Keyword research is fun. It allows you to enter the minds of the search engine users and created contents or posts to fit their needs. The only problem is it’s hard to do it properly. You need to know tools and understand the principles of keyword research well before you even started. Even then you might not reach the level of success that you aim for. But, in the end, we just can’t ignore its importance as the first step towards optimizing our site or blog for better search engine ranking. These are the 5 perpetual laws when doing search engine keyword research.
1. Use Keyword Research Tools
There are a lot of keyword research tools out there. Some of them costs hundreds of dollars a month, while others are free. I recently purchased Keyword Elite 2.0, a keyword research tool that could be used for both SEO and PPC purposes. And I’m extremely happy with what it could do. It just simplify my keyword research process, you could find out more by clicking this link, Keyword Elite.
I don’t like to complicate my keyword research process by using too many tools. But the other two tools that I often use are Google Keyword Research tool, which I mentioned in my previous article (Top 6 Blogs Research Sites), and Traffic Travis. I’m using the Pro version of Traffic Travis which is around $99. But, the free version actually have all the features of the professional edition, with some sort of minor limitations (like smaller keyword limits, etc). I love Traffic Travis, although it’s not as powerful as Keyword Elite, simply because it runs faster, the simple and intuitive interface also helps a lot. And do I tell you it could do a whole lots of other stuff (other than keyword research)? Check it out here, Traffic Travis.
2. Choose the just enough
Search engine keyword research tools would reveal the number of searches per month for every keywords in their database. So for example, if you searched the term “lose weight fast” into the Google Keyword Tool, you might see that this particular keywords have about 673,000 average searches per month. “Wow that’s good right?” you told yourself. “Let’s start writing the article using “lose weight fast” keyword. Hold your horses!
As much as much 600,000+ searches is good, you would probably be slaughtered by your competitors. Always check the number competitors in Google first, by using quotation search on your keyword: “lose weight fast”. And you’ll discover that there are 1.5 million pages competing for that exact keywords. That is tough. Our challenge is to find keywords with less than 7,000 competing pages but have at least decent average searches per month (at least 1,000 searches/month). My principle is this, it’s always better to choose 10 keywords with 1,000 searches/month than 1 keyword with 10,000 searches/month. You’ll just have much less competitors. And those more long-tail keywords usually converts better.
3. Be very specific
When you do your keyword research, the more specific you are, the better. This is especially true when you are in a highly competitive marketplace, like the internet marketing niche, where everyone have at least understand the foundations of SEO (search engine optimization). Keyword research allows us to avoid facing the enemies (competing sites) head on and let us choose just a couple at a time. Specific keywords also increase conversion. If someone typed in “Samsung camera” into the search engine, they might just want to find some general information regarding what Samsung cameras are available. But when someone typed in “Samsung camera VX 1090”, they are usually searching for reviews. And, thus the chances of them buying from your site (after reading your review) is much higher.
4. Cut out to be engaging
This might sounds a tad contradictory to my previous points which is to be very specific. But, you have to make sure that even when your keywords are specific, it should be able to be shaped into a compelling article. Remember that it’s not the search engine bot who would read your article, but your readers and visitors. So please don’t choose something keywords like “lose weight oprah super fantastic result”. It might have a high number of searches per month and with a very little number of competing pages. But come on, how are you supposed to write a proper article or blog post with that title?
5. Highly relevant
Make sure that the keywords you are targeting is highly relevant to your site. I mean, there’s no use of targeting those people from dog training niche when you are offering a weight loss products. You could also use Microsoft Online Commercial Intention tool to check if your keywords are buyers’ keywords (the higher the number, the higher the commercial intention). Don’t forget to optimize your articles using the keywords you have chosen by putting the keywords in the title tag of your article and doing other other on-page optimizations. Check out my 8 Steps to High Search Engine Rankings to know more about search engine optimization.
These are the 5 laws that you should follow when doing search engine keyword research, no matter what niche or market you are in. Feel free to leave comments or tweet it if you like it.
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Another great post Andi. I fell victim to being wowed by all the searches without looking at the competition and couldn’t figure out where I went wrong for a long time. I finally figured it out but I wish I would have read this article back then and saved myself some headaches.
Just out of curiosity, what keywords would you pick for a blog about making blogs? Or am I asking for secret information?
All the best,
~R.W.
Ey RW,
That really depends. There are too many keywords that you could use on making money with blogging, from simply “make money blogging” to like “get more traffic to your blog”, etc. Just remember to choose a more long tail keywords (3 or more words) since they usually have less competitors and a lot of them still have decent searches/month.
As I’ve written in my article, use Google Keyword Tool to check it. Hope this helps. Cheers.