I have found Keyword Discovery is useful, but quite expensive. There are many users. Most of the free tools are not that great. Word tracker is also a favorite of mine. The key is to find common phrases that have less than 100,000 in competition.

Of these focus on those that have over 1000 searches per month. I need approx 100 searches to make the keyword worthwhile, but instead of creating a separate page for each keyword I can dump several similar ones into one page.

To me, the number of competing sites isn't actually relevant.

I'm competing with only the top 5 of them. If I can't reasonably foresee getting a site in the top half of the first page, I won't compete.

So all that matters to me is the quality of the SEO of those top few sites. Those are my only real competitors.

I'd rather compete with 50,000,000 others of whom the top 5 sites include "nothing special" and "article directory articles" and so on, than compete with 5,000 sites of which the whole of the first page (as can happen) comprises age-old, high-PR authority sites each with hundreds of thousands of backlinks from other high-quality, well-ranked sites, because I've no chance against that.

In short, I'm competing with about 5 sites, either way, and it makes absolutely no difference to me whether there are 4,995 more sites after them, or 49,999,995 more.

Just my perspective.

Let's say you were trying to teach a newbie about keyword research and using Google Adwords Keyword tool? Would you recommend a Global Monthly Search result with more than 1,000 and no more than 30,000 as well as less than 50,000 competing site by doing a broad keyword search?

That's absolutely right. But I'm thinking back to the first time I was shown about keyword research and that was what I was taught. I have since become familiar with studying the top 10 results to see if I can outrank them, but I am trying to find a way to tell a complete newbie the easiest way to find a keyword that they will be able to hopefully rank #1 with.

One thing that might help you understand the top sites is to check out cherry picker by Ryan Deiss. This is a free download which is awesome and helps you see what the competition looks like for the top 10, 20, and 30 sites. That way you can explain to a newbie that if they want to be at the top of the heap for a specific keyword, here is your competition.

Alexa is right, it's not about how many results are returned but by how strong the first page competition is.

If the average pagerank of sites in the first page is 4 and up it will usually take you a lot of effort to get there...

Also, it's quite hard to find keywords with around 100,000 results these days. Unless you are looking at keywords that are basically worthless.

Omar

I just realized I forgot to mention this keyword research is for finding a domain name.

Honestly, if I'm so passionate about a particular niche that I think I have something "special" to offer to the targeted market, I ignore the competition or force them to be on the defensive side.

I attack them. I don't wait for them to attack me first. How?

I start doing more of what they are doing right and then add my own touch of "specialty" or "uniqueness" to it.

And I will never stop until I win.

In my experience, over-analysis has made me lose some golden opportunities to have a major breakthrough online.

These days I act more and analyze less. I react more and research less. Why?

There are many myths in this whole business.

Well I guess as it has already been explain and I do agree to that the quality of the keywords matters as much as the number of searches it gets per month. I think I will go after key words that are more valuable with less competition or with a beatable competition. I would not go after a keyword that has a few giants that have already gotten hold of it. Because that will be wasting my time. But I guess you can always try.

I have played in niches with over 500,000 competing sites where the phrases I was interested in had very few backlinks, from spammy looking sites, and their PR was 0 to 1.

I'll have to agree with Alexa and the other troops. Numbers are irrelevant. I find keywords I'm interested in using Market Samurai, run them through the competition module, get an idea about the quality of their backlinks, and then make a decision whether to pursue the niche or not.

Look at it this way, a niche with 3 to 5 article directories on the first page with low numbers of backlinks on a phrase you are interested in with decent traffic should have you licking your lips, rubbing your hands, and starting to type.

Very interesting information from both Alexa and Barry so thanks for that!

Also good point King!

Much appreciated. It's great to hear the thoughts from all kinds of different people, because by doing this we all allow ourselves to be involved in much broader tests in the spectrum of internet marketing which increase our chances of being more successful!

If you believe someone posts a bad tip or a bad keyword method, that's great because that being said, you have to then bare it in mind that those are some of the methods used by your competition and then at the same time, you will have the methods you agree with and it allows you to create your whole perception of what internet marketing is.

This is one of the things that has brought me to internet marketing, you don't have to have some secret recipe, it's more about perception, thoughts and intuitions the way I see it. I'll be able to tell you what I really think after some time though

Regards,
Ross.

I first look at how many daily exact searches the keywords get. If they are above 100 then I will consider going for them. Then I use a keyword tool to see how many back links the first 10 sites on google have that are ranking for the keywords. I then check out the quality of these back links (Are they from high PR pages or low ones). If I think I can outrank these sites I will go for it by finding out what back links they have and then trying to get links from them too.

while reading thru this thread, i am thinking that if we skip the keyword search (in respect of the search volume), just typing our target keyword or phrase into google search engine, then check the top X pages, to see how they do the seo such as titles, discription, domain name [emd or not], quality of bachlinks and contents, the only thing i need to do is just to do 1 more step in any aspects than they do, then should i outrank this site?
the reason why i want skip the keyword research stage, is that i am currently choked by it... making no improvement or progress

A good keyword is one that your target market is searching for regularly. An even better keyword is one that’s not only searched for regularly, there’s also very little competition in the search engines. That means you have a good chance of ranking well for that keyword.

i am using word tracker for keyword research. it shows search volume of keywords country wise. so better keyword research can give you better outputs.

keywords with low competition and high search volume are really good, you can try these type of keywords

Keyword research is analysis of keyword it is actual search term that peoples enter into search engine. It is very important for a on page optimization. You can use Google Adword for a keyword research.

Thanks for the useful thread...

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