keyword/niche research confusion?

I wish I could help. I do all my research with Market Samurai. But, before I purchased MS, I used Google Keyword tool and Google trends.

Here's what I did for my most recent book: I knew I was going to do a keyword research on passion, so I searched passion on Google's keyword tool, eliminated all the non-related phrases. That went into list #1 for passion. Next I Google keyword-ed hate job, that's related to people looking for more passion in their life. Saved another list. Took all the related searches that were relevant and keyword tool-ed them as well.

Also, Google wonder wheel is fantastic for finding related searches for your keywords or key phrases. As long as you understand the market you are targeting, you will be able to come up with simple phrases like this to keyword tool on Google.

So. Simple steps are:

1. Know your market, know your niche. If you want to know what needs and what terms your market/niche uses, join a related forum. You can do a search on The largest Message Boards and Forums on the web! for market specific forums.

2. Collect the phrases that you already know, put them into Google's keyword tool and search with synonyms. Save all these into a spreadsheet. Create a separate spreadsheet for the related phrases, and add these to your 'to-be-Google-keyword-tool-ed' list. Go through your list, depending on how thorough you want it to be. If this is for PPC, don't worry, you can add new phrases later. I'd recommend saving only the phrases with 4 figures or more of US traffic per month.

3. Use Google wonder wheel for the high traffic and high relevance phrases to find out what the related terms are that you might not have gotten from keyword tool. Do a search of all these phrases on Google and see what the top 5 or top 10 sites are. You might find some relevant keywords on THEIR sites that you missed. Feel free to borrow.

4. Know that you're not going to get this perfect and that you're not going to squeeze every single keyword out of the system. You don't need to. Set up your first campaign (again, if this is for PPC), set up two ads, split test and see what your best performing keywords are. Create a separate ad for these if possible. The faster you get your campaign up the more traffic you will get sooner.

That's what I've done so far. Oh and check out this post for your PPC bidding.

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...k-formula.html

Hope that helps.

Hiya mate...

It's really confusing and everyone says something different or how the quoted search results don't matter - you have to look deeper at the backlinks etc to hit page 1.

I gave the Keyword Academy a go and used their $1 trial offer which was actually a really cool and new way to look at keywords and working out how much each KW would be worth to you and only going for those that could potentially net you over $50 per month per KW.

A big part is making sure you go for buying keywords otherwise you can waste alot of time targetting rubbish that gets you nothing.

Check out the following thread

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...ion-101-a.html

Some of the confusion comes from the fact that most of the methods and or software used does not take into account the real percentage of searchers that end up on the first page.

Not everyone who types in a search term (keyword) and hits the "Search" button go on to click on any of the site links that come up.

There is a percentage of people that realize that they made a mistake, or the phone rings, or any number of other reasons to stop them from continuing with that search.

So the "Monthly Search Volume" will show you a number but there is around 4% - 8% that you need to subtract from the monthly totals. Just to be safe, I deduct 10%.

Then out of the 90% that actually click on a link at the search results page almost another 10% turn to the second page of the results.

Of the 80% that click on the front page, 50% of the clicks go to the first listing, another 25% - 30% to the second listing and the rest trickle down the remaining 8 spots.

So if you were shooting for 100 hits a day the easy math would suggest you look for 3000 hits a month but after reading the above percentages you can see that you need to aim much higher than that.

Then there is the matter of actually converting people that read your description.
Just because someone makes it to the front page of Google does not mean that people are automatically going to click on your link.

You are getting different numbers from different people and books based on their experience within their niche, where they are in the world, who they had to compete with, and the conversion rate for their link.

It would be almost impossible to tell someone how many hits they were going to get if you did not have every variable included in your research.

You could find a niche that gets 4000 hits a month with no competition and full of high spending prospects and another niche that gets 4 million hits a month with plenty of competition for peanuts.

Like someone mentioned above, you need to know your market before you start looking at search volumes.

Matt

I've read a lot of information on this subject and discovered that there is no "standard" plan of action.

Much of it depends on what you're trying to promote and how you are going to promote, so it could be different everytime.

But basically, you want to target "buying" keywords in whatever niche you are in.

Hi, Jason.

I know where you are coming from.

Let me start off with a little advice. Don't run wild with your credit card buying every keyword tool under the sun.

If you really need keyword tools, you can buy my computer, and you will have enough tools for the rest of your life .

The first thing you have to do is to differentiate between niche research and keyword research.

When you do niche research you are looking for a profitable marked to tap into.

This you can do visiting popular websites selling products, and see what is hot.

Another way is to go to any free keyword tool on the net as "Google keyword tool" or "Wordtracker" and type in start phrases of problem questions as "How to", "How to fix" and so on.

Yahoo answers are another place you can see what problem people are facing and want a solution to.

Those methods will give you something to start with.

Then, when you have found yourself a nice marked, it is time to find the keywords you want to target. What you now are looking for are keywords those people interesting in finding answers to their problem in your niche will use when they are seeking on the net.

Use your imagination. What keyword phrase would you have used if you had that problem?

Visit also some article's directories and see what other marketers are writing about in that niche. This way you will get some more ideas on what to do.

I hope this helps.

- Oddvar.

PS. If you shall spend money on something, invest in the "War Room". Inside there you will find a lot of information on the subject.

Thank you all for your responses. I only have one tool that I got at a great discount from trying the affiliate classroom 2.0... Traffic Travis Pro. So now I better understand the process of niche research and keyword research but what I (and possibly others) am/are/ still confused about is these "buying keywords". Just a little more assistance on this aspect would be greatly appreciated. I am going about this as I want to start targeting the niche of "Child safety online" as I have some experience in this niche dealing with my parents and sibling on that niche. Thank you all SO Much! Oh and by the way I plan to join the war room after the first of the year.