Am I doing keyword research wrong?

6 replies
  • SEO
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I just use the google keyword tool......the part I'm wondering about is whether I should I have "broad" or "exact" selected under "match type" when looking for keywords I want to optimize for.

I found a keyword that had 10,000 monthly searches, but only had 9 competing sites under a search in quotes. I was pretty excited about this.......and now I'm wondering if it's not a big deal, being that I had "broad" selected in the keyword tool? Thanks for any input.
#keyword #research #wrong
  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi newBum76,

    Never use the "broad" setting for the type of research you are doing. You want to use "exact" instead.

    I found a keyword that had 10,000 monthly searches, but only had 9 competing sites under a search in quotes.
    When you "search in quotes" the number of results is not "sites" it's pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author newBum76
      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Hi newBum76,

      Never use the "broad" setting for the type of research you are doing. You want to use "exact" instead.



      When you "search in quotes" the number of results is not "sites" it's pages.
      Well I'm a little bummed because I spent all day coming up with what I thought was a killer list of keywords.........but thankful that I caught this so I don't do it anymore and waste time building pages and writing articles for the wrong ones, thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author kkchoon
    Use exact match and allintitle, broad match tell you nothing...
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    • Profile picture of the author dle45
      exact match will tell you how many people search that exact phrase.

      You may be surprised because many people just take the broad and try to run a campaign solely on that.

      like the post above me stated....in search use allintitle:keyword
      to see how many competing pages there are listed.

      Go for the long tail....3 words are great.

      Just keep digging down....its almost like a game at times.
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  • Profile picture of the author janvera
    When it comes to broad matches you can't even be too sure as to what Google considers "broad", so be careful. Always go for exact matches and terms.
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    EVEN using the exact match, I take it with a grain of salt.

    The GKT data looks poisoned. Sometimes it's 10.000 searches per month (exact match), you get #1 and #2 and you get 30 visits per day. Then you have this keyword, 1600 searches per month (exact match), just a couple longtails... you get #2 and you receive 200 visits per day.

    So Yeah, Google Keyword Tool? Poisoned like a fish in a garbage river.

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