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What is your keyword research criteria?

by jan roos
8 replies
I would like to know which factors make you decide to target a keyword or keyword phrase?
Obviously the criteria for people just starting out with SEO will be lower than for some of us that has more experience and I think it'll be interesting to see how different marketer's evaluate the keywords they want to target.

We'll start with me.

Right now I am targeting keywords with at least 30 searches a day and with fewer than
35 000 competing websites for that keyword or keyword phrase. I use this free tool to do my research Keyword research service for search engine placement, Google keyword tracking tools, web site promotion software
Then once i found a phrase that matches the above criteria I will do a google search for that phrase and see what comes up. Sometimes there are quite a few competitors but I can see right away that they don't know what they are doing and I know I can get a spot on the first page.Other times I see there are some fierce competition and I'll leave it to spend my time with the less competitive ones.

This technique has been working well for me and I am finding the first page of google for most of the keywords I am targeting which makes me want to start targeting more competitive keywords and see what happens.

Cheers

Jan
#criteria #keyword #research
  • Profile picture of the author kkchoon1
    Banned
    It depends on what site you are referring. If this is a blog, any keywords that would like your post to the keywords should be ok.

    If you are doing an affiliate website, you should target the buying keyword first, like brand name, product name + buy, purchase, discount, coupon...
    Then the evaluation keywords: brand / product name + reviews, compare, comparison, top rated...
    Lastly you should target the research keyword, the general product name...
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    • Profile picture of the author jan roos
      I mostly target long tail keywords related to my niche and write some ezine articles around them. Works pretty good so far.
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      • Profile picture of the author Techie Turtle
        Do you trust those numbers in the "Predicted daily searches" columns? Have you found a way to check the numbers to see if they're correct?
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        • Profile picture of the author Marian Berghes
          I used to rely 100% on longtail keywords, now I tested some other more competitive keywords. Currently I am mostly into article marketing, so I will refer to this when I say:

          1. If the article is good, and I mean good, and it provides quality content...the traffic will come.
          2. I got for an article that targeted the "online dating service" keyword...witch has like a gazillion competing websites, 9K views and around 1600 url clicks in 1 month.
          But thats just me, sometimes its better to take a small piece of the pie than trying to take the pie itself.
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          • Profile picture of the author lstoops
            Yep, I mostly target long tail keywords too for my niche blogs. I mainly use Google Keyword tool and look for at least 1500 search monthly and less than 150-100K competing websites. However, really only the first page matters as your competition for your keyword phrase. I look to see if they have the keyword in the title and/or how many backlinks, etc. I do look at allintitle too.

            Lisa
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  • Profile picture of the author moodyresources
    more than 1000 monthly searches on google keyword tool with less than 200,000 competing pages for exact match for the keyword. Also, less than500,000 competing when typing in allinanchor: keyword.

    I can almost always get several listings on the first page of google for this criteria using Peter Drew's seofightclub software.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris_L
    The thirtydaychallenge.com website suggests 80 searches a day and less than 30,000 competing websites. However, I find it a little too restrictive so I bent the rule a little bit, especially if I like the long tail keyword and the first-page competing websites are not authoritative sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author AskJesusLeon
    I use a paid keyword research tool, searches a day I am currently testing that but for competition I try to stay closer to 10-15k.
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