Keyword Research Guide: Part 1
In this guide, I’m going to assume you know why it’s important to do proper keyword research. So if you want the basics, go to google and do a search for “keyword research”
Instead of providing the basics, I’m going to give you what I feel is much more quality information. It’s the information that has taken me years of experience to acquire.
#1 – Each keyword is a person with a unique desire, need, or question.
This is actually a very practical tip. For those of us that are more technically inclined, it’s a little more difficult to get into the whole “emotional” side of keyword research. But what you must understand is every keyword represents a conversation going on inside a person’s head. If you can tap into that conversation, and answer his or her question, you will be much more successful.
#2 Each keyword represents a stage in the buying cycle.
Fairly straightforward. That’s why some keywords such as “buy ipod nano 4gb” are more competitive. Someone who is searching for that specific phrase already knows exactly what he’s looking for. A more general phrase like “ipod nano” will convert into a sale less often. When choosing keywords, make sure you are segmenting your audience (through different landing pages), depending on what step of the buying cycle they are in.
#3 Each keyword, no matter how obscure, has the potential to improve your ROI.
When doing the initial phase of keyword research, it’s important to realize that you may not know which keywords will convert into sales. Although you may have some ideas which keywords will work, be cautious with eliminating keywords that you have not yet tested.
There are a few tools on the market that allow you to monitor which keywords and ads are consistently showing up in top position in the Google sponsored results. Generally, if a competitor shows up in the top position of the ads for a long period of time for a particular keyword, he is most likely making money on the keyword (or is a REALLY stupid advertiser).
#4 The head (top 80%-90% of keywords) is what you need to focus on first, before moving to the tail.
When I started to learn about keyword research in 2000, I would often put up thousands or tens of thousands of keywords at a time. Although this strategy worked for a time, over the past year or two it has become less effective. Now, it’s more important to focus on the “head”, or the most popular keyword terms. After you’ve optimized for these terms, you can go after the tail, which represents a significantly less search volume.
#5 Not all keyword research tools are created equal.
There are dozens of keyword tools on the market, yet only a small handful of them will give you a competitive advantage over the competition. I currently use only 2 keyword tools that I pay for: KeyCompete & Wordze.
KeyCompete allows me to spy on my competition and download all their keyword lists. This saves me a TON of time. Then I just compile and edit this list of keywords.
WordZe helps me to research each keyword in depth. I often import the keyword list from KeyCompete and use it in Wordze to help me gauge the demand of each keyword phrase. WordZe is a powerful and flexible tool that allows me to do “lateral searches” with it’s Dig feature. Basically, it goes to the top 10,000 websites for any keyword phrase, and then grabs the keywords off the pages. Pretty cool, very useful.
Tomorrow I’m going to go more in depth to show you the secrets of successful keyword research.
