When it comes to both affiliate marketing, SEO, and any other type of online work, knowing which keywords to target is an essential part of getting your business started.
So what exactly is keyword research and how do you go about doing it the right way? Well before I would get started on a new niche or topic one of the very first things I will look at is the competition. If you didn't have a good idea or are a bit of a beginner, typing your main subject into the search engines will usually give you a list of keywords to start out with. Have a look at the screenshot below to see what the related keywords that Google gives us right off the bat.
Now the red arrow is pointing at of course what you have typed into the search engines and the purple arrow are what Google has supplied for you as related terms or topics. This is not simply a made up list of what Google may think that others may like. These suggested terms have been taken from real time data processing and I would advise you to start out here.
Having a targeted keyword research report to pull from is an excellent strategy as well. Once you have a large amount go ahead and start implementing seo keywords and Google keywords into your articles. Articles must be rich in relevant words and must be a bit longer to make any headway in 2016 and moving into 2017. For more information about what SEO is needed in 2018 check out my SEO Marketing article. Another place one can find suggested keywords is to check out the very bottom of the search screen that will look like this-
Using these different methods in your research process will give you a broader range of targets when it comes to driving traffic. This should just get you started with your keyword research but we are far from over when it comes to looking in different places. This would have been very helpful to me when I started out and that is why I'm writing this to help the newbies. If you are only using this method or the Adwords tool, you will most certainly still be competing with a fair amount of people. If you don't know about the Google research tool it is one of the originals and user-friendly but I have most recently noticed that Google has just updated it and it looks like it will be more difficult to use.
It used to be not as catered to making money for itself but this recent update has many of the keywords presented in very vague search volume terms instead of the most providing accurate numbers. You will however get a more defined set of numbers if you deposit money into the Adwords system. Kinda cheap but oh well. The Display Planner was also a good resource but as of right now I only was getting an error signal from it and no information at all.
Alright, we have talked about the Search Bar Method and The Keyword Suggestion Method as well as Adwords and the Display planner. All of these will give you a fair amount of firepower but we are not done yet! The next keyword research tool I want to talk about is the Google Trends website. This is a fairly simple tool that is also free but you are going to have to dedicate a large amount of time to it and get educated about all of the ways this research tool can be manipulated and used. I enjoy looking at Trends when I am searching for niches to jump ahead in. Like a new diet drug, that is about to be passed by the FDA or a hot new product getting ready to hit the market.
Find some good keywords, do some great research and compare the product to similar items on the market.Sounds easy enough right?
Let us keep going with our journey to find good keywords. Bing is a great place and although the search engine doesn't get as much traffic as Google you can cross reference the KW's to grab and set an even broader net than once before. Remember, you want as much traffic as you can to get flowing through your sites, so don't hesitate to write Bing friendly articles.
If you didn't know what Bing and Google friendly articles are, they are articles that I write which not only have one focus keyword in them but have many different and related keywords sprinkled throughout the whole piece of writing.
That and making easily readable articles will have your websites becoming indexed more quickly. The simple fact is that these search engines are evolving and we must get over the mindset of the old spammy and quick money sites of the past. Those days are long gone and the only way to get the money coming in is to either pay someone to build articles for you or take the time to put together an authority site. This is why everyone is having a hard time getting that all impressive money coming in.
As for SEO tricks, well I will get into those on some other posts but for now, let's jump back into the subject of more places that you can do keyword research. One of my favorite way's is to check out the competition in your niche. This is something I have known about for a long time but I never really dug that far into. Like a newbie I let the keyword planner drive me astray and I had frustrating results. It was only when I started to really become good at competition research is when the whole world shifted for me and the money finally began trickling in. Let's say you use one of our older examples of teeth whitening and you type those keywords into a search engine.
From there I simply grab the URL's of the top 5-8 websites. Next, after I have made a list of the top websites from all of the other different keywords I have found from the searches and keyword tools I will input them into SpyFu and start my research there. I would highlight another one of my favorite keywords spy tools but for time sake we will stick with just SpyFu. This is an excellent website that will provide you with plenty of information about what keywords your competition is targeting and with a little more secret tactics you will be bringing in targeted traffic from all over the web. Now this website offers up a subscription service and if you are serious about getting your business going I suggest you begin setting aside some cash to get the full amount of services. Alexa.com and Majestic also will provide you with great information.
What I'm really getting at by showing you all these resources is that there is so much opportunity for you if you go about keyword research in a methodical way. Figure out what others aren't doing and blaze your own path. If you think we've covered a lot well we haven't. Let me pose a quick question to you. Do you think it would be profitable if you could rank YouTube videos?
Of course, the answer is yes. Now there are many tactics you can use altogether to rank your videos but for this example, we will go over how you can literally pick the keywords from the top viewed videos in your niche! Ok, so how does this work exactly. Well a few years ago you could simply hit “see more” and right below YouTube, there would be a list of the keywords or tags.
Now although this method of copying keywords has been denied for us we, as smart marketers can still move around this speed bump and find out what keywords are actually being used. So how do we accomplish this you may be asking? The answer is simple.
Once you are at this part of the YouTube page hit the right button on either a mouse or your laptop keypad. You will see a menu and look for a phrase that says something like”inspect source code” click that and the HTML coding will appear on another screen. When you first look at it, the HTML coding may look a bit intimidating, but have no fear and scroll down to around line 44 and you will see what looks like this below-
Right in the middle of the above picture, you will see the phrase “meta name=”keywords” and just following that phrase you will see the keywords that have been used in the video. This will not just help get your video ranked but it will give you a good starting point for finding those keywords that have an opening. O.k we are trucking right along with our keyword research journey and like I stated earlier, this is meant to get you in the right mindset of finding not only less competitive keywords but to get you away from using and relying on only tools.
Let me speak a little about keyword finding tools and software. If you have the money to spend on a monthly basis then I say go ahead with those software's and systems such as ones as Longtail Pro or you can have a look at this article that talks about different keyword tools to use. Rarely do they all provide accurate numbers as well.
Alright, now we are on the home stretch. Using all the keyword finding methods in conjunction with this last piece of the puzzle it will give you a better overall understanding when it comes to narrowing down how excellent and easily rankable keywords can be found. Enough talk, let's get into it.
In the search bar above your browser where we used to find the Google suggested keywords, there is also another method that can be used to see how much competition a keyword has. You will want to know this to see if the keywords in question would be worth your time in putting together a lengthy article. As many of you may know, the search engines prefer a lot more content than in previous years and this will lessen the frustration when you begin to see some results.
To find out what good keywords would be to target in YouTube you would type in inurl:youtube.com”teeth whitening” What this will do is look for a url inside of YouTube that has the keyword of “teeth whitening”. The reason you would want to do that is to check the Google results for competition of a long tail keyword such as “teeth whitening for seniors”
Now I know you might get excited to see only 2 results for YouTube videos but think of the market. How many seniors really care about having whiter teeth? Still this is a very good tool and lesson to think about. You don't only use this for YouTube but you can use it for Facebook and other social properties as well. Moving on to our last piece of the lesson for targeting the right keywords we come to typing into the search bar just inurl:”teeth whitening” Do that and Google will bring up all of the webpages containing that specific keywords.
Of course you would get something back like the picture above but if there are more then 100 webpages showing you will have to go to the bottom of the page and click the highest page until you reach the end of the result. Like the picture below demonstrates.
As the arrow points out you click the 10 then maybe a 14 and so on until you reach the end of the list of indexed Google pages that has that specific keyword in the URL. So what does this really mean in laymens terms…? Well let's have a closer look. For one thing it is exceptionally helpful to know how much competition you have and to be able to see how many sites are “untouchable authorities”.
If a keyword is dominated by webMD, Forbes or ESPN.com it may be a good idea to check for something more manageable. This method can also be used in other forms such as intitle:, allinurl: and allintitle:. In time and with practice you will get used to using all these methods for a specific situation. So there you have it…
Keyword Research methods that could be sold but are instead just told!
In closing don't forget to hit me up on twitter @DSpyker1 and on Google+ . Be on the lookout for my reviews of great products that help me learn all that I know about the internet and I wish you great success!
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