help picking keywords for my niche

Once upon a time, I was probably one of those 360 searches.

A good keyword is probably "withdrawl". That is what people want to know because that is where the "hooked feeling" comes from. Withdrawl of vicadin cold turkey can be similar to heroin. The people you are targeting are the ones who want to know what to do about the physical withdrawl symptoms and what they can do to stop them through OTC medicines, etc.

i think i´d type in:
get rid of painkillers
rid of painkillers
no more painkillers

something like that - maybe use just painkillers or no painkillers in market samurai to figure what people are searching for and then go from there

you can go with buying keywords, consider the search volume as well. buying keywords are keywords with emotions there, like how to quickly YOUR NICHE, cheap YOUR NICHE, how to solve YOUR NICHE. etc

Hi, I don't suggest you as a newbie to start with something hard like SEO. Bettert you should start with easier marketing methods which will help you to determinate your niche keywords. As well as it will help to determine what the conversation rate of your website is. So you will be able to know which keywords will convert best. Then you can move to SEO. Need more info, contact me.

newmarket is correct about SEO not being easy for beginner. But the problem is, alternatives (PPC, PPV, etc.) aren't all that easy for a beginner either, especially if you don't have enough seed money.. If you do, latter could certainly be a smarter choice.

You mentioned you have a good book about painpill addiction that you want to promote. Well, since it's a product of your own, you COULD find some affiliates who'd do all the marketing work for you. Then when you have some money from sales, you could hire a SEO or PPC expert to design full fledged campaigns for you.

Anyway, to answer your original question.. I like newbiemarketer and monja's ideas too. Another way of identifying best keywords in your case could be Yahoo Answers; search and see what maximum people are asking.. Are they asking withdrawal, symptoms "break painkiller addiction", etc.

Perhaps also try searching "(specific painkiller's name)" + "addiction", and create new blog posts targeting JUST one painkiller's keyword.. put some useful content & direct to your sales page, etc... This may even help pre-sell and establish trust.

Best of luck!

Hi Rocky
Unfortunately MS shows that keyword to be a loser, it gets ZERO results when MS is set to exact match (Which is what you want).
Also used it as a seed and there are only 4 related KW's which get any worthwhile traffic.
There probably are better keywords for this niche but more research needs to be done.

FYI - Noblesamurai.com has excellent tuts/videos explaining the ins and outs of KW research, check it out.

Theo

Rocky - you are asking EXACTLY the correct questions.

You have what is potentially a very important and highly marketable topic and yes, the sooner you get a handle on the keywords that trigger both demand and sales, the better your business will be.

What I do for new businesses we launch is:

1. I go through the top Google searches and discussion forums to collect the terms that I see ranking highly - in this case terms like "painkiller addiction", "painkiller detox"... - this will lead to dozens of high-level keyword 1-3 word keyword phrases

2. I would then go through either Keyword Suggestion Tool or Market Samurai and look to extend the trees and get a feel for demand as well as competitive level and ad spending. From this list of possibly 1000's of keyword phrases, I target the top 20-30 (to start with) based on mix of demand >1000, evidence of ad spending and where I have a shot at ranking in the first 10 positions.

3. Your next step is to "test" those keywords - you can either do this via paid ads (Adwords, MSN and/or Facebook) which will give you fairly quick intelligence but at a price, or you can create content around each keyword and wait a few days/weeks to see the response. I often do the latter given that I typically want content to bring in traffic around those keywords anyway, so I go ahead. That content is typically a mix of articles, blog posts, and videos that link back to content on my page.

4. I then look very closely at stats - my cpanel stats, Google Analytics to see what is happening both in terms of traffic and conversions.

From all of this you get a good handle on which keywords are best for you in terms of ROI

Jeff

You can download Market Samurai and use it for free for 12 days I think. They have excellent tutorial videos that should take you a few hours to master. Once you have mastered their keyword research tools that include, competition, relevancy, traffic you will answer your own questions.

To say that newcomers should leave SEO is poor in my opinion. It's not so hard provided you use the right resources. Unless you have expendable income of paid advertising.

My tip is that despite what I've just said you should not make SEO your only focus but keep it as part of your attack plan to make money online. I've ranked sites/pages on page one many times but that counts for little unless you know all the other bits and pieces that go along with the KW research.

I have tons of good stuff on KW research that might help you out but none better than MSamurai.

Go for it, you can have the basic skills in no time at all.

Marcus Rockey

You can always use the google keyword tool, its free and you can search for keywords that best fit and has potential in your niche.

My advice is to not get too hung up about keyword research. The problem with relying on traffic from Google - is they can change their algorithm any time they want, which can kill your traffic overnight.

If you work on free methods, you have more control - and will never be affected by Google.