other techniques you may use.

All of these combined will decimate the competition and I have personally dominated many a niche just with these tactics alone (many millions of results even for a quoted term)

Many SEOers are lazy and the extra work does pay off and puts them in their place, which is lower down the page!

Hope that helps...

Sean

[Jenie0109]

finding high search volume keywords is not doomed to failure after all thanks!

[Chris Hunter]

Awesome info, Sean!

Thanks!

[intelinside]

I just came across this tool couple of days ago but wasn't aware of that competition filter...thanks for pointing it out.

[NZ Bryce]

Hi Sean,

Tool has a lot of potential. unfortunately for me I can't test it properly yet. Google gives me a limited range of keywords suggestions and tells me...

"This tool isn't available yet in your country/territory. If your billing address is outside the U.S. or UK, you'll see a limited set of keyword ideas - regardless of whether you advertise for the website or not."

Does anyone know when Google will make the tool broadly available?

Cheers
Bryce

[Sean Donahoe]

I am not sure when it will be released in your country but what you can do is use an American Proxy server and get access to it.

I tried a few web based proxies for you and they were not successful. However I use a proxy service in firefox (FoxyProxy) and could access it fine using an American Proxy.

Give that a shot and see if it works for you.

Regards

Sean

[intelinside]

Hi Sean,

I just did a cross check between the results returned by this tools and Adwords tool but they differ a lot in numbers for the keyword: Low Residue Diet

As you mentioned, the monthly search of this term as per this tool is "5400" whereas the Adwords keyword tool brought "22,200" Approx search volume in Feb.

What are your thoughts on this one?

Thanks,
Yasir

[Sean Donahoe]

In the main Adwords tool change the match type to "Exact" and that is a more accurate reflection of searches.

For example "Low Residue Diet" Returns 8800 for the exact term which is still different between the two and in comparisons and testing the SKTool tends to be a little more accurate as the Monthly spikes and averages shown in the Adwords Tool tend to fluctuate a lot more.

Hope that clarifies a bit.

Regards

Sean

[Web Dummie]

Thank you Sean

I had not used this tool before, it is now in my toolbox.

That was a very generous post

[intelinside]

Hi Sean,

Well yes 'Exact Match' is somewhat closer to the new keyword tool number in terms of search volume.

About the competition, can you give a rough idea what numbers are considered as 'Low' competition and what numbers fall in 'High' Competition category.

I know it would be hard to tell but still your thoughts about that?

Further, a general practice adopted by various SEO experts to judge the competition of a particular keyword is to use 'allintitle' or 'allinurl' operators but I guess this tool won't take this thing into account while calculating the competition.

So, in order to better judge the competition, we will need to check this as well in addition to what this tool comes up with.

Thanks,
Yasir

[Sean Donahoe]

A lot of "SEO Experts" do use the Allintitle and allinurl but the difference between that and using the exact phrase targeted when using quotes is virtually zero.

The green bar which indicates the competition levels is the indication of competition levels and using the filter to remove the medium and high competition will leave only the low competition phrases. When you export the list it actually shows the competition in numbers from 1-10 and 1-4 is generally the low competition keywords.

Again, this is just a quick method to find low competition and high search volume keywords and the correlation between low PPC competition is often an indication of low natural results competition. Feel free to go through the keywords manually to double check each term.

I have come across occasional exceptions to this correlation between PPC and natural listings which are usually company brand names as you are not meant to bid on a trademarked term without permission and if a company "Forbids" you to bid on that term then there may not be many PPCers but many thousands or even millions of natural search results.

I have actually suggested to Google's engineers to include an extra function:

• Include total results found
• Include "quoted" results found
• Include results with the phrase in the title
• Include results with the phrase in the url
• Use a hybrid KEI formula to compare the relative strength of the keyword

Whether they will listen to an SEO expert outside of their own sphere will be hard to tell but when they first released this tool they asked for feedback so they got it!

Regards

Sean

[bryansmith]

Excellent tip. Look forward to using it right away

[Yogini]

Sean,

Thanks for the great thread. Would you consider under 54k in quotes (which is what it is for low residue diet) low competition ? Do you use any specific numbers to determine competition when you check it in quotes?

Debbie

[Sean Donahoe]

Well for that term "54k" is a bit too generic and has no real focus. For example there are going to be millions of hits for file sizes (1054kb) and every variant so that would not hit the market you were after.

In general I like to have under 60,000 results when quoted. A lot of people like to have a lot less (under 10,000 competing results) but some of the techniques I use allow me to easily dominate a niche I enter into.

Not wanting to self promote here but some of the techniques I use in the Video Assassin course in my sig are very powerful and allow me to really crush many markets and the techniques I discuss in that pack can be applied to many marketing models, not just Video Marketing.

Once you enter into a niche you can use what ever method works well for you. If you cover the basics of onpage SEO (page titles, correct h1 tags, image alts, url, content etc) and then link build towards those pages with good anchor text, dominating these terms if pretty easy.

All the best

Sean

[ver]

Hi sean.

Thank you for this information, this is a really informative post, thank you.

[sourcecode]

Wow...this is a very valuable post. I didn't even know about this tool lol

Thank You!!!

[stevereel]

Thanks Sean, Great information. I found this tool recently but didn't know about the filters. Very useful.

[Sean Donahoe]

Glad you guys are finding this useful. It's a little goldmine most people don't know about.

All the best

Sean

[jobowen]

Thanks for that great post, it will be of great help keep it up.

[Sean Donahoe]

It does not work for every "Narrow" market which affiliate marketing is. You have to have a more broad scope market.

For "affiliate marketing" (no filters) there are only 259 keyphrases found and only 6 with a search volume of 500+. However, if you check these lower hanging fruits there are still some opportunities:

"clickbank affiliate marketing" - 72,000 Competitors
intitle:"clickbank affiliate marketing" - 1700 Competitors
inurl:"clickbank affiliate marketing" - 923 Competitors
inurl:"clickbank affiliate marketing" intitle:"clickbank affiliate marketing" - 642 Competitors

You just have to work with what you have and see what you can turn up.

All the best,

Sean

[Sean Donahoe]

There are too many niches to give a comprehensive list. For example I looked at some generic terms of the weight loss market. If you are in marketing or gardening, etc just think up the most generic words related to that market and start from there.

All the best,

Sean

[keivn2]

Thanks for the tips and information.

It is quite useful for me who can't afford to buy Keyword Tools.

[linkisking]

Superb posting!!...i never knew this "intitle","inurl" thing existed.really changed my view on SEO.thanks.

[CraigJones]

Golden advice! Thanks Sean!

[Sean Donahoe]

Your welcome guys, now go put it to good use and make some money!

Sean

[mrtrance]

Originally Posted by Sean Donahoe

Your welcome guys, now go put it to good use and make some money!

Sean

Do you have a list of the top 30 directories that you submit to you?

[Palmeratech]

This is a great post. I really like the SKTool. To me it is way better/easier to use than any other tool that Google has released for keyword research.

I think it won't be long before more and more people use it and any advantage you can have will disappear.

Time is of essence!!!

[kckaz]

SKTool is cool. So is wonder Wonder Wheel. Type in search term - click options above top entry returned and that pulls up a sidebar. Then go down to Wonder Wheel near bottom of the list. Returns related search terms.