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Keyword Research Questions?

by AnthonyWilson
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am going through various ebooks and videos about keyword research, which have been most helpful but I have some questions that the warriors maybe able to answer.

So far I have used The Free Google External Keyword Tool and The Free Word Tracker Tool. I understand the differences and all about broad match and exact match searches.


Question 1.

When selecting a keyword using the Google Tool, what is the minimum number of Global Monthly Searches you would need before considering that keyword as a possible. If I have read correctly am led to beleive at least 3,000 per month though this seems to be using the broad match search. Do you agree and what figure would you suggest if performing an exact match search.

If using Word Tracker I believe this returns the exact match. If you use Word Tracker what is the minimum daily search volume you would consider before considering using a keyword?

Question 2.

Lets suppose we have a keyword and wish to assess the competition. First step, type the keyword in quotations into Google to see how many results there are. How many results is too many? I understand we can go deeper by using intitle: and also making an assessment of the competiting sites back links. But as a general rule how many results from the initial search would be too many?

Thank you
#keyword #questions #research #word tracker #wordtracker
  • Profile picture of the author bwj292
    Hi Anthony

    The first question is quite difficult to answer, whilst you have to concentrate on the search volume to some degree this shouldn't be your primary deciding factor in whether or not you conisder to persue a keyword. There are many keywords out there which get quite small amounts of traffic but have NO COMPETITION, ARE LONGTAIL and which it would be very easy to rank in the top 5 within a VERY short period of time. If these keywords are very commercial and are what I would call 'BUYING' keywords then you are more likely to get a conversion and therefore make money.

    The 3,000 seems to be where people head for with broad match, broad match is something which gives you an overview of the potential traffic your site could achieve in the future. I start with broad match for the overall market and drill down with phrase match and finally exact.

    Be careful of following search volume, a keyword may get you a huge amount of traffic but if people searching with that keyword do not have commercial intent then the traffic is pointless.

    For question to, if I were building a site in a niche market I would look at the top 10-20 listings for the search competition and look at those websites in detail to see if it's possible for me to rank above them and how easy/hard it would be. This is where you will start to look at factors like:

    OFF PAGE FACTORS
    - Page Rank - LOOK AT FIRST
    - Number of Backlinks
    - Site Age

    ON PAGE FACTORS
    - In Title
    - In Anchor
    - In URL
    - In the First 50 Words Of Page Content

    I hope this helps.
    Ben
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    • Profile picture of the author AnthonyWilson
      Thanks for that Ben.

      I guess keyword research is as much an art as an exact science.

      IF when performing the Google search with the keyword in quotations, it returned over say half a million sites would you think that too many or would you still look at the first ten results and assess their strengths.
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      • Profile picture of the author bwj292
        Absolutely, I spent so long trying to understand keyword research as an exact science, I have a science based degree and I like structu, I like knowing that A will always lead to Z. Unfortunately this isn't the case with keyword research.

        In that case where you have over 500,000 results it MAY be too many to compete with but again I would still look at the strength of compeition before movig on. Sometimes you will find that your site is going to target that segment of the market far better than any of the top 20 competitors, in which case you can achieve rankings for this alone.

        There are some great tools which will allow you to analyse competition quite quickly and easily like the SEO for firefox addon plus there is also a module within Traffic Travis (FREE Tool) which will produce a report with the main on page and off page factors of the top 20 sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author jazbo
    A lot of what is involved in keyword research is intuition and knowing your niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ritz100
    Just a quick addition and a couple of rules I follow when looking for a keyword niche

    1) I always look for well searched (80 per day min) long tail keywords
    2) I never use a keyword if, on exact match, it shows more than 40,000 results
    3) Choose niches where a long term relationship can be built with the client

    Hope some of these help
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    • Profile picture of the author butters
      Keyword research will become easier I find it quite easy now to get a niche but now I got to learn traffic.

      3000 a month is a good number for a small targeted niche, remember, it doesn't matter if there are a billion pages in google. If the top 20-30 are not optimized for your keyword then you will get the top position once you get BL's
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      • Profile picture of the author AnthonyWilson
        Thanks to all those who have replied above.

        So far I conclude...

        Choosing your initial keywords is an intuitive process, where you have to put yourself in the mind of a potential customer and come up with "commercially viable" keywords.

        Then if putting the keyword into the Google External Keyword Tool you should be looking for 3,000+ Global Monthly Searches (broad match). Or 80 daily searches if using Word Tracker. It is worth noting that Word Tracker returns what could be considered "exact match" phrases - please correct me if I am wrong.

        Then take a qualifying keyword and put it in the Google search engine "in quotations".

        At this point the fewer results the better, but there still seems to be no real concensus on how many results is to many (Ritz100 suggested 40,000).

        Rather it is perhaps better to research the first ten results and consider their PR (Page Rank), what they have done to optimise their site and investigate how many and back-links they have.

        I am aware of several pieces of software which can do this but BWJ292 has suggested I take a look at Traffic Travis. Thank you Ben, it seems very interesting.

        I would welcome any further advice.
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