Trying to understand the results I get with keyword research tools

[Ryan700]

I've always had a problem with keyword tools. Today I was plugging in some keywords starting with the top level ones and adding words to create longer keywords.
I understand that the more words I use in that phrase the less results I would get but they would be more targeted.

What I want to know is if a keyword phrase "make extra money online" shows over 300 daily searches and "how to make extra money online" only shows just over 30 searches would the search for "make extra money online" contain the result of a web page or article that optimized the keyword "how to make extra money online"?

I am interested in optimizing my titles on my articles but the results I get from the keywords won't make sense unless I add a word or two.

What if I ran two keyword phrases together like - A Beginners Guide to Making Extra Money Online.

I hope someone understands what I'm trying to say.

[Cathy Henry]

I feel your pain! LOL
It is often difficult to get the keyword phrase you want to work in your content. But more than just looking at the words, you also need to look at the phrase to broad match. If you get the order of the words wrong, it can mean a huge drop in percentage of traffic you generate from your keywords.
For example:
If my keyword phrase was: "scarf knitting pattern". it would may have a higher phrase match search percentage than "knitting scarf pattern" so if I made the mistake of keying my content around the second one I could lose as much as 35% of the targeted traffic.
I know this may sound even more confusing, but getting the order of the words correct can be important too. What keyword research tool are you using?

[Ryan700]

Originally Posted by Cathy Henry

I feel your pain! LOL
What keyword research tool are you using?

Market Samurai

[jasonmorgan]

What I want to know is if a keyword phrase "make extra money online" shows over 300 daily searches and "how to make extra money online" only shows just over 30 searches would the search for "make extra money online" contain the result of a web page or article that optimized the keyword "how to make extra money online"?

Yes.

short and sweet answer

[SeanIM]

Give it about 2-3 weeks and one with much more clarity on what you're looking at...will be released.

[RussRave]

Yes... Market Samurai is terrific and will help you render the real results and not just the semi or fully dysfunctional Google results that are oh too prevalent.
In the meantime,. you could try checking out the free video on the Commission Blueprint2 program which is currently offering a free 7 day trial of their excellent Keyword Blueprint and Offer Blueprint tools (no I'm not an affiliate... just used them and know they are really worthwhile. I have Keyword Elite 2 and I used it to cross reference a lot of the Keyword Blueprint tool results and found that it correlated very well).
If you're going to compete on the Internet do anything then it's a plain fact that Keywords are the key to all traffic and that knowing how to get that traffic and then decipher the commercial intent and typical habits of the traffic is imperative. You NEED software to do that job,.. and whilst some of the in-house free Google tools are good to start with... they WON'T render consistently reliable information. As IMers we need tools,.. and just as the best tradesmen have the best and latest tools we also have to make similar investments in our trade too,.. that's the way I see it.
All the best with your endeavors ;-)

[Palitra]

Don't forget that you also need to build the backlinks for the keywords you choose.

[Vaan]

Don't use word "free" on your keyword phrases because it will bring traffic from freebies, and you now freebies is hard to convert into buyer because they like FREE!!!

Cheers,
Vaan

[SMS]

Hiya Ryan,

If I were you I wouldn't fuss too much about optimizing your content. Do the little you can and make your content read naturally. Gu.rus will tell you that you must have x% keyword density to rank and all that...

I've done a fair bit of research and it proves that this is not the case. You would be shocked to see some of the pages that get to #1 in Google.

I would concentrate on getting backlinks. That is the fastest way to the summit as far as Google is concerned.

Regarding whether optimizing a page for 'how to make extra money online' would also rank it for 'make extra money online'. If you mean ranking on the 1st page... my answer would be - in theory yes... but in practice probably not.

The reason is that the pages already on the 1st page of Google are probably optimized heavily and specifically for 'make extra money online'. To displace them you'd have to do more backlinking than them, using the specific keyword as anchor text at least 45% of the time

You have to treat every case on its merit - there's no formula to ranking No. 1 in Google.

Why don't you concentrate on ranking for 'how to make extra money online' first? Get to page one for that and then assess how much more work you need to do to get to page 1 for 'make extra money online'.

Don't forget your backlinks.