About This Book

The intention of this book is to help you find low competition and high profitable keywords and accurately measure true values of a keyword.

 

Let us start!

There are many free and paid keyword research tools available but I do not completely rely on the data provided by these tools. The data provided by these tools are not accurate. They use data from meta search engines.

Do not

1. Gather keywords using a free or paid keyword tool.
2. Check the search volume according to the keyword tool.
3. Check the competitiveness.
4. Define which keywords to use.

From wikipedia.org, a meta search engine “is a search engine that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source.”

From the definition, the “several other search engines” do not include Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

 

Meta search engines use data of 1.5% or less of the search market.

 

Most keyword research tools, free or paid, use meta search engines in their reports. With only 1.5% share of search market, the result is not as accurate as it should be.

I do not intend to say that these tools are completely useless. All I am saying is that the data provided by these free or paid tools are inaccurate because of the very little share of search engine market.
Google Keyword Suggestion Tool

I personally like Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. Among search engines, Google is one that is more open in how they treat websites.

 

You can find more news/information on Google search engine here http://www.mattcutts.com/blog.

 

We will be using this tool in our keyword selection methodology.

 

1. KEYWORD RESEARCH

 

Now let us start how to find out keywords in a particular niche. The goal is to find relatively high-search-volume, low-competition 'keyword phrase groups'.

 

1. Open a spreadsheet.

2. Using the common sense approach, brainstorm and write down all relevant keywords that are related to the product you’re selling including synonyms. For example, if your main keyword is “dog beds”, list other keywords also like “pet beds”.

3. Go to Google keyword suggestion tool and type in with the keywords from your spreadsheet. Make sure to select “Broad search', analyze the results.

Select the appropriate keywords by clicking the Add button at the right-side column. It is a bit tricky to select the keywords as nearly all results seem to be related to our products.

Just choose the key phrase that you think is closer to your niche and for which you can write content for your website.

 

Do not select, say, “discount on dog beds” if you don’t have or can't provide discount on your products.

Note: Approximate Search Volumeis not exactly the search made in
Google.com. According to Google, this column shows the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network.

1.A Google suggest

 

Go towww.google.com. Make sure that you open google.com and not in regional Google website like google.co.uk.

Google Suggest analyzes what you're typing into the search box
and offers relevant suggested search terms in real time. You can choose one of the suggested queries by moving up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

As you type, it’s giving you key phrases. You should see some key phrases that are not in our previous list like “dog beds for great danes.”

 

These are hidden keywords.

Play around with it by typing slowly and going alphabetical. Examples:
“dog beds a”
“dog beds ab”
“dog beds b”
“dog beds ba”
“dog beds c”

Note down all such keywords. Put everything that you discovered to

 

the spreadsheet.

 

1.B Yahoo

 

Yahoo! also has its own version called Search Assist.

 

Just go towww.yahoo.comand repeat the same as you type did it at Google.com. Yahoo suggests phrases that are not necessarily starting from the letter or word you typed in.

 

You find few keywords that do not exist in initial search of “dog beds” in Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

 

Try different terms and combinations to reveal more key phrases.

 

Note all the keywords you discovered in the spreadsheet.

 

1.C Yahoo Answers

 

Visithttp://answers.yahoo.com.

Since most people visit this site to ask a question, you have a very valuable data in your hand: the actual words they use to find information that is related to your niche or product that you’re selling.

Search in Yahoo! Answers using “dog beds” will give us questions like the following:

 

“Where can I find quality dog beds online?”

 

“Any ideas on homemade dog beds?”

 

“Need ideas on how to make waterproof covers(liners) for dog beds to protect inner stuffing when peed on?”

 

“Are there truely any indestrucible dog beds?”

 

“What stores would you reccomend for stylish dog beds and other stuff too?”

 

We can spot some phrases like “quality dog beds online,” “cheap place to buy dog beds,” etc., or possible combination of terms.

 

With a little imagination you can find more long-tail keywords that have little to no competition at all.

 

Include all these phrases to the spreadsheet.

 

1.D Using Forums

 

You can Google [your niche] forum.

Examples:
“dog forum” “pet forums”

To find big forums in your niche, you can also visitwww.big-boards.com. Browse through the forum directory until you find the forum for your target market.

 

In our example, our target market is the pet owners.

 

Do a quick search and pick up a forum, lets say “Dog Pages” at http://www.chazhound.com/forums/

 

Go to Google and search using the following format: allintitle:keyword site:url

 

Example:

 

allintitle:dog beds site:http://www.chazhound.com/forums/

 

The above search command searches the forum chazhound.com/forums/with any topic that has “dog beds” as the or part of the title phrase.

 

We can uncover phrases like “dog beds for older dogs”, “mud repellent dog beds”, “really cheap dog beds”, “comfortable dog beds”.

These are potential golden keywords. Keep on doing this using different forums and key phrases. Write down all these keywords in spreadsheet.

Why to Choose Long-tail Keywords?

Long tail keywords are multi phrase words used by visitors in search box while looking for information. These keywords are much more targeted than a main keyword topic. Long-tail keywords are often called as “Buyer oriented keywords”.

Benefits of Choosing Long-tail keywords:

1. Higher conversion rate: Since users searching with multiple key phrases are more specific with what they are searching for, you have likely targeted your specific market. These are users who are ready to purchase from you.

2. Can rank easier: Long-tail keywords often have less competition. Hence it is easier to rank your site with these keywords.

 

3. Since a multiple phrase contains general terms too, you can easily rank for broad terms too.

 

4. More visitors: Assuming that you will target relevant keywords, you should generate more visitors to your site since you will rank well with all these keywords.

 

Try to target more web pages with these keywords.

 

2.Competition

 

Now that we have a list of key phrases in the spreadsheet, let us find the competition of all these keywords.

 

Search in Google.com: allintitle: “[keywords]”

 

“Allintitle” is a Google search operator that restricts results to those containing all the query terms you specify in the title.

HTML title tag is an important key factor in search engine optimization, so the lesser number of competitors using the same target keywords in their title tag, the easier it is for you to rank. For example,
Search in Google with “allintitle:"comfortable dog beds"”

Are you overwhelmed with the number of competitors? Wait a sec.

If you scroll down at the very bottom of the results page, you see a navigation for user to select which page of search results he or she wants to jump to. If you select the very last page you will see a more accurate number of competing web pages.

Now there are only 51 competing web pages for your keyword.

Repeat the same procedure for all the keywords listed in the spreadsheet and note down the competition.

Singular or Plural form?

 

This the most common question I receive from my clients. Search engines are smart enough to determine between singular and plural forms of a keyword.

 

I go for plural form because this way I am actually targeting the singular form od the keyword too.

 

3. Search Count of Keywords

 

There is really no tool that will tell you directly the exact search count per day, week, or month.

 

But I explain you a method that can be used to verify each keyword search volume per day.

 

Google Adwords:

 

Create Google Adwords account, register athttp://adwords.google.comand pick Standard Edition.

Five to six dollars is normally enough for you to do this exercise and to tell us the specific search count. Through this Adwords campaign, it will reveal to us the daily search count of each keyword candidate from our spreadsheet.

If your site is brand new, use high search volume and high competitive keywords to main pages and low competition long tail keywords to inner pages.

If you do not have a site yet, go to ezinearticles.com, choose an article related to your niche and specify the url as the “destination url”, in the ad campaign while preparing the ad.
Here we are trying to find out search count of untapped keywords, with possibly less competition but with high search count.

We don’t want to verify keywords that have obvious high search count and are very competitive like those generic terms “dog beds,” etc.

 

Open your spreadsheet, select such untapped long tail keywords and start an ad campaign in adwords with those keywords.

 

What you need to do is to create an Adwords campaign. What we basically do is advertise our site in google.com.

 

After selecting the appropriate language page, you then have to create an ad. Now, enter your keywords from the spreadsheet.

 

Observe that each of our keywords are surrounded by open and close bracket. This means that we would like our ad to appear only when the exact key phrase is searched by a user.
Enter maximum CPC bid and daily budget. The amount to enter depends on the competition of the keywords i.e the competitiveness of the advertisers.

It will not cost us anything if nobody clicks on the ad. Primarily, we are interested to find the number of impressions.

 

Make sure that while setting the ad campaign,

1_. UncheckContent network.
2_. UncheckSearch Partners.
3_. SelectAccelerated: Show ads as quickly as possible.
4. Select an appropriate end date for the campaign.
5. While creating Adwords campaign, you are asked to list down keywords that you would like to use to trigger your ads. To better target your ads, you can use the following keyword matching options:

_• Broad Match = keyword
• Match Exact Phrase = “keyword”
• Match Exact Term Only = [keyword]

Thats it! Run the campaign for 5-7 days.

 

What you need to focus on is the number of “impr.” (impression) in theImpression column.

 

For each search made in Google.com using the keywords you selected, your ad appears. So one search is equivalent to one impression.

 

To get the actualSearch Count per Day, we will use a simple formula: