For a rule of thumb, I pay attention to anything that gets 1000+ searches a month for affiliate marketing. However, that number can be significantly less if the keyword phrase has a really strong commercial intent...

For Adsense, I will take a keyword that gets 50 searches a month if the phrase itself is fairly easy to dominate.

If you want to build a profitable business, the count is just one thing.

You should think about the searcher you are targeting; Basically, search marketing keywords can be categorized into 3 phases:
1. Research Keyword
2. Solution Keyword
3. Buying Keyword

#1. During research phase, the searchers are looking for an answer / solution, and there are many solutions to a problem, they don't necessary buy from your recommendation. You can capture them into the list, follow up and build relationship before they will start to trust you and your recommendation. Example: Computer Slow

#2. During this phase, they already identify the solution, you are easier to recommend product as they already "choose the solution". Example: Registry Cleaner Reviews, Download Regcure

#3. Buying keywords, this is the least people searching keyword, but also the most profitable keywords. If the searcher reach your site, you can easily convert them into buyer! Example: Recure Review, Buy Regcure, Regcure Discount...

The count is relative, you should focus on designing your page and content to convert the visitors.

For reference, I like a keyword with 10~ 20 searches / day, especially buying keywords, I will try to rank for all buying keywords even the search count is low.

- To your success!
- Kok Choon

Hello,

I wrote an article that ran in the Associateprograms's newsletter (of Allan Gardyne fame) about how I do keyword selection, especially as it pertains to the long tail. I won't post the link here to that article since that might violate the rules of this forum, but if you go to Allan's site you can read it for free. Just search his site for "One thing many affiliates get wrong."

But I will say this here. I think the actual search demand "minimum" you would go after depends a lot on the type of marketing you do. If you are doing PPC, then this sort of question becomes more important because you need to make sure the added work involved of setting up tightly focussed landing pages that converts the traffic is worth it.

In fact, the guys who put out the product commission blueprinte state that they believe the days of huge keyword campaigns are over.

When I saw that, I thought "Well, that may be true for PPC, but it's not true for all types of Internet marketing."

For example, when it comes to article marketing (free traffic), I think it makes a ton of sense to create massive keyword lists and go after long tail keywords with very low search demand even though you'd never use these keywords if you were doing PPC.

I don't have a minimum demand, believe it or not. If the keyword is tightly focussed, I don't care if it only gets 2 searches a day, it's still worth doing it the article marketing way (and profitable).

Regards,
Dan Ho

I'm going to approach this different although the information already provided is excellent.

First, I never look at searches or counts. What I focus on is, "Will this be a key phrase my target market would type in?"

Second, the problem with this is in order for me to answer that question I must understand who I am targeting. Hence, where most people drop the ball.

Third, all keyword tools are just guides. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Finally, and this is slightly different from the norm, I focus on the words and phrases my target market uses then find phrases that use those words regardless of the search count. Why? Because they used them and will continue to use them.

Of course it has to be buying key phrases but I also target browsing and researching key phrases too! Keep in mind I'm not talking about PPC but organic search traffic. PPC will require you to target higher searched key phrases your target market would use.

Now the next question is, "how do you convert that targeted traffic into customers?"

I heard that you should try to find a search time with the highest amount of searches but the lowest competition or one that has little to no green in the bar. Someone told me to get indexed faster, you should use low competition words with 100 searches or less because the advertisers doesn't want to use those words. it works

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Hope that helps!