I wanted to do a little keyword research guide that could help you guys make some money. I know that I’ve taken a bit of a break from the blog to do link building to this site. Honestly, I really haven’t done anything. I’ve made a support site and backlinked that, but that’s really all so far. I’ve been busying trying to finish my extensive backlinking of my sniper sites. I really want to get these 41 sites done this month, so that is where all my efforts are concentrated.
Keyword research is a very important thing to know how to do. Good keyword research means that you’ll get traffic and you can get it very soon after putting up the site. Bad keyword research means all your efforts go to waste. Building a site that no one visits isn’t enjoyable or fun, and you’re definitely not making cash doing that. Since this site is designed to show you how to make cash, I’m going to give you this keyword guide to follow.
The main tool being used today is Google’s Adword keyword tool. This is something relatively new (as in under 2 years I believe). Google used to be very secretive with their search volumes. But they knew they had to provide something for their Adword clients, so that they would start spending money. This is the keyword tool that is the compromise. The reason that I say compromise is that sometimes it is very accurate and other times it is a complete joke.
Before Google came out with their tool, many of us used the Free Wordtracker tool. They got their data from smaller search engines and extroplated the data to overall internet volumes (IE: if search engine has 1% market share, than all keywords are multiplied by 100% to get real volume). It’s not near perfect either.
For this keyword research guide we’re going to use Google’s Tool because when it is correct, we’re good.
Finding Exact Search Volumes
Just go to the keyword tool link I gave above and type in the keyword/niche/whatever into the keyword tool and take a look at the results. The first thing you have to understand is that the results are set to broad, which makes them exceptionally over inflated. You have to set the “Match Type” to “Exact”.
When you set it to exact, you’re going to get a much more accurate view of how many searches that you’ll get a month. For me, I’m always aiming for a minimum of 100 searches per day for the main keywords that I pick up. That means roughly 3000 searches a month. Those are the keywords I’m trying to get. If you’re someone that is new, you might want to aim lower (though that might not help for the verification section of this post). What you’ll want to do is take all the keywords that you find and throw them into notepad.
Assess Competition
At this point of the keyword research guide I like to look at the competition and assess how much work that I’ll have to put into rank for a keyword. This can be tough for a lot of you because experience plays a big roll in this. You can look at some of the criteria out there by many of the different gurus if you want… like maybe Ed Dale or something.
Personally, all I’m looking for are weak sites listed in the top 10 when I search the keyword at Google. Just remember that aggregators are weak. An aggregator is a site that just lists products and shit automatically. They basically have a massive database of stuff. The content on the pages are minimal.
You should also be able to pick up “webmaster” like search results. A search result like that has typical “webmaster-esque” like results coming up. You’ll see squidoo lenses, hubpages, Ezinearticles, etc. Typically with a keyword targeted domain you shouldn’t have an issue out doing them.
This is important, so don’t skimp on this. If the top 10 are dominated by power house authority sites like Wikipedia, WebMD, etc you’re going to have trouble getting anywhere near the top. I’m not saying this is impossible, or that there aren’t exceptions to the rules, but you have to recognize lost causes.
Checking for a “Dud” Keyword
Up to this point, the keyword research guide was just like any other that you would find on the internet. Essentially find the keywords, check competition and go for them. But if you’ve been at this long enough you’ve probably noticed that some keywords you go after don’t have quite as much traffic that you expected. In fact, you can be hugely disappointed by inaccurate data provided by Google.
I’m sure Google has extremely accurate data when it comes to searches, but they hide some of it. They hide it because they don’t want us gaming the search engine.
The cool thing is that I’ve found a way to find out if a keyword is a dud and can help you determine how accurate Google’s keyword tool really is. This is very valuable to those that want to make cash online.
Even though the keyword tool has issues, I’ve found that Google Trends is quite accurate with its information. I hope you’ve been using trends before this point because you can learn a lot about the keyword. Most important thing is WHERE the traffic comes from. What do you think is more profitable? Traffic from United States, Canada, Australia or traffic coming from India, Philippines, etc? We all know the western world is the best, primarly the United States. Anyway, that is an aside.
Anyway, take your keyword and type it into Google Trends search and you’re going to end up with a graph. If you get no graph, the search volume is probably below 1500/mth. There’s a cut off point on trends where it won’t give data. I’m guessing that is the magic number.
Here’s the key, an accurate keyword will have a graph that exists for a significant period of time. When I say “exists” I mean it isn’t zero. You’ll notice a lot of keywords will have sections where the graph is zero. If that makes up a small portion of the graph than you can be pretty sure the keyword isn’t a dud. But if a big portion of the graph is zero or erratic jumps from zero then it is probably a dud. And I would avoid that keyword.
Here is an example of what a good keyword would look like:
There are some zero chunks of the graph very early on. But you can see that the graph exists pretty consistently for a good two and half years. The keyword tool said this keyword gets 3600/mth. I rank top spot for it and the numbers appear to be very accurate.
Here is an example of what a dud keyword MAY look like:
This graph is much different. Over half of the graph has the zero areas and this happens to be one of the MANY possible ways a dud keyword would show up on a graph like. The keyword tool at the time of me going after this keyword said it got somewhere around 3000 searches a month. Six months later and finally ranking for the keyword, I’ve found that it gets absolutely nothing. Maybe 10-15 people search it a day at most.
I was going to show you a graph of another keyword that I ranked for that turned out to be a semi-dud. At the time of this post trends won’t show the graph (too low volume), but as of a few days ago it showed it. It was essentially a straight line that went up. That’s all it was. Just a straight line going up. Google keyword tool says it gets 5400 searches a month. I rank for it and can obviously tell you that the volume isn’t very high.
Verifying Data Volume
You can also use Trends to verify the volume on a search term. It’s quite a useful tool. If you personally know the search volume for one keyword you can compare it against another. You just have to use a comma to do this and it can be done like in the image below.
The very first graph that I showed you in this keyword research guide was for a term that I personally know gets rougly 3600 searches each month. This allows you to create a base and judge it against the other graph. Here is an example below.
The red graph is my 3600/mth keyword term and blue is our “researched keyword”, which I also happen to rank for. As we can see, blue is just a little smaller on average than the red. It probably gets around 3000 searches a month. According to the keyword tool the blue graph is around 2900/mth and I rank for it. It gets about that.
Let’s take a look at another one.
Like before, the red is the 3600/mth base and blue is the “researched keyword”. As you can see for 2007 and part of 2008 the search volumes were about the same. Blue was probably getting about 4000/mth. But over the last year and half there has been a significant jump in the volume that is coming in. You might be thinking that the volume of this particular keyword is about 8000/mth now maybe 9000/mth. The keyword tool lists the keyword at 10,000/mth. I rank for it and I can verify that the number of searches are probably closer to 10k a month.
I can keep throwing graphs at you, but I think you get a relatively good idea of what you need to do.
Assessing WHERE the Traffic Comes From
Finishing off the keyword research guide can be done easy enough with trends. The last thing you want to know where the traffic is coming from and it should be consistent with the specific demographic you’re trageting. If you don’t know who you’re targeting than you’re aiming for the United States. Something like the rave niche would probably be a more UK related niche. Understand? Most of the time you’ll be aiming for Americans unless it is a special niche.
Below the graph you’re going to see regions bar graph. It will list the top 10 countries where searches originate. Very simple stuff people.
Here is what a good demographic will look like:
You have the United States first and primarily Western countries in the rank. Don’t worry if you have Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom coming in first. They’re all pretty similar when it comes to a credit card.
Here is what a bad demographic will look like:
Most of the searches are coming from Nigeria. How many big spenders do you think come from the top 3? Not many. India will be a game changer in the future (a few decades), but they’re hardly the traffic to target right now. Unless, you’re targeting something specific to that audience.
I guess that is enough for the keyword research guide. I’ll add more to it if I think of it, but other than that it looks good to me. Should be enough to go on and start making cash.