Keyword Research

When you start a new website, blog or single webpage, with the intention to reach a certain top position in the google search results on a particular keyword. Than the first thing to always keep in mind, is to start with keyword research. A lot of times I just thought about something to create. At that moment I thought 10 seconds about keyword I wanted to optimize for. Now these days I know better. Most of the times I take about an half hour to do research for a descent and not competitive keyword to optimize my website for. Because good keyword research is viral. You can write a great article or post about something, but if it is optimized for a keyword nobody is searching for, then it is not funny to see no one is reading it. Always start your project with descent keyword research.

The main problem with finding a popular but not too competitive keyword is how to find that keyword. I invested a lot of time into discovering and maintaining a keyword research strategy. Because this is the basement of the search engine optimization for your website, I must do this right, else all my writing and research work for the specific topic is all done for nothing.

There are a lot of keyword research tools out there who claim to have the key to the top keywords. Most of them just scraping keyword websites, but you still don’t know how much people are searching for that particular keyword, you want to use in you post or webpage.

I had a lot of times the idea, that I knew a top keyword, where everyone will search for. Nothing is further from the truth… I reached a lot of semi top positions in the search engines. Some of them costs me a lot of work, and some where just in the top position in a few weeks. But while my website was standing in the top 5, almost no one was visiting my website. And with no traffic there is no profit to make. But also with no visitors it is definitely not funny to create a webpage, when nobody reads it.

I was very frustrated, I thought I was becoming rich on that ultra superdupa “top” position, but just nothing happened. In my internet history it happens me a lot of times. I thought I was hitting the jackpot but noting happened. Again good keyword research is the key to success.

Again I will give you some descent information about how to do your keyword research. The first thing I discovered myself is that google knows everything, so the tools they provide are based on the data the google algorithm uses too.

For instance while I was advertising in the adwords program, it exactly knows which keywords are related with each other. If I wanted to advertise on a particular keyword, adwords suggested a lot of keywords which are relevant to my niche or keyword. I knew this was some very vulnerable information, that only google can give you. If google adwords find those keywords in you niche or keyword relevant, than definitely this is based on the data the search engine results algorithm of google uses too. Maybe this is not true, but I can’t imagine they use to different datasets for adwords and their search engine.

Just type in the google keywords tool from adwords, your main niche keyword or the keyword you think you want to optimize for. After a few seconds google shows the relevant keywords to your niche keyword, which you can use for your keyword research. Click on the export to csv under the keyword list the google keywords tool suggested, and save this on your computer or laptop. Try to enter all your relevant keywords into this list. It is also a good idea to use long tail keywords. They got a smaller search volume but they are better converting, and are easier to rank on. Anyway after 10 minutes you got a descent keywords list with 2 phrases keywords and 3 phrases keywords. Maybe you got much longer keyword phrases, it doesn’t matter as long they are relevant.

The main question with this keywordlist is which keywords are less competitive and attract a descent volume of visitors. The google search engine already shows you how much results there are, on the keyword you entered. But this is on a broad match. So just enter your keyword in quotes like this : “keyword” . Now google will show you how much websites have listed your keyword in the exact match you entered.

Ok here we need a baseline. I discovered in my keyword research, that if there are less than 30.000 to 40.000 competitors it is worth the time to optimize for this keyword. Just make a list in e.g. Excel from Microsoft Office or use google docs or something, and in the first column list all your keywords in here. Enter in the second column how much competitor websites have that exact match of your keyword on their page. Google search engine will show the amount of competitors in the right-top corner when you entered a keyword. If google shows : Results 1 - 10 of about 397,000,000 for “keyword”

This means that there are 397,000,000 competitors for “keyword”, just copy/paste this number of competitors, near the keyword in your excel keywordlist. Do this for the whole keyword list, and ascend them from low to high. Now you have a keywordlist, starting with they keyword with less competition until the keywords with high competition.

Now this is cool information before you start creating a post or website. But there is a but… You possible can rank for the keyword with less competition, but maybe there are almost no visitors who are searching for that keyword. And you will almost get not any visitors at all. At last you need a keyword with let’s say about 100 unique visitors a day to make it profitable for the work you did.

Again I tried a lot of tools and websites who are claiming to know the exact search volumes. Most of them only knew some search volume of very high competitive top keywords, which take years to rank on. This time I searched for a tool which is provided by google itself, because the google algorithm knew all that data. So if they have a webmaster tool which shows you how much visits each keyword has a day, than you know which keyword is worth your time.

If found a tool called google trends. In google trends you can enter 2 keywords and compare their search volume, so you can predict how much visits a keyword has each day. The main problem in here is you need to know the search volume of a keyword. With this number of search from this particular keyword you can compare it to another keyword.

Because I am really a nice guy I can give some data about a keyword, I found in my keyword research. I have the data from a keyword,and I always use this baseline keyword myself as a compare keyword for google trends. The keyword I use is : free search engine

I know because I was ranked at number one, that there are 600 people are searching a day for this keyword. So if I want to know to search volume of let’s say the keyword : “search engine list”, then I enter at google gtrends the keywords the query : free search engine, search engine list (Remember that when you are doing this to choose in the drop down list for the United states).

Now in the lower-right corner you see so graphical lines under the term : languages. The upper bar show the volume of the first entered keyword and the second determines the second entered keyword. When you take a good look at the bars you see that the second bar is almost 1/5fth of the other bar. If divide the magic number 600 from the keyword free search engine , with the number 5 (because of one fifth) it gives you the number 120. So probably this means that about 100 to 120 query’s are entered in the google search engine for the term : search engine list.

Attention this is very very viral information in your keyword research work. With this kind of data you exactly know what to do. So open up your excel keyword list again, and enter for every keyword the amount of searches a day for every keyword. Use the same technique I used for the other keyword I mentioned here above. If the first bar is shorter that the second bar in google trends, than you must multiply it with the magic number 600.

Now that you have a keyword list with the number of competition and the number of searches a day, it is time to clean up your list in this stadium of your keyword research. Delete all the keywords with more than 30,000 competitors. Now your keyword list is almost done. Again around 100 searches a day is a descent number to work from, so delete all keywords with less than 100 searches a day.

Your keyword list is now cleaned up, and ascend it again on competition column. Probably some keywords are having a lot of searches and very little competition, these are the keywords you need to optimize for. Just because it will be very easy to rank on them, and the visitors will visit your website or page very soon. And you can sell them the products or services you have to offer.

At this stage you see how good it is to do some 30 minutes research on your niche and keywords, it can save you a lot of time. But the main reason is you are getting traffic from the google search engine, which you need to make a profitable webpage.

I wrote myself a tool in php which automates this process. So I can just enter a keyword list and it gives me a nice table with the competitors and the daily searches of the keyword list I entered. I’m thinking about to make this seo tool public, but I need to finish it first. Because it is written very crappy, and google trends doesn’t allow that much query’s a day. Just have some patience I will release this tool in a few days, if I got it working right.

Probably I triggered your mind on how to do good keyword research. I always love this stage of keyword research. While I am busy with this my mind is loading with new idea’s for websites. Right now while I was doing research for this page, and I was playing with the keywords, I already found another very less competitive keyword. With less than 24,000 competitors, it has over more than 180 searches a day. I am going to create a webpage or post for this particular keyword this week, on this blog. So I want to show and learn you how I work with this information I found about this keyword. When I’m done, I will make a post on this blog, with some screenshots, and a report of my work process. And we shall see on which position I shall enter in the google search engine, and if I can climb trough the results to the number one position for that keyword.

Things like this it keeps me very motivating to create good content, everyday I discover pearls in the deep dark ocean of search. And I know the visitors will come because of the motivating keyword research. Let’s go into action and earn some profits of your website.