struggling with keyword research please help

[RAJ Wells]

HI Guys

With key word research what it a reasonable competition level for article marketing? I have read several conflicting posts as to whether the keyword should be in in speech marks or not. Im beginning to think not as most people dont enter keyword in speech marks.

On Market samurai I have found several niches where the competition is very high like several million with out speech marks but on the seo analysis the quality of the competition is very low, most of the table is green including amazon. Is this worth having a stab at ?

Also with big sites like amazon toys r us MS shows that they have been there for 11 years but have few back links the PR and BLR columns are green and the rest of the table is mostly yellow does this mean they could be moved?

currently Im a going for long tail keywords

I dont mean to be rude but could people who are making a comfortable full time living online please respond to this thread. Rather than people who are just getting going like me. I say this mainly because there seem to be many conflicting ideas and it would be nice to have a general consensus from genuine experts for both me and other newbies to use


thanks so much look forward to your comments

[PeteHarrison]

Hi,

There is a lot of confusion surrounding keyword research, so here is my take on it.

The use of speech marks when looking at competition numbers is nothing to do with how people search, it is how the Search Engines interpret the search.

If you search for your keyword phrase (without speech marks) you will get all of the results that contain any of the words in your keyword phrase in any order.

If you search for "your keyword phrase" (with speech marks) you will get all of the results that contain all of the words in your keyword phrase in any order.

So using speech marks is better for finding out which pages are optinised for all of your keywords.

Personally, I use allintitle:"your keyword phrase", this returns only pages that have all of the keywords in the HTML Title of the page - these are the real competition

Any keyword phrase with less than 2,500 competing using allintitle:"your keyword phrase" (or 50,000 just using "your keyword phrase") should, as a rough guide, be considered as doable providing there is enough search volume to warrant the work involved

Market Samurai uses a number of factors to decide if a keyword phrase is competetive and, in my experience, it is one of the more accurate tools at doing this so I would be inclined to go with it's analysis if you are uncertain.

Good luck!

Pete

[RAJ Wells]

HI Pete

thanks a lot what do you consider to be the minimum monthly search volume ?

[Lisa Gergets]

I'm not Pete, but I never go with something under 10,000 monthly broad searches (if using Google Adwords Keyword Tool), and I always check it using "phrase" as well.

[PeteHarrison]

It depends

For main keywords I look for 30,000/month broad match, for long tail I would be happy with 1,000/month because they will be easy to optimise for and if I can find 30 long tail keywords at 1,000/month it could be easier to optimise for them than 1 main keyword at 30,000/month

It's "swings and roundabouts", the more you do it the more you get a feel for it, the main thing is to DO IT!

Pete

Originally Posted by RAJ Wells

HI Pete

thanks a lot what do you consider to be the minimum monthly search volume ?

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Searching in quotes doesn't provide much useful information. In the KW tool, I'd recommend focusing on EXACT matching only and laser-target your keywords. Apply my GTEF system to the keyword volume and you'll be able to determine right away whether it is worth your time in optimizing for a keyword phrase.

Your "competition" is really only 10 Web pages, and never more than 1,000 pages -- even if there are 100,000,000 pages found by Google.

[RAJ Wells]

So your saying that it doesnt matter how much competition there is on google its all about the quality of the top ten sites if their quality is poor and they are at the top ten then the rest must be really bad and easily surmountable is that what you mean ?

What is lazer tageting your keywords ? And can you send me a link to your gtf system so i can check it out ?

thanks a lot

Robert

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by RAJ Wells

So your saying that it doesnt matter how much competition there is on google its all about the quality of the top ten sites if their quality is poor and they are at the top ten then the rest must be really bad and easily surmountable is that what you mean ?

What I'm saying is this:

People talk about "oh, I rank #3 out of 17,000,000 web pages for my keywords" or "I'm on page 3 of Google out of 24,000,000 pages" and, while it's interesting and maybe a nice ego massage, the fact of the matter is that the VAST majority of the clicks come from Google page one results. That is 10 pages other than yours at the most.

Once you get to page two, the traffic is a mere trickle compared to #1 overall.

Even if you did everything right -- every single tiny thing -- the most you could EVER possibly hope for, if you were #1 for a term and got 100% of the organic clicks, is 86% of the people who search for a keyword phrase.

Therefore, your aim shouldn't be to rank #36 out of 150,000,000 pages. While that sounds nice and all, if you intend to make money from your efforts, you need to be aiming for #1 overall and on the front page of Google at the very least.

That means forget about searching your keyword phrase with quotes. Forget about knowing that there are 17 gazillion pages intentionally targeting your keywords (I can assure you, there are not).

Don't focus on that stuff, focus on finding profitable keywords -- BUYING keywords (that's the laser targeting I mentioned) -- for which you can rank your pages on the first page of Google, nothing less. That means find the profitable niche, find the correct keywords, search those keywords in Google (without quotes, please) and carefully examine every single page that comes in in positions 1 through 10.

If you can beat some of the pages, and preferably MOST or ALL of them through your on-page and off-page SEO efforts, then you've found yourself a winner. If you can't beat them, don't waste your time -- check the next keyword phrase, the next niche, the next set of desperate buyers. They're out there, you have to find them, and stop wasting your time with efforts that just aren't likely to pay off.

If you follow that strategy, you'll put yourself ahead of about 96% of IMers as a whole.

Oh, and to see my GTEF formula, here's a link here in the forum where I discuss it:

Conflicting methods of analyzing keyword competition

Good luck!

[RAJ Wells]

Hi Steven

Thankyou for such an informative reply

[mike52683]

RAJ,

I use the following tool for checking keyword competition.

Keyword Difficulty Check Tool - SEO Logs

Any keyword that has a difficulty score or less than 40 will work for article marketing.

[Graham Maddison]

when doing keyword research, a useful free tool I use (It's not perfect -but guides me) to find keywords that pay is Detecting Online Commercial Intention: Audience Intelligence: adCenter Labs

Graham

[solotr]

I also use Market Samurai but because I do a lot of research on topics that interest me first, I use this Wordtracker Question tool. If there are less than say 20 actual relevant questions about a topic per day, I move on. It makes it easier to not get stuck.

Hope this works but here's the url for the tool: Keyword Questions – Keyword Research Tool

[pratibha]

Hi, You might have heard about "paralysis by analysis". You can get tons of free info on any Im related topic. The point is to understand the basics and start working. Testing is the only reliable way of selecting or dumping any niche/keyword etc. Please remember that even so called profitable long keywords may not remain so for ever. It is a hard work. You learn slowly.
Nobody knows everything on internet and everything is NOT useful for everybody. Choose what suits to your temparament and take action.
If your progress is slow, do not panic. Things do get sorted out eventually.
Pratibha.

[BrentHodgson]

solotr has a cool idea - I really like that one

I don't like saying when I think people are in a good or bad niche because I think everyone needs to decide for themselves, it's one of the most valuable skills you can have, and I think one of the best ways to learn is to just try something out...

But I'm happy to help you with your question here.

Originally Posted by RAJ Wells

I have read several conflicting posts as to whether the keyword should be in in speech marks or not. Im beginning to think not as most people dont enter keyword in speech marks.

You're 100% right here.

Most people DO NOT enter their keyword in speech marks...

But let me show you why it's best to use phrase-match (speech marks) to analyze competition...

Let's use the keyword: Market Samurai

Do a search and have a look at what you see appearing in the 1st, 10th or 100th page...

Up the top of the results, you see Market Samurai's web-site.... But as you go down further, you see a lot of sites that just mention the words "Market" and "Samurai" together...

They're talking about buying a Samurai sword at a flea Market...

Or they're talking about the Samurai Bonds Market...

Or they're talking about a scene in a movie where a Samurai rides his horse into a crowded Market.

That's the problem...

If you analyze the competition without speech marks, you get a bunch of sites that just mention the words "Samurai" and "Market".... Not sites that are targeted to "Market Samurai".

So if you want to find out the true competition in your market - the sites that are actually optimized for the keyword - it's best to use speech marks.

These are the sites that are the strongest competitors (notice how you see mainly the same sites at the top of the search results both times you search Google - with speech marks, and without)

So these are the sites you want to focus on - the ones that are optimized for the keyword, and have the highest chances of ranking - not the ones that aren't optimized.

I hope this helps you out.

Brent