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"GURUS" and their keyword research process

by michael_nguyen
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a bone to pick here...

"put your keywords in quotes..."

Anyone who knows squat about keyword research knows that is NOT the correct method (or at least IMO anyway) and if you're are using this method, you're probably throwing a lot of potential keywords away or just limiting yourself.

What really bothers me is that when these software makers have options that might say "competing pages" (keywords in quotes) when in reality this doesn't mean anything. If anything this just sound logical to a newbie that doesn't know anything about SEO.

An example I saw on video was that the guy was using GKT and actually used broad match type for keyword research and he is a guy that lots of people respect in this forum. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Another thing I see is that they guys will build their own keyword research tool that supposedly access GKT but then throw out funny numbers. I don't care how good at software developing you are, but what you don't do is try to re engineer the numbers to make it look good. Yes you might be able to give average search volume per day but / 30 but it will only apply to last month. It doesn't even take into account the search trend.

For an advanced marketer you will most likely know that GKT is only an estimate and will give wild numbers but they are still good bench marks.

If you want "real" numbers do not rely too much on third party software.

Doing things manually will give you the most accurate numbers. GKT + SEOquake + (optional adwords account) is all you need.

I'm not saying I don't use software but when I do use it, I only use it to collect info such as backlinks, title tags, what the top 10 are etc traffic travis and market samurai are excellent for this.

MicroNicheFinder is another good tool but the SOC option is not always correct. I'm starting to notice that the keyword that MNF says are green are probably based on "competing pages"....NO GOOD

MNF gave me red last time but I ignored it and now my site is on first page of Google, 2nd spot for a few days ago.

I think I trust my manual keyword research better than MNF or MS.

One question you need to ask yourself, if you're relying your decisions on software, what will you do when it fails? Where do you stand?

Rant over
#gurus #keyword #process #research
  • Profile picture of the author mikkosant
    Manual keyword research is the best way to go. Use exact match in the gkt. All that quote nonsense is just rubbish. I see people boasting about their special seo wso's and show some 6 keyword long word with "look at that! 10,000,000 competitors and I'm on the first page! Get my product now......please"

    If you study the results long enough, you can pretty much tell how difficult it will be to rank by looking at the first few pages of results.

    Also:

    allintitle:
    and
    allinanchor:

    Can really help to find out who the competitors are

    Thanks for the rant, KW Research is so crucial, yet so many people get it totally wrong.

    Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author somedevil
    The thing is, competing pages doesn't seem like an ideal way to judge a good niche.
    in fact shouldn;t many competing pages mean that the niche is actually a selling niche ??

    Now, correct me if i am wrong but isn't analyzing the first page results of a google search for optimization the better way to figure out competition in a niche ?

    isn;t PR, on page optimisation and backlinks more important ?

    cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author michael_nguyen
    So out of 100 views no one has opinions? Either you don't understand what I'm saying our your research process is superior to mine.

    So let me ask you this, if you use software, do you actually care about the "competing pages" column? If yes and why?

    Discuss now because I think everyone can learn something here.
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    • Profile picture of the author Han Fan
      Mike,

      Will you shine the light, how do you manually do the Keyword research by using GKT + Seo quake...

      an example would be great..

      many thanks in advance

      Han


      Originally Posted by michael_nguyen View Post

      So out of 100 views no one has opinions? Either you don't understand what I'm saying our your research process is superior to mine.

      So let me ask you this, if you use software, do you actually care about the "competing pages" column? If yes and why?

      Discuss now because I think everyone can learn something here.
      PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait...wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...
      [IMG]chrome://seoquake/content/skin/close.gif[/IMG]
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      • Profile picture of the author michael_nguyen
        Ok pick your keyword and throw it in to

        GKT
        Select country
        Search keyword
        Look at local search volume
        Search volume trends
        Look at Estimated Avg. CPC bar and see if displays green (at least full bar)

        Done

        Install seo quake and set the plugin so that it only display Yahoo backlinks an PR as they are most important. LD is not important as L.

        Look at backlink number and decide if you can rank above it.

        Cool?
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        • Profile picture of the author butters
          Originally Posted by michael_nguyen View Post

          Ok pick your keyword and throw it in to

          GKT
          Select country
          Search keyword
          Look at local search volume
          Search volume trends
          Look at Estimated Avg. CPC bar and see if displays green (at least full bar)

          Done

          Install seo quake and set the plugin so that it only display Yahoo backlinks an PR as they are most important. LD is not important as L.

          Look at backlink number and decide if you can rank above it.

          Cool?
          No idea, I don't use seo quake :p or probably the tools you use, I said how I do it above, if it is the same as that, just translated into your programs, then cool .
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  • Profile picture of the author arttse
    "MicroNicheFinder is another good tool but the SOC option is not always correct. I'm starting to notice that the keyword that MNF says are green are probably based on "competing pages"....NO GOOD"

    That is incorrect. You may want to research it a bit more.
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    • Profile picture of the author butters
      Are you saying don't trust SOC (the amount of competing pages), if so, I agree with that. If your saying other stuff, I didn't get it , then again, I am on a slight hangover.
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      • Profile picture of the author michael_nguyen
        Originally Posted by butters View Post

        Are you saying don't trust SOC (the amount of competing pages), if so, I agree with that. If your saying other stuff, I didn't get it , then again, I am on a slight hangover.
        Im not saying that. What I'm saying is that MNF works up to a point but then past a certain number (which I don't know) SOC goes wrong.

        Eg
        if it gives a green, then most of the time I can rank of first page

        if it gives a red, the it means hard right? Well I ignored it and just went ahead and my site is ranking on first page.

        What I'm saying software is not always right. Another example is traffic travis saying its difficult when the results have only 10 backlinks and below.
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        • Profile picture of the author butters
          Ah ok... I'll go through how I do my keyword research, put nice and simple though .

          -Find a market

          -Start out with a broad keyword (eg weight loss)

          -Use a keyword tool to drill it down (find a longer tail keyword)

          -Put traffic on exact (from my experience I have accepted that it is fairly good estimate (google keyword tool + market samurai).)

          -Find the keyword which I think looks good

          -Plug that keyword into Market Samurai (Basically checking the on site seo of the top 10 and the amount of backlinks they have, domain age etc... Most SEO factors basically.)

          -If they have BL's, look at the quality of them

          -Take a look at the sites which may be competition

          -Carry on with market research...

          That is my keyword research summed up in a little nut shell . I don't focus on how many pages there are for the search term, all I look at is the top 10. You can test the traffic with adwords, I have done that before and I some times do it but I look at the estimated traffic then run the test if I feel that it is needed.

          Anyway, hope it helps
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    • Profile picture of the author michael_nguyen
      Originally Posted by arttse View Post

      "MicroNicheFinder is another good tool but the SOC option is not always correct. I'm starting to notice that the keyword that MNF says are green are probably based on "competing pages"....NO GOOD"

      That is incorrect. You may want to research it a bit more.
      Care to explain?
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  • Profile picture of the author Spencer Haws
    Okay, you are 100% right that looking at competing pages is irrelevant. Judging how difficult it is to rank in the top 10 of Google has absolutely nothing to do with how many websites mention your keyword on their site (which is what putting your keyword in quotes shows).

    I dont use Micro Niche Finder, but I do believe I know what the SOC means (which shows red and green). This stand for Strength of Competition and is the Number of websites that have backlinks pointing to them with the chosen keyword as the link text. This is also a faulty way to judge the strength of competition. It might be a good way to narrow things down. But if the SOC is 50 for example, this means only 50 websites have backlinks pointing to them with your keyword as the link text. Anything under 500 or so is usually considered a weak niche. I dont know when MNF goes green, but I bet its close to 500.

    However, just because only 50 websites are actively trying to rank for a keyword tells you nothing about how difficult it is to break into the top 10. The best way to tell?? Look at the top ten and make a decision based on backlinks, PR, Title, and other SEO factors...

    You are absolutely right that most people do keyword research wrong. If they are relying on MNF to make decisions for them, they are leaving a TON of money on the table.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    An example I saw on video was that the guy was using GKT and actually used broad match type for keyword research and he is a guy that lots of people respect in this forum. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
    Because many of these 'gurus' are failures and are only good at pitching dreams to newbies and the desperate. I doubt many of them could point to a site of their own that actually ranks well for a competitive keyword.
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    I'm all about that bass.

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  • Profile picture of the author WealthWithin
    I'm yet to find a keyword research software that does what I need.

    Which is analyzing top few pages. (maybe I should build one myself )

    MNF SOC is totally misleading. I've found better results with doing it manually using GAKT.

    And BTW, 'gurus' don't do keyword research. They get others to do it for them.
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