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Keyword Help?

by lutherlars
14 replies
Warriors, need a bit of advice here:
I'm using the keyword traffic tool that can be found here:
https://www.wordtracker.com/ and have a few questions.
1. When I put Dog Obedience Training into the search box, the results I get are all long tail, and it appears that there is no exact match for Dog Obedience Training. I have a hard time believing that this keyword phrase does not get a good number of daily searches. Am I wasting my time targetting this keyword phrase??
2. Am I better off targetting keyword phrases related to dogs that get hundreds of searches daily or am I better off targetting those that get double digit searches daily? Cheers for any feedback here.
#keyword
  • Profile picture of the author Danny Gardner
    From my end, it looks like there are about 9,900 exact match monthly searches for that term. But it also looks like there is plenty of competition.

    I would personally go for an easier, long tail keyword. In the time it would take you to get ranked for "dog obedience training", you could get ranked for several related long tail keywords.
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    • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
      Thanks for reply:
      So when looking at level of competition, how much is too much?
      Originally Posted by Danny Gardner View Post

      From my end, it looks like there are about 9,900 exact match monthly searches for that term. But it also looks like there is plenty of competition.

      I would personally go for an easier, long tail keyword. In the time it would take you to get ranked for "dog obedience training", you could get ranked for several related long tail keywords.
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      • Profile picture of the author grafic
        Originally Posted by lutherlars View Post

        Thanks for reply:
        So when looking at level of competition, how much is too much?
        Depends on the amount of link building you are planning and how much quality content you are going to be offering.

        You can check out how many backlinks each of the page one sites have and work out if you are realistically going to be able to match that.

        Its not just a case of get more links and you will rank better though it does help. You also have to take into account the domain age, the URL, ie if it has the keyword included, the domain age, the amount of high quality respected backlinks the site has.... and on and on...

        Its hard to put a number on the optimum number of competing sites as there are so many other factors in play too.
        If you have under 50,000 competing sites then that might be a good niche to investigate further.

        Also, be careful what you view as competing sites.
        That doesn't mean the number of search results returned by google.
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    • Profile picture of the author newell
      Originally Posted by Danny Gardner View Post

      From my end, it looks like there are about 9,900 exact match monthly searches for that term. But it also looks like there is plenty of competition.

      I would personally go for an easier, long tail keyword. In the time it would take you to get ranked for "dog obedience training", you could get ranked for several related long tail keywords.
      yes i think you are right
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  • Profile picture of the author Chri5123
    Or what you can do is try out the Google keyword tool - I know that Wordtracker has more features but I have always found the Google keyword tool the best for quick keyword research.

    Chris
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  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    So for example, Dog Obedience Training Advice, might be better to attempt to rank for than Dog Obedience Training? The number of returned results in Google is way smaller meaning that I would have an easier time ranking.
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    • Profile picture of the author capitalalchemy
      Hi lutherlars,

      It does depend on how many back links competing sites have, quality of those links, how well optimized their ranking pages are, age, size of site, structure, etc.

      From my own experience and the way I see it....you can spend a year trying to rank for a very competitive keyword, or you can turn out more work taking the time to look for low competition/high traffic keywords (and they ARE out there!)

      A good rule of thumb that I follow is:

      "keyword in quotes" total competition < 10,000 - 20,000 (the lower the better)

      < 1,000 = PERFECT

      allintitle:"keyword" < 500
      allinurl:"keyword" < 500
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      • Profile picture of the author grafic
        Originally Posted by capitalalchemy View Post

        Hi lutherlars,

        A good rule of thumb that I follow is:

        "keyword in quotes" total competition < 10,000 - 20,000 (the lower the better)

        < 1,000 = PERFECT

        allintitle:"keyword" < 500
        allinurl:"keyword" < 500

        Nice simple rule of thumb that... I like it. especially with the allintitle and allinurl bit
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      • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
        Am confused here:
        using the quotes surrounding keyword phrase, what would an example of a dog related term that has under 10,000 competing results be?
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        • Profile picture of the author capitalalchemy
          That I can't tell you. That would be phase 1, detailed keyword research.

          I take as much time on this as possible, because I don't want to work any harder than I absolutely have to. I'm not lazy, but I have also spent thousands of hours trying to get a site ranking for high competition keywords.

          Sometimes that's payed off, but then I look at all of the money I could have been making if I had just done phase 1 patiently. It can mean

          a: this is too much for me at this time
          b: this will give me free time to also work on other things shortly

          Some people use excel and make a spread sheet.

          I actually use notepad and make a detailed list of the keywords, all intitle, allinurl, # of competing websites.

          From there and after you have settled on some keywords, you could also make a detailed list of the top 10 search results NOT in quotes.

          This would include a detailed look at what SEO factors each of those pages are using, how many back links, how many are PR 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc

          Then this gives you a pretty good idea of what you would need to do to rank.

          Dog obedience training 9,900/5,400 searches
          1,540,000 results
          allintitle:241,000
          allinurl:175,000

          Given the number of searches in comparison to the fact that it is extremely competitive - I wouldn't go after it.

          But something like "dog training collars reviews" is still a little competitive, but gets an OK amount of traffic, and it's a buyer keyword. People are looking to buy dog collars and they are looking for reviews about them.
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  • Profile picture of the author grafic
    Chris is right,

    You can use the Google keyword tool (which isn't bad at all these days)
    Or even Market Samurai (my favorite) or Traffic Travis.

    They all get their results from the same place I believe but you get a different slant on things by using several. For me it seems to give me reassurance and an overall global picture of the niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author victor9011
    The number of results doesn't matter very much. It the number of backlinks that counts.
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  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    Awesome, thanks, will take more time to do proper keyword research
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  • Profile picture of the author lutherlars
    So does the results given by WordTracker represent daily search totals or monthly? For example, the keyword dog gets 32,000 searches. Is this daily? Thanks.
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