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Keyword Research

by Notarealdoctor
12 replies
I see everyone talking about keyword research before they start marketing. What are the things that you look for when doing the research to find "good" keywords?

Any insights are appreciated.
#keyword #keyword research #research
  • Profile picture of the author drgreg
    It is important to identify keyword and key phrase popularity with regards to search volume. This will include any variations of the keywords and even mispellings.

    Do not use a single keyword tool. Use many and then integrate your results when planning your marketing campaign.

    Also take into account that a keyword may not always allow you to plan your marketing for the appropriate niche. Let's look at the word "weight". Does the person want information on the word in terms of human physiology, physics, standards of measure? If it is body weight, then do they want information on weight loss, weight gain, weight management?

    So it is pointless putting up information related to a keyword if you are not considering the context. Rather consider keyphrases to ensure that your marketing campaign is targetting the most appropriate user.
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    • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
      It can be as simple as selecting a market that as a lot of customers and then defining a few small sub-niches that you can compete in, which just involves a little checking into what's hot right now along with what people are searching for.

      Or you could create a new niche by renaming or repurposing an existing in-demand niche. For example, if you saw people buying keyrings and searching for animal pictures - you could sell keyrings with animal pictures in - create a niche for it and be the main player.

      Most people say go where the money is, but I think using your brain a little more can make a big difference.

      Don't just do what others are doing, model what's working and do something different that evolves that.

      Andy
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      • Profile picture of the author wealthyaffiliate
        Banned
        Great post and thank you all for the tips. Just the same stuff i have been emphasizing in a much detailed way on my niche affiliate marketing report.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tim Dixon
        Originally Posted by Andyhenry View Post

        It can be as simple as selecting a market that as a lot of customers and then defining a few small sub-niches that you can compete in, which just involves a little checking into what's hot right now along with what people are searching for.

        Or you could create a new niche by renaming or repurposing an existing in-demand niche. For example, if you saw people buying keyrings and searching for animal pictures - you could sell keyrings with animal pictures in - create a niche for it and be the main player.

        Most people say go where the money is, but I think using your brain a little more can make a big difference.

        Don't just do what others are doing, model what's working and do something different that evolves that.

        Andy
        That just about sums up my philosophy on niche research!

        There is so much more to niche research than just looking at the numbers.

        Thanks Andy
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  • Profile picture of the author jlandells
    I'd highly recommend that you check out "SEO Fast Start" by Dan Thies. He gives this information away for free on his website (SEO Fast Start: Free SEO Book & Help from Dan Thies) and in my opinion, it should be considered "required reading" for any IM-er!

    Regards,
    -John.
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  • Profile picture of the author seamusb
    Originally Posted by Notarealdoctor View Post

    I see everyone talking about keyword research before they start marketing. What are the things that you look for when doing the research to find "good" keywords?

    Any insights are appreciated.
    Hi NotARealDr...

    This is part of an assignment I gave one of classes in one of my Internet Marketing night courses...


    - Analyze your business carefully and think of all the words that relate to your business
    - What words would you search for when looking for your business?
    - Who needs your service? Think about who will use your services, then target them with keywords
    - Include variations of your keywords - including misspelled, capitalized and plural keywords
    Avoid wrong keywords
    - Do not use "stop words". These are words like "and" and "the" and common words like "Internet"
    - The more specific your keywords are, the better they are

    TO DO

    Choose a niche within an industry you are interested in (a niche is generally a subsection of a wider market, try to keep it reasonably specific)

    Using the tools below, try to find a list of ten keywords / phrases you could use to create a Adwords (based on the above assumption) campaign for this niche.

    Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
    https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

    Compare your keywords with those from various industries below (the Keyword Directory has specific search terms that drive traffic to web sites within each industry category.):

    What are the keywords that drive traffic to sites within the same category classification.

    How did yours compare?
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    • Profile picture of the author Steven Carl Kelly
      Originally Posted by seamusb View Post

      - What words would you search for when looking for your business?
      But here's where the real magic comes in: we need know not only the words that WE would use to search for our business, but we also need to know what words our potential customers would use to search for our business.

      Those two things could quite possibly be different.

      Here's an example:

      Back when I did more SEO consulting work, I had a large credit union that was a client of mine. They were having trouble getting any traffic to their CD rates and promotions pages. The reason was simple, but it completely eluded them...

      According to NCUA regulations (Part 707 to be exact), credit unions are not allowed to offer or advertise a "CD" or a "certificate of deposit". Instead, they offer a "CA" or "certificate account". Credit unions that do offer CD's are in violation of the NCUA's regulations.

      Consequently, this credit union client of mine had NOTHING on their Web site about CD's or certificates of deposit. Not one single reference, anywhere. Now that condition made complete and perfect sense to the people who worked at the credit union and designed their site, but 99 out of 100 of their customers or potential customers had no clue what a "CA" was... instead they were searching for what they knew, which was a "CD" (even though it wasn't appropriate).

      In order to fix the problem, naturally we included pages in their site which talked about CD's and certificates of deposit and then explained that the credit union offered CA's instead. We SEO'd the "CA not CD" info pages, got those indexed, and low and behold, Web searchers began to find their certificate account rates and promos!

      Back to online marketing:

      If you're going to sell soda online, then when you're doing your keywords you've got to remember that some people call carbonated beverages "pop" and not "soda". Some call them "coke" in the generic sense, whether the brand they're drinking is Coca-Cola or Pepsi or RC.

      A thesaurus can help, but there's even more to it than that.
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  • Profile picture of the author lstoops
    It really depends on what you are using the keywords for...SEO,PPC,etc.

    When I look to find good keywords for a blog or article marketing then I look at the volume of searches and then I look at how much competiton - usually allintitle is all I'm concerned with. I also look at the CPC too. I usually only use the Google Keyword Tool. It's been good enough.
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    • Profile picture of the author seobro
      High KEI. I use nichebot, but you can do the same for free with google keyword tool. I tried using the microsoft tool that imports keys into excel, but it did not work on my machine.

      I used to use wordtracker which is great, but move away from it due to expense. If you need cost per click information Keyword Country is OK. I think that Keyword Discovery has a much larger database, but they make me pay 69.95/mo. If you need info on keywords PM me.
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      • Profile picture of the author Notarealdoctor
        I'm going to work with all of the information that everyone suggested and get a real start in IMing.
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  • Profile picture of the author forous
    Look for longtail keywords with less competition
    And if you can afford it get this tool Market Samurai.
    I not there are free keywords tools you can use.
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  • Profile picture of the author MaskedMarketer
    Depending what I want to accomplish, I just spy on competitors. they already did testing for you.

    I use spyfu.com, keywordspy.com, google keyword tools, and use google search too directly, to watch for competition and to see keywords.

    researching your competition is just as important or can be more important than keyword research- depedning on your goal.
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