Monthly search count quesetion. (niche research)

If you are doing the keyword research properly that averages out to 138 searches a day for all your keywords. I'll take 138 chances at someone seeing my stuff all day long. Especially if I know the niche converts.

if I were seriously interested in investing time/engergy into a niche based on some keyword counts I would fire up some adwords ppc campaigns and get some real time data

those keyword tools, any of them, are rough estimates at best

Dennis,
Great work getting your research done.

Here's a rough estimate calculation that has worked well for me.

Take Google's Keyword Tool, and do a search for your keyword.

Let's try an example to make this simple:

We want to target the keyword [elderly home health care]. (Exact match)

Google says, in the US, that Exact Match keyword gets an average of 210 searches per month.

Take that number, and multiply it by .1

That seems to give a pretty close estimate (not always, yes, I know...) of how many CLICKS you could expect from a #2 listing organically. (#1 listing gets roughly 40% of the clicks, #2 about 12% and it trickles down from there...while we all would love to be #1, a #2 or #3 listing should be a more reasonable expectation and will give us some better estimation figures to work with in a minute.)

After all, searches really don't mean anything until they become clicks (traffic).

To determine how tough it will be to get those 20 visitors per month, simply do a allinanchor: and an allititle: search for the exact phrase "elderly home health care"

One more thing to factor is in the Adwords cost for that keyword. In this case, it is $4.70 per click.

Multiply that by your clicks and you come up with $90 bucks or so if you were trying to buy these clicks just 1 time around.

Factor in how much you think you can make with the keyword (your conversion rate and price) and you can get a pretty good idea of what any keyword is worth in $ to you.

That's really the bottom line.

Take the keywords one at a time though. Lumping them together is a problem...sounds a little like "aggregate profits" and we know how well that worked for the housing industry.

Hope this helps,
Jack

Oh...

One more thing I forgot.

You can theme your keywords to get more lift from any single Exact match keyword.

Here's how:

Step 1: Take you keyword [elderly home health care] and put it back in the Google Keyword Tool but make sure the "synonyms" box is NOT selected. This will return only keywords that have the words "elderly", "home", "health", and "care" in them...in any order and with any other words that might be in the search.

Then select "Broad" as the Match Type. (We are going wide at this point to see what is worth targeting. Obviously this works better for keywords with 3-4+ words, i.e. longer tail.)

Now, select the keywords from that list that have decent search counts.

These are the themes of your page/site.

So, in our example:

Parent Keyword: [elderly home health care]

Theme Keywords:

home health care for elderly
home health care for the elderly
elderly in home health care


Make sense?

Wow,
Okay I'm following you. Thanks for the great info, I guess I was doing too much. I see the importance of focusing on just one phrase versus bulking them all together.

So, tell me if this makes sense.

Take that one phrase. Work it, until there is no more working left, or until your rank high in google for that phrase, then move on to the next one?

Dennis

Dennis,
I'd definitely start with one "theme" at a time.

Do your research around the theme, then put something together for that theme.

You can then move on to the next theme/subtheme while the other content gets indexed and ranked.

Think of it like building a fire.

You have a match. (The initial idea for a webpage)

You grab some small sticks. (Your initial "low hanging fruit" keywords)

You add some larger sticks. (Your themes branching off)

You add some bigger split wood. (Your parent subthemes)

Your add a big log once you have lots of hot coals. (THE parent theme)

Just take it one step at a time, but make sure to light something.

Unless you are a really good multitasker, or outsource your work, sticking with a single topic/niche market will make your promotion easier to handle.

Hope this helps,
Jack