So now that you have a website with some content, pictures, and some affiliate links scattered throughout, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the money to start flowing in, right?
Wrong!
Now you must learn how to find the best keywords for SEO and start bringing people to your website by maximizing your content by doing the proper keyword research.
Building your website is no doubt the base for your business, but learning how to do keyword research the right way is what is needed to bring massive amounts of traffic to your website each and every month.
Doing keyword research might seem like a tedious task and a bit difficult at first, but there is a keyword research tool that can make the process really simple, and when it’s done right, this strategy will be the most important part of your SEO efforts and what will ultimately start bring consistent traffic to your website.
What Is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique that is used by internet marketers, bloggers, content writers, etc, that are looking to increase the amount of organic traffic to their website.
For a blogger or any professional that is running an online business, you know how important it is to know what people are searching for, and more importantly, how many people are actively searching for it.
These keywords are what your audience is typing into the search engines, and these words are what you must incorporate into your posts and articles to achieve higher rankings in the SERPS (search engine results pages).
If you can become a master at finding the perfect keywords as part of your SEO strategy, you will have already beaten most of your competitors in the SEO game. One thing that has been time tested and proven over and over again, and the main factor with a successful online business is how to identify and make the best use of the right keywords in your blogs or articles.
Taking the time to do keyword research properly can literally be the difference between yours pages and posts ranking high in the SERP’s, or buried somewhere deep way out in cyberspace.
Why Is Doing Keyword Research So Important?
Some experience writers and bloggers don’t always focus on doing keyword research before they write. They are already so familiar with their chosen topic that they just write about what comes naturally to them.
Unfortunately, if you are not real good at coming up with content for your articles for whatever reason, keyword research is something that you should really consider.
An when you start doing the right keyword research, there will be no doubt exactly what search terms your customer base is using.
Sometimes you might not realize it when writing an article, but you could be targeting a completely different set of keywords for your articles, instead of using the same exact search queries that you potential customer is using.
When this happens, you will start to understand why you are not getting your desired amount of visitors to your website. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go after keywords that the majority of people are not even using when they are searching for something specific online.
What Is The Best Keyword Strategy To Use?
While there isn’t necessarily one specific set of guidelines you should use when researching a keyword, there is a way to increase the chances of moving up the ranks of the SERPS and eventually landing on the first page, which is the goal of every website.
Of course the main objective for someone running an online business, is to find those juicy keywords that have a high volume of monthly searches with a low amount of competing websites who are trying to rank for the same exact keyword.
You might think that going after words that get 1000s of monthly searches would make your website or online store a potential goldmine, but unfortunately, that’s probably not the best thing to do. You will find that these high volume keywords will be extremely hard to rank with because you will be competing with hundreds of other websites.
Some online gurus might stay to only go after words that have more than 500 monthly searches, while others won’t even look at a keyword that has less than 5,000 monthly searches.
If that is what works for them, great.
But I prefer to go about it a different way.
The 50/100 Rule
In my opinion, a good plan of attack and something that has worked for me, especially if you are just in the beginning stages of building out your niche website and you are not ranking yet, or not getting much organic traffic, is to use the 50/100 rule.
The 50/100 rule just means that if you find a keyword or phrase that you would like to use, and it has at least 50 monthly searches, and less than 100 competing websites trying for the same keywords, go ahead and give it a shot.
You will be continually finding additional keywords that are related to your main topic to make up for the low volume of these less searched keywords.
Think about this for a second.
I think I would rather be on page one, wouldn’t you?
Search Queries Are Not Always Accurate
Unfortunately, not all of the search volume numbers are always accurate. Sometimes just because there is a really high amount of searches for a keyword phrase, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has the same number of real clicks.
For example, there are about 7,000 monthly searches for the term “Bill Gates Net Worth.” But does that also mean that 7,000 people actually clicked on something?
No it doesn’t.
Because Google has an answer box that comes up when doing the search, the answer is right there in front of you to see, so there is no need to click on anything further.
So it’s important not to just focus solely on the amount of monthly searches a keyword receives, but the amount of actual clicks a keyword is getting too.
Long-Tailed Keywords
Keywords can be a single word, or sometimes better known as a “head keyword, and they are very broad in nature. This type of singular keyword might be what you are ultimately trying to target, but most of the time, there is usually too much competition.
Not only might the competition be too high, generally these single keywords are too vague, so you really don’t know what people are looking for. If somebody is searching for “shoes”, you don’t know if they are searching for ladies dress shoes, men’s running shoes, or cowboy boots.
Long-tailed keywords are a more defined and specific search term with a clear intent. So for example, going back to shoes, a keyword phrase that someone might be using could be “most comfortable men’s running shoes”, or “snake skin cowboy boots under $100”.
These long-tailed keywords are not just about how many words are in the phrase, but they are less common and not searched as frequently as a single keyword.
These keywords are what your articles and posts should be built around, and it is what your audience and potential customers are realistically searching for.
So you can see why going after these long-tailed-keywords for your articles can get you ranked faster and drive more traffic to your site.
That might not be what the experts say, but I can tell you that it really does work. It’s only natural to want to go after keywords with high search volumes, especially for newbies just wanting to bring more traffic to their website. I also made the same mistake thinking that was the way to go.
It wasn’t. At least it wasn’t for me.
I knew that being a brand new niche website, I wasn’t gonna be able to compete with all the powerful authority sites, and there was absolutely no way I was gonna outrank the big boys of the SERPS.
But once I started using the 50/100 rule, my posts began showing up on the first page of Yahoo and Bing within a few weeks of publishing my articles.
Not too shabby.
My goal was just to be seen and start slowing bringing more and more steady traffic to my website on a consistent basis.
No, I still wasn’t on the first page of Google yet, but just remember that Yahoo and Bing are still 2/3 of the search engines and those two search engines can also bring a lot of traffic too.
How Many Keywords To Use & Where In Your Posts Should They Be?
Each one of your pages or posts on your website should primarily focus on just ONE keyword.
That’s it!
And whatever that keyword may be, just don’t get the idea that using your keyword over and over throughout the page will have a positive effect on your rankings.
Google doesn’t like keyword stuffing and It won’t do you any good, so don’t do it.
There are at least three places where you want to use your keyword in your article. 1) You definitely want to put your keyword in the main title of your post , 2) Preferably somewhere in the first paragraph, 3) And then again somewhere near the end of the page.
Then just start creating your content and write about it completely natural. Not only will you start ranking for that main keyword, you can also start ranking for 100’s of other relevant keywords that you were not even thinking about.
Of course, as part of your SEO strategy, and to drive more organic traffic to your website, you will also want to add your keyword to the meta title, meta description, and don’t forget to add your keyword to the alt attributes of all your pictures that you add to your website too.
Placing your keywords in these places is an important part of your SEO strategy, and will give you the best opportunity for your pages to start showing higher in the SERPS.
How to Easily Research Keywords For SEO
During your initial introduction into finding the best keywords to use, you just need to concentrate and focus on general ideas and words that are related to your business.
From there, you will need to expand those particular keywords into more specific phrases or long-tailed-keywords.
Single Keywords Related To Your Niche
Grab a pen and paper and start writing down between 10-15 words or topics that describe what your online business is all about. Later on in the process, these 20 words or so will be used to come up with more specific and refined keywords.
If you are creating an online business around a specific niche that you are very knowledgeable about, you probably won’t have much trouble coming up with a list. Just remember to try to put yourself in your audiences shoes, by looking at it from their perspective.
Depending on what topic your business in focusing on, you want your potential customer to find you by using what search terms? Maybe you love animals and you would like to have a website or blog about “dogs” and you need to start building content around a few of these topics:
- Food
- Toys
- Grooming
- Collars
- Training
- Beds
- On and on and on.
As you can see, you should be able to come up with a lot of basic single keywords to get you started.
Expand To Long-Tailed Keywords
After you have come up with 10 to 15 general keywords, it’s time to start coming up with some long-tailed keywords from your list.
These will be the more specific keywords based on what your audience is searching for, and an important process to getting ranked higher in the SERPS.
Using the few examples from above, we want to come up with a more detailed search term that people are typing into the search bars.
- Healthiest Dog Food
- Best Chew Toys For Puppies
- Grooming Brushes For Dogs
- Tracking Collars For Dogs
- How To Train Your Dog To Stop Barking
- Orthopedic Dog Beds For Large Dogs
These are just a few long-tailed keywords that came from the top of my head, but now we can do some research to see what the monthly searches are, and the amount of competing websites there are.
Monthly Searches and Competing Websites
Now that you have come up with a few long-tailed search phrases to possibly use, now lets use a keyword research tool to find out how many monthly searches there are for a few of our new keywords, along with the amount of competing websites.
Having an efficient way to research keywords properly is such a huge part of your SEO efforts and can be done in just a few minutes.
All of these search terms fall into the 50/100 rules and could be used to help people find what they are looking for. Again, even though they do not have a ton of search traffic every month, there is a really good chance to move up the rankings with these type of keywords.
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Search Of Head Keyword Vs Long-Tailed Keyword
Keeping with the dog niche and using a keyword research tool, you can clearly see that “dogs” is searched over 1.2 million times a month, but the amount of competing websites (QSR) is sky high. In other words, don’t even think about using it.
If you plan on using “dogs” as the focus keyword for your post, you can probably just forget about showing up on the top pages of the search engines anytime soon, and more so if you are a brand new site.
But the keyword came up with many other possible keywords related to dogs instead. In fact, “potty training for dogs” was not even included in my original examples above, but this long-tailed keyword would definitely be something you could use because of the amount of searches and the QSR rating.
Also keep in mind, just because a single head keyword is more frequently searched and will be harder to rank with because of the competition level, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try using them at all. Try to focus on the long-tailed keywords for your blogs with a few single keywords sprinkled in here and there.
Example Of Doing My Keyword Research
Here are a few screenshots of a page on my website that made it to the first page of Bing within a few weeks of me publishing it.
I spent a little time figuring out what kind of article I wanted to write about and then used a keyword research tool to find all the data that I needed.
I started writing a rough draft using a few low competition keywords that didn’t have that many websites competing for the same word.
After a few tweaks here and there, I published my article to my website on June 21st, 2019 and reached position #1 on July 5th. It was pretty cool to move up to the top spot in just 2 weeks time.
It’s kinda ironic, but the keyword tool that I used to help me find the low competition keywords to help me with my writing is what my website article is about, (keyword research) and you can read more about the keyword tool that I use for every article that I write.
Will Keyword Research Guarantee 1st Page Results?
Of course not!
I would love to sit here and say that every article you write after doing keyword research will land you on the first page of Google, Bing, and Yahoo, but there is more to it than that.
They say that content is king, and that is true when building out a new website. You don’t have to be a great writer, but writing and publishing consistently to your site is what it takes for better and higher rankings.
When you are a newbie, the search engines don’t know the difference between you and the man on the moon, and will take some time to build up that trust.
It’s gonna take more than just a few articles that contain just 500 or so words before you will start to see progress. For starters, you need to try to write at least one post of 1000 to 1500 words and publish it every week.
Again, you don’t have to be an expert at writing. Try to focus on the quantity of the content rather than the quality. You can always go back later and edit old posts.
Just write, then write, then write some more.
Even though some of the authority websites have hundreds and hundreds of articles on their websites, but they surely didn’t start with hundreds, they started with just one.
How Much Competition Do You Really Have?
Earlier in this article, I talked about using the 50/100 rule for a beginning strategy for finding keywords, but now I am going to contradict myself a bit. Yes, I still think it’s a good idea to come up with keywords with a low volume of monthly searches and competitors.
But I also want you to think about the competitors in a different way.
Sometimes when doing keyword research, you might come across a keyword that you think is perfect, but then you find out the amount of competing websites is in the hundreds and too high. You start thinking to yourself that you are probably gonna be on page 20 of Google where nobody is ever going to find you.
So put yourself in the shoes of someone who is surfing the net.
When was the last time you were on Google looking for something and you skipped to page 2, 3, 4, or 10 to find what you were looking for?
Probably not very often, if ever.
You see, in reality, you are not really competing with hundreds of other websites, you are only competing with 10 and only 10.
The 10 that you have to try to beat are the ones that are on the first page.
If you can spend a little extra time doing a search analysis of competing websites will give you even more valuable information as to what they are doing to achieve their high rankings.
If their articles contain 2000 words, make yours 3000. If they don’t have any photos, add some photos to yours. If they don’t have video’s, add some to yours. And so on and so on.
All you have to do is find out what they did to get on the first page, and you just have to do it better.
Final Thought & Conclusion
There is no reason to make keyword research and SEO anymore complicated than it really is, but having the proper knowledge of SEO and how best to optimize your content will definitely increase your rankings with Google, Bing, and Yahoo. And higher rankings in the search engines will bring more organic traffic to your website, which will lead to more money for you.
If you are want to learn more about starting an online business, or how to bring more traffic to your existing website, I would highly encourage you to read more about my #1 recommended online internet marketing training program, and learn how you can begin for free.
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If you have any questions or comments about this article, please feel free to leave them in the section below and I will get back to you.
-Todd-
