The Essential Guide to Keyword Research

Keyword research is vital, so I'll try and keep this'taylor made r9′ which has a search
section brief and action focused! What we arevolume of 22,200 - these are people searching
looking for are keywords that have good searchfor the same thing but just spelling it differently.
volume and low competition. We are also lookingTaylor Made are a range of golf clubs that are
for keywords that display 'buying intent'.clearly popular (I think they are fairly new to the
It is best to start with a list of 20 general ideasmarket as of Sept 09 - so this search volume
for a niche. Go to Google's Keyword Tool and putmay increase further) because they receive a
in the first idea in your list of 20.decent search volume. Now we need to see if we
To give you an example I'll do the same with withcan find some search terms that have some low
my previous idea for Taylor Made golf clubs.competition. I'll pick out 1 example 'taylor made r9
When I put in my search term 'Taylor Made Golfreview' receives an average 1000 searches per
Clubs' into the Google Keyword Tool. I'm lookingmonth and has exact phrase match competition
at 2 things:of 26,000. Now that's OK.
1. How many average monthly searches - 110,000What we are looking for to build a micro niche
2. Advertiser competition - Very Highblog is 5-10 keywords that have an average
This tells me that Taylor Made golf clubs aremonthly search volume of 800+ and exact
obviously in high demand, but the fact that thephrase match competition of less than 30,000.
advertiser competition is very is an indicator thatOnce you've found keywords that meet this
competition on the internet as a whole will be high.criteria you have the building blocks for a micro
If I was planning a large content site, this is theniche blog!
sort of search volume you need for a niche. UsingQuick Note: You'll also notice lots of keywords
the keywords listed pick out 30-50 relatedwhen doing your research that have low search
keywords such as 'taylor made golf clubvolume (800 and below) most of them will be
r7′ and 'used taylor made golf clubs' thatlong tail keywords (which means they have
have a monthly search volume betweenseveral words in the phrase e.g. 'buy taylor made
3000-25,000. Next for each keyword you need tor9 driver online') make a list of these they will be
do a phrase match count. To do this simply do auseful when it come to building our blog.
search in Google for your search term usingA Word of Caution: It is also worth mentioning,
quotation marks like this "taylor made golf clubswhen you are doing your keyword research, you
r7"need to put on your commercial hat; try and get
In this example there are 46,100 results. Whichinside the head of the customer who is search
means there are 46,100 web pages featuring thefor a product, and think to yourself what search
search phrase "taylor made golf clubs r7″terms would people use if they are looking to buy.
that is your competition for that search phrase.Some keyword phrases will have more
For a large content site target keywords thatcommercial intent than others, always bear this in
have 3000+ monthly search volume and less thanmind when choosing keywords - one word to
100,000 competing web pages. Repeat thatavoid 99% of the time is 'FREE' people searching
process for all the 30-50 keywords on your listfor free anything aren't usually looking to buy, but
hopefully you should find 15-20 that meet thethe exception to the rule maybe a free trial.
criteria. So that is a niche sorted if you're lookingAnyway just be aware of commercial intent
to build a large content site blog. With sort ofwhen doing your research.
competition it will take a little longer to get trafficTo Sum Up
to your site but in the long it will be worth it. ButFor a large content niche blog: 15-20 keywords
if you are looking for profits fast, we want to findwith a search volume of 3000+ and exact phrase
a 'micro niche' and for that we need to dig a littlematch competition under 100,000
deeper!For a micro niche blog: 5-10 keywords with a
By the way, this is a laborious job, we use an toolsearch volume of 800+ and exact phrase match
called Micro Niche Finder to do all plus a bit more,competition of less than 30,000
it saves hours of work!For both you will need a list of long tail keywords
Back to our example; there are 2 search termsand remember to think about commercial intent
that interest me 'taylormade r9′ which haswhen choosing keywords.
a average monthly search volume of 33,100 and