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Please Help Me Choose My Keywords

by Supermoves
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I just wanted to get some keyword experience from people who have been doing this awhile (I havent!).

My site is news related to U.S. Defense and Intelligence. All of the below keywords have "low" competition, according to Google's keyword tool. Here are the words Im considering and how many monthly searches they each have. I have put an asterisk next to the ones I am currently using.

*Military Intelligence 90k monthly searches
*Defense News 90k monthly searches
*National Defense 450k monthly searches
* Iran News 450k monthly searches
*Syria News 1 million monthly searches
*Libya News 450k monthly searches
Iran 13.6 million monthly searches
Syria 7.4 million monthly searches
Libya 6.1 million monthly searches
Army 30.4 million monthly searches
Military 20.4 million monthly searches
Defence 13.6 million monthly searches

I know that a smaller niche is better, but are the keywords Im currently going after TOO small? Especially when the major keywords are so low in competition?

Any advice, including new keywords is GREATLY appreciated!
#choose #keywords
  • Profile picture of the author Blue445nm
    Originally Posted by Supermoves View Post

    I just wanted to get some keyword experience from people who have been doing this awhile (I havent!).

    My site is news related to U.S. Defense and Intelligence. All of the below keywords have "low" competition, according to Google's keyword tool. Here are the words Im considering and how many monthly searches they each have. I have put an asterisk next to the ones I am currently using.

    *Military Intelligence 90k monthly searches
    *Defense News 90k monthly searches
    *National Defense 450k monthly searches
    * Iran News 450k monthly searches
    *Syria News 1 million monthly searches
    *Libya News 450k monthly searches
    Iran 13.6 million monthly searches
    Syria 7.4 million monthly searches
    Libya 6.1 million monthly searches
    Army 30.4 million monthly searches
    Military 20.4 million monthly searches
    Defence 13.6 million monthly searches

    I know that a smaller niche is better, but are the keywords Im currently going after TOO small? Especially when the major keywords are so low in competition?

    Any advice, including new keywords is GREATLY appreciated!
    Make sure to set searching to exact because MT is actually ~2k searches
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    • Profile picture of the author Supermoves
      Sorry, what is MT?
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      • Profile picture of the author Blue445nm
        Originally Posted by Supermoves View Post

        Sorry, what is MT?
        Oh sorry I meant MI - Military Intelligence; it gets only ~2k searches a month.

        Use "Exact Search" in the keyword tool instead of "Broad" to avoid screwing yourself over
        Signature

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        • Profile picture of the author Supermoves
          Fabulous, Im sure that will lower everything..haha!

          What is acceptable anyway? Should I even be trying for keywords that get ~100k searches? What about ~500k?

          I have now used the keywords tool to look at the keywords for some of the sites that I pull my news from. 90% of them have 50 keywords that get no more than 50-100 searches per month??!!
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  • Profile picture of the author gPlayer
    "Defense News"
    Its easy to rank.
    What is your domain?
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  • Profile picture of the author options
    google keyword tool is for adwords users, the competition your seeing is for adwords not the competition for organic rankings.
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  • Profile picture of the author Supermoves
    My domain is The Intelligence News | Defense News | Military Intelligence

    Thanks for the tip about Adwords competition vs organic competition. Any free tools to measure organic search competition?
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  • Profile picture of the author Supermoves
    I know some of you are just sitting around with nothing to...just waiting to help me choose the right keywords :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author TonyTrevor
    Originally Posted by Supermoves View Post

    I just wanted to get some keyword experience from people who have been doing this awhile (I havent!).

    My site is news related to U.S. Defense and Intelligence. All of the below keywords have "low" competition, according to Google's keyword tool. Here are the words Im considering and how many monthly searches they each have. I have put an asterisk next to the ones I am currently using.

    *Military Intelligence 90k monthly searches
    *Defense News 90k monthly searches
    *National Defense 450k monthly searches
    * Iran News 450k monthly searches
    *Syria News 1 million monthly searches
    *Libya News 450k monthly searches
    Iran 13.6 million monthly searches
    Syria 7.4 million monthly searches
    Libya 6.1 million monthly searches
    Army 30.4 million monthly searches
    Military 20.4 million monthly searches
    Defence 13.6 million monthly searches

    I know that a smaller niche is better, but are the keywords Im currently going after TOO small? Especially when the major keywords are so low in competition?

    Any advice, including new keywords is GREATLY appreciated!
    +1 for :
    Military 20.4 million monthly searches
    Defence 13.6 million monthly searches
    Signature

    My contact: antony.trevor@gmail.com

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  • Profile picture of the author scottiek
    Hmmm....nice little news site. Visting it here were my first impressions (and maybe how an average searcher would search):

    war news
    middle east war news
    libya war news
    war on terror news

    ~ just my quick two cents. Hope that helps.
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    ---> I run SERPs.com. Run SEO experiments and prove your SEO work.

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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    There's some very stiff competition there for most of your keywords. Out of the ones you listed, Libya News is the "easiest".

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  • Profile picture of the author Supermoves
    Thanks for all the help guys. Even though there is some competition with deep pockets for some of my keywords, there are not very many. For example, "Army" obviously the US Army and National Guard have more money than me, but I dont mind being ranked 5th under their sites. Maybe I should mind?

    Also, to Scottiek, thanks for the keyword help. Im not sure those keywords describe what my site is about, but if thats what gets the traffic, I will consider it!
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