'Secret' Keyword Research Tip - This is VERY Eye Opening!

by 142 replies
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Those of you who didn't know about this are gonna really love this tip! I honestly cannot remember who I first learned this from or I'd give him/her credit, but this is not something very many who don't eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff know about. If you're at the beginner or even intermediate level, this will probably kind of amaze you. I started to just write out a detailed explanation, but it's just so much easier to show than write about, so I made a quick video.

Trust me, this will be a very eye opening 5 minutes if you aren't already pretty advanced at keyword research...

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.
#main internet marketing discussion forum #competition #ecret #eye #google #keyword #keywords #opening #research #tip
  • Yeah, this is something I actually learned last year but don't really use it
    much because I never worry about competition anyway. I think competition
    is overrated IF you know how to get sufficient content out there for the
    niche you're targeting AND know how to tie it all together through backlinking
    and other tactics.

    But yeah, if you're looking to target a few long tail phrases for a niche (when
    I did this, I found you need about 4 or 5 to turn into anything really substantial)
    this is a great tip and it does work.

    Downside is that it's sometimes EXTREMELY hard to find enough long tail
    keywords that have ANY kind of decent search volume, which is why I have
    personally stopped doing this.

    Anyway, excellent video and yes, it does work if you have the patience
    to weed through the junk.
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    • Banned
      Good tip Steven, What monthly 'ranges' of keywords do you try to go for, when having a search? 1000-2000? 3000-4000?
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    • John,

      Thanks for sharing, very informative. The "Zeus of keyword research" now? lol

      Exactly my thoughts on channels of distribution as well. I've yet to find a niche where the top players dominate every single channel of distribution. Not everyone uses articles and content for getting the word out. Not everyone uses press releases (in fact, most don't and the ones that do generally do a piss poor job at it). Not everyone gets on the radio as an expert guest to get wads of targetted traffic. Not everyone buys cable television ads. Most people don't know how to get their products on a CPA network for insane levels of traffic. You catch my drift.

      Lately, I've been focusing less on long-tail keywords and focusing more on keywords that convert. I've found some insanely good keywords that get wads of traffic (and are very expensive via PPC) and also longtails that do the same. I test them all out because to me it really boils down to what converts based on your pre-sale and sales funnel.

      RoD
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • Hey John,

    Thanks for making that Video - very interesting, i'd never heard of that before.

    But, how do you determine what the correct number is? 127k, 74, 116?

    Riz
  • Riz, the correct number is 116 in this case. Just follow the exact steps in that video and whatever number you end up with in the last step is the correct one.

    John
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    • Just when you think you know a lot, you learn something new

      That's why i love this forum.

      Thanks again John.

      Riz

  • You could have just sold that little tidbit you kook.

    You just found me my new KW phrase for the week.

    Thanks!
    • [2] replies
    • I'm all about giving, Jill. You know that.

      Now where are my double stuff Oreos! It's almost lunch time here!
    • [QUOTE=avenuegirl;1653614]You could have just sold that little tidbit you kook.
      [QUOTE]


      Aaahh!!!!

      Sorry but that really bugs me.

      Some of us have shared this for free already in the past.

      Telling people to sell any piece of information that some people don't know is why the WSO section is filling up with crap.....
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Well I thought I was pretty good at keyword research but I'd never heard of this. After checking the keyword in Google I tried it out in Micro Niche Finder and it did indeed come up with 74 for the exact phrase count. I've often wondered if MNF was faulty (doesn't always come up with the same results as Google) but your tip has definitely shed some light on this for me.
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    nice tip, and voice sounds authority like too. Lets just say your voice sold me already, hehe
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    • I was just going to say the same thing. Put a price tag on that voice! Perfect for video or radio.
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  • John, that's awesome! Now I have to go back and recheck all of my niches.
    Will
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    • Thank you for showing that! I am going back and rechecking some keywords I might have already written off. And - I agree about your voice - it is the kind of voice I actually listen to when watching a video, and there aren't many out there I can say that about....(I have a touch of ADD)

      Thanks!!!

      Marie
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  • It's a nice tip, but people need to remember that



    It really doesn't matter what's on page 2 and onwards. It doesn't matter if there are 7 pages after page 1 or 103,000.
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    • Ah, I was coming in to say just this.

      Both the number of results in quotes and without quotes are meaningless. For starters, even if it says 127,000 Google will only return a maximum of 1000 results per each search query, so the top 1000 is your only competition.

      More importantly, as Joe stated, the top 10 (top 5 in my opinion) are the only sites you need to worry about.

      When I'm doing keyword research I don't even look at the number of results, I simply analyze the top 5 results. If I think I can out rank them I'll go after that keyword, if I think it'll be too difficult I leave it.
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    • I completely agree (well almost, I also see value in page 2 and 3) and I've been pushing this in the WF for some time with very little traction. The whole concept of the "competing pages" is an extremely broad indicator.

      In many cases I would call it completely irrelevant.

      First 3 pages are all that matters. What is the "SEO strength" of those 30 sites? That's ALL that matters.

      The concept seems to be that the more competing pages the better the SEO of the top 30. This simply isn't true in my experience, one has very little to do with the other.

      It all depend on the niche.

      One keyword phrase that shows 1500 competing pages could be very easy to crack the top 30 while another with 1500 competing pages could be almost impossible.

      The 1500 number means very little other than a very general indicator. Top 30 "SEO strength" is what matters.

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    • Isn't that only partly true? The first page - and maybe the second and a couple more - are the actual competition to a searcher today. Yes sure.

      But every other site on every other page is competing for that Page One spot, so they are all competition in a sense (if they're working on optimization of some sort to move up).
    • I agree with this completely too.

      If there were ane exceptions to this rule, then perhaps it is the first 20 results (first 2 pages) rather than the first 10.

      Statiscally it has been proven that more than 90% of search engine users do NOT go past page 2 of the search engine results.

      And most keywords, if you were to visit page 3 of the results page, start to show 'weaker websites' that aren't really all that great, but just ranked at the 3rd page anyways.
      • [2] replies
  • Thank you for this! Very interesting
    I haven't really done much kw research, but after watching this vid, i decided I should really try this out.
    I checked the phrase

    spongebob birthday invitations

    All the way to page 33 of google it said

    Results 321 - 330 of about 248,000 for "spongebob birthday invitations".

    but then when I clicked on the last page (page 34)-

    Results 331 - 336 of 336 for "spongebob birthday invitations".

    So 336 is the correct count, right?
    • [2] replies
    • Yes, you did it correctly. What this is telling you is that there are 336 actual competing pages in Google for that exact phrase, not the 248,000 they initially told you.

      I didn't cover it in the video, but the next step is to go back, run the search without quotation marks (because that's how most people search), and really look at the Top 10 or 20. If you see almost all are recognizable authority domains (amazon.com, shopping.com, etc.), then it's probably not worth pursuing. If you see a bunch of unrecognizable domains and sites featuring user generated content (like ezinearticles.com, squidoo.com, youtube videos, etc.), then you have a green light to proceed with that keyword.

      That's the watered down version. It's not always going to play out that way, but in a nutshell, that completes the picture.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • Hi John

      Best little tip I have seen for a while. Great little video too. You should be producing video products IMO

      Thanks

      Kenj
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  • Why, John, WHY do you search within quotes? I have never and will never understand the logic, and nobody has ever been able to give me a good reason for doing it this way. I'm not talking about the reason that everybody's been taught by the "guru's", but the REAL reason...
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    • Because I said so. Hey, that answer worked for my parents from age 2 to about 17 years, 364 days. So it's good enough for you, young lady.

      Ok, the real answer is that it's not foolproof, but a low number there tells you that you can most likely get in the Top 10 with a bit of work. You still have to delve into the Top 10, but more often than not, if the phrase in quotes has 1 million competing pages, the Top 10 is gonna be really tough to crack, whereas if you have 1,000 competing pages, you can probably get in there with a lot less work. You still need to check this of course. But this method is a time saver.
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    • Lisa, John gave you a good explanation, but let me explain it in more detail...

      Without the quotes Google will count pages that have the keywords anywhere on the page in the results, but those keywords may not necessarily used together or in that particular order. For example, with the keyword phrase dog obedience training, without the quotes Google will return pages that use those three keywords anywhere on the page and in any order, and they could be separated by many other words.

      In other words, Google might count a blog with a post about a woman's dog, a separate post with a tip about how she encourages obedience in her children, and yet another post about a weight training class she's starting as relevant to the broad match search query.

      So a site like that would not be in competition for dog obedience training at all, but if you don't put the search in quotation marks you might think it's part of the competition because Google includes it in the broad match results.

      However, if you put the search in quotation marks, Google only counts pages that have those exact words used in that exact order on the page, which is a much better indicator of how much competition there is.

      Hope that helps.
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  • I use other tools but this was a nice little nugget ... good stuff. I wonder why G does this?
  • Wow! This is really cool.

    I sent you a PM about it.
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    • [2] replies
    • Great tip there John!

      The problem is that people blindly follow the Gurus, and lose out on a lot of money, or end up creating unnecessary headache for themselves.

      What you demonstrated happens a lot and not just for Phrase Matches. Even the Operator Searches like allintitle suffer from the same problem.

      Joe118 is also very very right. In many cases, you can rank for a keyword that has 2 million Phrase Matches much easier than you can rank for one with 50,000 Phrase Matches.

      Guys 'n gals listen to John & Joe. They might not be Gurus, but they are talking a lot of sense.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • Blast you, John! This was going to be a tip in the first February issue of my newsletter using the term "best shoe horn" - which goes from 55,000+ to 47 (I'm not saying that's a good keyword, people, it was just for an example because it shows how Google lies). Now I'll have to find something else or all the Warriors who subscribe will think I'm copying you.

      I don't know why, but I hadn't thought of that before. If a person finds a good keyword and product but the competition is formidable, it makes perfect sense to see if the competition is weak or strong in the individual channels you're proficient at. Thanks, Rod.
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  • Great tip! I learn something useful everyday on this forum! I'll be sure to double check now, before "writing off" any of my long tail keywords...
  • Fantastic tip John. That makes me look differently at some of the ideas floating around in my head!!!

    Cheers

    Jon
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    • [1] reply
    • John,

      I appreciate the video and never realized that the number returned after selecting to show all results is different from the number shown before but...I don't know if one should put much stock in a particular number returned by Google.

      There are lots of number descrepencies that show up. All over the place. From the numbers returned by Google through the keyword tool to the numbers returned by Google from different data centers handling the search query.

      I guess the important thing is the overall direction of the numbers and how the numbers compare overall with other numbers that are returned for different keywords.

      The numbers are valuable for showing general relationships and trends. But I am not sure that a number of 116 vs 74 is really all that significant.

      But even more important is whether what you are showing has actually resulted in an improved keyword selection to allow you to make more money.

      If I may ask John...have you been able to use the numbers you are showing in the video to actually improve your money making keyword selection? In other words what real difference has it made for you compared to the more "traditional" ways of doing keyword research? Has your approach helped you to personally pick more winners based on the bottom line of what you make from those keywords?

      Just curious if you care to share more about your personal experience using this approach.

      Carlos
  • Thanks for the video! I had learned of this at some point way back when but since I didn't write it down, I forgot all about it. Nice job on the vid; you have a good voice.
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    • Thanks for the tip. Definitely one I will put to use straight away!
  • Let me see if this explanation helps at all, Laura...

    We do the search inside quotes for our own analysis of keywords for the reasons Dennis laid out. But when we get the green light from that in terms of low competition numbers, then we go back and search the phrase without quotes to see how tough the Top 10 looks.

    Now, that begs the question: why even bother with the search inside quotes if all you're doing is looking at the Top 10 without quotes anyway. And my answer is that it saves time. You can do what I show in the video really fast when you practice it a bit. And there is a strong correlation between very low competition numbers from that check and easy Top 10 competition. It's not always accurate as a predictor, but usually it is. So when I end up checking the Top 10 without quotes, it's rare that I find something out of kilter with what I expect. Hope that makes more sense. It's a time saver when you have a lot of keywords to check out.

    John
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    • Thank you, John. I understand this, but I was just trying to clarify Lisa's question because it is one that pops up from time to time. I should have just kept my mouth shut and let Lisa speak for herself! LOL

      But I would like to get your thoughts on something Dennis said: "In other words, Google might count a blog with a post about a woman's dog, a separate post with a tip about how she encourages obedience in her children, and yet another post about a weight training class she's starting as relevant to the broad match search query. So a site like that would not be in competition for dog obedience training at all, but if you don't put the search in quotation marks you might think it's part of the competition because Google includes it in the broad match results."

      If we're talking about the first 10 results in a broad-match search, even if something unrelated shows up, it IS in effect our competition, isn't it? Although, obviously its position won't be hard to usurp.
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  • Carlos,

    Of course there are real world applications! I have found many keywords that before I knew this tip I would have written off, just as I mention in the video. I have 3 right off the top of my head that come to mind that I have pages for now that I would not have bothered with before, and all 3 add to my bottom line every month in Adsense and affiliate earnings.

    I do agree with you that the difference between 74 and 116 is insignificant. But the difference between 127,000 and 116 is HUGE in terms of what decisions you make about what to do with that keyword. That was the point of the video.
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    • A point well made then.

      If I may ask something else why do you not use Phrase match instead of Exact matching?

      Exact matching will match perfectly of course but Phrase matching is a valuable indicator of the real traffic through a potential keyword phrase too. In many cases better than Exact (depending on the keyword phrase of course).

      Based on the description of the different matching phrases at https://adwords.google.com/support/a...er=6100#phrase, I wonder if you are missing some significant traffic numbers from your keyword analysis by using Exact.

      Carlos
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  • You ca also try entering your search phrase, jst as you did, in quotation marks, then click the Advanced Search option immediately to the right of the regular Search button.

    At the next screen Select Results Per Page '100', Language 'English'. That returns an immediate result for the exact phrase "bark collars for small dogs" of 70 pages.

    Same system, a couple of steps less
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    • Yeah...that's one of those things that can return different numbers. Way different at times so it's good to use that with a grain of skepticism included.

      Many times the numbers returned by using 100 per page vs leaving it at 10 are the same but sometimes they are WAY different for no discernable reason.

      Carlos
  • Yeah I learned this one a while back from Travis.
    Very handy tidbit indeed.


    Shawn
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  • Pat (and Joe), as I've said in this very thread (I think more than once), I agree that ultimately it comes down to how tough the Top 10 or 20 competition is. What I'm telling you here is that there is a STRONG correlation between a low competing pages number using what I show in the video and the relative competitiveness in the Top 10. This takes almost no time to do, and it will quickly weed out keywords to even look at the Top 10 for. You can whittle down a list of say 50 keywords to 10-20 very quickly doing this and never even have to glance at the Top 10. What's more, there's "sort of easy" Top 10 competition, and then there's "really easy" Top 10 competition. This method usually shows you the "really easy" keywords in short order.

    Look, I know there are many ways to skin the cat. If you're farther along the IM trail, I agree you can cut this step out entirely and be just fine. But most are not that far along and this is a very good thing to learn to do. It widens the margin of error, if you follow what I mean. You can screw up your analysis of the Top 10 to a bigger degree after doing this and still come out fine. I know it helps newbies and intermediate folks because I see it happen all the time. So, yes, you're right, but with an asteriks. LOL
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    • I just think it's important that people learn to study the real websites on the front page rather than the total number of results Google returns.

      I've found keywords before that have returned in excess of 100,000 when searching in quotes, yet, the competition on the first page wasn't very strong at all.

      Had I been going the traditional route of choosing keywords based on number of competing pages, I would have completely disregarded keywords like that when I shouldn't have.

      There is one time, however, that I will take on this approach.

      If I'm just trying to find 20-30 extremely low competition keywords to write some articles about I will generally try to find a bunch of keywords with less than 20k results.

      When I do it I know it isn't the best way to go about it, however, as a general rule a lot of the keywords with that number are going to be fairly easy to rank for. I also do it because I don't want to spend too much time finding these types of keywords.

      I do think using this method should be used occasionally like in the above example, but I think you're shooting yourself in the foot if you use it exclusively.


    • Exactly...this process helps you skin a lot more cats in the same amount of time by prequalifying the cats with loose skin.

    • Okay, now I understand more clearly what you're saying. I guess it took a rewording to make it click, for me at least!
    • And just to be fair to John, he goes into all this strength of competition stuff in other videos in his YouTube channel. And John is about giving -- really true. The stuff he gives away in his videos is the stuff others are charging for.

      I agree that people should learn as much as they can, while using their brain. Noone has a monopoly on the truth, not the goo roos nor Joe118 or Zeus

      Zeus, is it really true that there's a strong correlation between the number of pages returned by your method and the competitiveness of the top 10? If yes, that would be a very good filter. Is there perchance also a correlation between the number of pages with this method and how profitable the niche is? LOL

      I think of keyword & niche research as a series of sieves. They can be applied in many orders. Each sieve is good for narrowing the number of choices (degrees of freedom if you will). I'm definitely not saying that your sieve is bad, I'm just saying that people should not stop there. And your other videos (in the YouTube channel) teach many other sieves to apply, so all is good.

      So I guess I overstated the importance of *my* sieve versus yours. Yours requires less work (MUCH less work) and can eliminate keywords or rescue keywords from elimination. Clearly the oft-advised "of approximately 73bazillion results" approach is complete bunk and you should suspect anyone who is promoting that kind of "research" as a snake oil salesperson.
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  • I don't know who originally discovered this technique but it's brilliant! I'd better go through my potential niche list again! Thanks heaps!
  • John,

    Great tip! I'm still trying to figure out why clicking page 10 would show a different amount of search results. I guess we'll never know!?

    I also wanted to share another tip I've been using...

    This method will really tell you how much SEO strength the competing sites have for the keyword.

    If you search Google for your keyword phrase without quotes and then add up the page rank of the top 10 listings. If the PR of the top 10 listings add up to less than 30 the keyword is very doable.

    This is very powerful because now you are focusing more on SEO strength rather than competing searching results.

    I have found lots of keywords that have over 1,000,000 search results where the PR of each page listed has less than 10 PR when added up.

    Most of these keywords I would have dismissed because of the high search results but on further inspection using this method I've discovered the real competition is actually extremely low.
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    • I frequently do something very similar when I'm researching a niche.

      I've tested it with some of the most popular niches on the internet. I've never been able to get beyond page 100.

      I don't know why Google does this but it appears to set a limit of 100 pages to display, possibly thinking that more pages would not contain additional information that was useful.

      Ivan
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    • Very interesting idea. May I ask how long you've been doing this? What I'm getting at is whether this method has held up over time, or if maybe you've only done it a couple times and the results could be a fluke.
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    • Another variation I have seen on that is to add the PR of the top ten, divide by ten, and if the average comes out to be 3 or less go for it. Josh Spaulding I believe is the one that started promoting this method if I am not mistaken. Maybe he got it from Court of the Keyword Academy. Don't know.

      Carlos
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  • This is a very helpful tip. I remember seeing this tip somewhere a little while ago I wanna say it was something that one of these smart marketers out here who I subscribed to their list sent to us subscribers. This is a huge reminder to me of something that could really help with KW research. Thanks for posting this!!
  • Very nice tip.. Of course with Micro Niche Finder the problem is that I have too many keywords.. lol

    Hard to stay focused!
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    • I know, right! I love MNF. The brainstorm feature has made me some good money. Best software I've bought in a long time. But it can definitely give you too much of the good stuff. I really have to focus, and I have ADD so that's not easy to begin with. My wife "caught" me one night at like 3 am at the computer... I think she expected me to be looking at naughty stuff, but like the geeky dork I am, what was I doing? Yep, checking out MNF for a niche idea that popped into my head as I was drifting off to sleep. LOL I probably need help.
      • [2] replies
  • I knew the first half of the method by playing with Google, didn't know about doing the repeat search thing though. Thanks!
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    • Hope this helps.

      Here's a quicker way to get to the number.

      Type the following web address into your browser
      and go to the page:

      http://www.google.com/#num=100&start=900&filter=0&q="keyword"

      but change the keyword into what you are searching for

      http://www.google.com/#num=100&start=900&filter=0&q="bark collars for small dogs"

      and the number appears at the top.

      num=100 tells Google to put 100 results on each page

      start=900 tells Google to show results starting at 900
      (i.e. 900-1000, or the last page of results - Google only
      shows 1000 results maximum)

      filter=0 tells Google not to filer out any results.
      • [ 4 ] Thanks
  • Zeus,

    this is good stuff, BUT not too surprising either.

    The reason is that a simple search and looking at the number of "indexed pages in google" for a phrase/keyword is not really an exact indicator for competition.

    (This also applies if you use a tool like market samurai etc.)

    Therefore it is a way better to search for "allintitle:bark collars for small dogs" to get a better first impression about competition.

    Using Market Samurai, the returned number would be 127,000 for SEOC (which we just saw is not really the right nr.)...and the returned number for SEOCT (pages with phrase in title) is only 174.

    This is why i also started basically to ignore SEOC/competing pages in Google. You can have 10 zillion pages which "somehow" are indexed for a phrase...but only very few with the phrase in title..making it a (potentially) good keyword nevertheless.

    (Of course there is still more to it, eg. examining competition strength like PR and domain age of the curren top sites in Google)
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
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    • I still consider myself a newbie at this stuff but I did some thinking about the allintitle thingy and it just doesn't seem to be any good at all.

      I mean there are tons of niches where the allintitle modifier does not pull up more than about 40-50% of the top ten that are your true competitors. That means you are missing a whole lot of the competitors, true competitors, that show up on the first page using the allintitle approach.

      We're talking about a quick gauge of competitors mind you and certainly not an in depth analysis.

      Carlos
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    • There are a few software titles already, like Traffic Travis, Market Samurai, WebCEO, etc... to do this...
      I personally use MS and WebCEO.

      MS is a paid product (with a free trial), while WebCEO has both free and paid versions too.

      You may try WebCEO for free if you want on this link.
      Or you may find more about Traffic Travis too on the blog post I've written here: Free SEO Software Tools

      As for the results they give you...

      I was doing the same kind of research before I bought MS about 12 month ago...

      I was only using it with search results per page setup as 100 in my preferences at that time.

      But since then, I have been always using MS for that kind of thing - being much easier to compare the same kind of results between the various long tail KeyPhrases back to back, so to speak (lol, write?)

      I was curious and just ran the search through it again for the given KW:
      ... and of course, there were many interesting ones to spot as KP there, including


      My results were similar, only that I've got 126.000 SEOC returned.

      Here is a nice finding...

      shows 177 SEOTC out of 215.000 SEOC results...
      while
      shows 132 SEOTC out of 800 SEOC results... which is similar to what Google search shows for such a quoted search phrase (801 on my session today) with all results added...

      BUT, if you drill down to the last result, that will be on page 52 (10 results per page) or exactly 512 pages shown, totally.

      However, in this case, many websites have double listings, so it would be ok to say with pretty much confidence that you compete with even less pages (no matter how strong or weak that competition is actually) probably a bit more than half.

      If you run the search w/o quotes, obiously google reports more (like 10.300 initially, then 10.200 up to the last page exclusively) but in fact it stops on the #64 page totalling 637 results.

      How about THAT!

      As we can see, neither MS nor GS (Google search where MS gathers the data from) are accurate enough for telling you the exact numbers.

      But would it be so important, especially on a long KP as here?

      I guess not, the really important things would be to look at the first pages (1-2 max) of results and assess the easiness of outranking those websites, one by one.

      Steve Lorenzo Virtuoso
  • Zeus, I'll have to say, you've done it again. Your posts are truly informative. Thank you for such a great post.

    Too bad this forum doesn't have the option to "follow" someone; you'd be a great person to follow.
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    • Angela, trust me when I tell you this... I owe you SO much more than you'll ever owe me when it comes to providing something that helps people. I'm glad you saw this thread and got something out of it. Maybe if I do about 100 more like it, you and I will be close to even. Your backlinks and general knowledge of that end of SEO helped me so much in 2009 I can scarcely do it justice with my words here. And I mean that sincerely.
    • You probably know this already Angela, but in case you've forgotten, you can click John's name and select "Find all threads by Zues66" and browse the threads he's started. It's almost as good as being able to follow.
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  • Great find, thanks for the post.

    I did this for a 4 word keyword search. It returned about 1.5 MILLION results in quotations.

    I got all the way to page 38 and the results changed to 376. At the end it showed a link to show 'similar results', which then gave me 1.5 million results again. I once again went to page 38 and then beyond and looked at the results. Most of the results were of the same site, but the phrase was from a standard footer at the bottom of the page which leads me to believe that 376 is really the correct number.

    ---------------------------------------------

    Sort of off subject:

    One thing that I noticed too with this 4 word keyword. If I type in the phrase match (quotations) I get 1.5 million. If I type in the normal (broad) search, I get 180,00. If I type in the [exact] search, I get 180,00 which leads me to believe that google takes this 4 word search and automatically gives me exact search results. Has anyone noticed this before???

    Also, for the above phrase, the top 10 returns some blogs, amazon and shopping pages. With this little bit of info, would you go for it? Or what else would you look into?
  • Thank you so much for your kind words, Zeus. And thank you again for another great post. I've taken to bookmarking your posts, recently, they're so helpful.
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  • You just totally revolutionized the way I'll do my research. That's amazing man. Thanks a ton for this tip
  • granted I knew this, I havn't used it in a while because I can tell if I can rank for a word just by looking at the other sites, PR, amount of sites, links to the pages and tons of other analysis I do to see if its viable.

    I did it for a niche I was preparing to target just now as a tester and found gold mine long-tail keywords with loads of views and little competition, below 400.

    Thanks for jogging the brain!

    Jay.
  • I've seen this happen when looking at backlinks in google or pages indexed, but never thought to check for keyword competition.

    Very eye-opening indeed!

    I also understand and agree that you need to look at the competition on page one regardless but still, this is a pretty cool tip.

    Matt
  • This is the first time I heard of this trick. I'll surely try to apply this in my next keyword analysis. And will post here if it proved to be effective.

    Thanks, Zeus66.
  • It depends, you could target keywords with 100 k, 200 k, 300 k and so on..

    People target below 50 k because its easier work.

    You could rank for better keywords, more work and building has to be done. It needs a more complex link building structure and strategy. That's why targeting loads of long-tail keywords with an easy planned out link building procedure is the preferred method.

    Because it takes longer to rank for those keywords.

    That's not to say that you shouldn't try to slowly climb the ranks for those harder keywords on the side, whilst you build up and empire of long tail keywords.

    Because when you do finally hit those top pages, its going to benefit you a ton.

    Jay.
    • [1] reply
    • Yes, I think Jay's correct here. The whole point behind the advice you see everywhere to target keywords with less than 100,000 or 50,000 (or whatever) when searched inside quotes is to find keywords that have low competition, so you can rank for them faster. The idea is sound, especially for those who cannot wait a long time and spend a lot of hours or money doing the link building and site building that would be required to rank for a more competitive keyword. The payoff for such rankings is obviously worth it in a lot of instances, but I'll tell you something a lot of people new to this don't understand very well. Sometimes you do better with a lot less traffic if that traffic is coming in from a keyword that is highly targeted but gets fewer searches vs. a less targeted keyword that gets a lot of searches. The notion that it's all about traffic is wrong in that sense. It's more about the targeting of that traffic than simply the number of people coming to your site.

      Which leads me to the reason I think long tail keywords are so much better for building a long-term business like this. Actually, there are 2 good reasons for that:

      1. Better targeting. Long tails reduce the poor targeting possibilities. The logic here is that someone putting in longer search strings is looking for something more specific. Not always true, but generally it is. So you get "better" traffic to your site, even if it's fewer people.

      2. Less risky. We all know how Google dances and SERPs change literally overnight sometimes. When you rely too much on traffic from one or two big keywords, your business is always just one Google change away from being devastated. Ask anyone this has happened to and they'll all tell you they switched to a more diverse long tail strategy. I did after it happened to me once. I'd rather get 100 visitors/day from 10 long tail keywords than 200/day from one big keyword. I'm not going to lose ranking position overnight on all 10, but I sure might on that one big keyword.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • John, that's a great video! Nicely done bud.

    There are a lot of ways to view competition. Like you mentioned, if there are a lot of high authority pages listed in the top ten results, even if the overall competition is fairly low--you would have your work cut out for getting into the top half-dozen results or so.

    Another thing to think about is that even if the top ten results for your search term are kind of weak, (not high PR or .gov, .edu type sites) you really need to look at the domains that are listed.

    Suppose using your method you come up with only 100 actual competing sites and the traffic volume for your chosen keyword is acceptable, the other consideration is the domain thing. Suppose you wanted to write an article and submit to EZA and get a top ranking to get some traffic.

    For any keyword phrase you search for, Google is only going to show two listings from any top-level domain. This means, in our EZA example, that even if there were 50 articles at EZA targeting your keyword phrase, Google will return a max of two of these for any particular search. (There may be more that come up if you hit the link saying "Some search results have been omitted because they were similar to those returned, click here to see all the results--or whatever the exact wording is).

    But in this example suppose there was already a page from EZA listed at the #2 and #12 position in Google. Now, if as I said, there were only 100 real pages returned--your "real" competition consists of those two EZAs already listed. If you can beat out one of them in Google's eyes--your page won't show in the listings. If you feel that those two EZA are strong in terms of SEO you are much better off submitting the article to another directory.

    The same would be true of Squidoo lenses, Blogger blogs, HubPages--Scribd, DocStoc, WetPaint, Quizilla, WordPress.com and similar pages. So yes--I love your idea (technique) but even when there is little competition, it is important to see what domains that competition is coming from. If there are already two pages showing in Google for your keyword phrase from one of these domains--your "real" competition is those two pages--you must beat one of them out to get into the listings.

    The way to circumvent this "two listings per top-level domain" is to host a WP blog on your own domain. This makes it easier to get listed, but of course you wouldn't have the EZA, Squidoo, Blogger authority working for you.

    Still, your video is great and very, very well done!!! --Mike
    • [ 3 ] Thanks
  • weird...now i have to do keyword research all over again
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for the video and the tip
      Looks like a good way to get a general overview of the market. Also would be a perfect candidate for a script to handle all the grunt work.

      From there a manual look at the results should do the trick
  • As I understand it, the reason this happens is because of semantics and relevance.

    Semantics comes into it because Google don't always say things in the clearest terms. In this case, when they say that a search term has returned '115,000 results' they seem to be implying that they actually rank that number of pages. But in fact, as this exercise shows, that isn't the case. What they are really saying is that they have that number of pages (that vaguely match the search criteria) in their database.

    Google's aim hjas always been to return the most relevant results, so it appear that they filter their own database (using an algorythm we don't fully understand) to return the best of that database - in other words, the much lower actual number of results we see.

    Martin
  • I tried it using my phrases and I did not get any reduction in numbers so maybe it could be that my niche is stable in the numbers.

    But I will keep this technique for future attempts.

    Thanks for sharing.
    • [1] reply
    • yeah same here tried a few keywords, no changes

      but in the video he said it doesn't always change
  • John McCabe, I'm like you I will drill down more than 2 or 3 pages, some of the times depending on what I'm looking for.

    John (zesus) you have confirmed something I also learned a short while back, I'm currently using that little function to increase the value for my clients. I also happen to know someone who is very good at keyword research, that has added another income stream to his business using this very tactic. And setting up an affiliate program to even make more money with it.

    John I do want to say a real thank you for bringing this up and the good video. Frankly I think it may be your bald head that makes the ladies want to send you cookies. :p

    Ken Leatherman

    The Old Geezer
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Dude, this is an awesome method. I purchased a video series from

      a guy who was supposed to be a "guru" and learned to stop at

      100,000. Thanks.
  • @Zeus Probably? LOL

    This is, by far, the most intelligent and informative real-world keyword research thread I've seen. I'm going to go blast my lists right now and tell them they need to come and read it!
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I haven't read all the replies in this thread, so I apologize if someone said this already.

    But just in case no-one did:

    When doing keyword research always set your search settings to 100

    That will take care of that issue...
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • That's a good tip to go along with this. Do a Google search, then in the upper right look for the Search Settings link. Then just change the number of results per page to 100 and save it. Now search again inside quotes and you'll get a much lower number (usually) that will show you the real competition level. Thanks, Sara!
      • [1] reply
  • Thanks for the keyword research lesson! Google is handy tool to use.
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  • Good tip, I had noticed that Google was that way. Found it just in day to day searches. However... it goes even deeper than than. If I can beat one of the top 5 no matter what the real competition is, then the number is irrelevant.

    ALSO, if the top results are all research oreinted, these are the searches where more than the average 12% of searchers will hit page 2. Many times there is no real competition for those in the product area because most affiliates have moved on and hitting the 1st spot on page 2 AND being the 1st product (other than paid ads) the searcher sees, their frustration level is many times enough of a push that they stop the shop there.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Most folk have default Google 10 results per page. I also find being top of page 2 is better than being on page 1 in the lower half. From my experience if the first results surfers see on page 1 are not particularly relevant they click to page 2 rather than scroll down page 1.
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  • yeah, I've experienced this... it's the little tips from what we don't always notice that seem to matter, thanks!
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  • Holy crap!

    I am stunned! Wow!
    I can't even post a sufficient comment.

    I am just going to post more amazement below!

    WOW!OMG! ROFL!

    Igor
  • Thanks for the hot tip. The info. is awesome!
  • wow, that is a wonderful video. It is really an eye open for me.
  • Hmmmm. I just tried this with a couple of my LT keywords and I didnt get past stage 1. In other words I clicked on page 10, and it didnt give an option to include omitted results just put more page choices at the bottom and the figure stayed the same.

    So I guess it will work with some and not others. Google knows why!
  • Awesome! Maybe it something that google have to do with. But it is very interesting that from hundred thousand you can get a 100 competition.
  • I love picking up little tips here and there, but this is definitely one of the best in a long time! I had no idea about this. Cheers mate!
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    • [ 9 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Rob, thank you thank you thank you! Now, having said that, I could smack ya for not turning that little gem of software into a WSO...
    • Moonfish,

      Thanks for the awesome tool!
      • [1] reply
  • Hey Rob,

    Wow, that's fantastic man! Thank you so much for posting it in this thread! That's gonna save us a lot of time. May I send a link to that to my email list subscribers? You can PM me with any promotional info you might want to include.

    Thanks!
    John
  • John and Rob thanks a lot for the excellent info and gift.

    Sam
  • Thanks a lot for sharing this!
  • Nice video but you kids should check out the SEO forum more often, this is kinda old news now.
    • [1] reply
    • Parade rainer. :p

      Where you been hiding man?
  • John,

    Thanks for the great video! I already have found some great keywords tongiht.
  • Just saying... we need love too... even if we are buried in the middle of WF and have to share space with the adsense people :p

    but it's a good video none the less.
  • wow, thanks alot man!

    that is a really cool feature and it is very funny that google covers that up whether it be intentional or a bug.

    Google knows its stuff pretty well (understatement) I would really like to know why this is how it is.
  • Whenever I see anything from John, I always pay attention. He flat out knows what he is talking about.
    • [1] reply
    • Convince my wife of that and I'll write you a blank check, my friend!
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