How To Do Proper SEO Keyword Research And Give Yourself A Chance In Google!

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How To Do Proper SEO Keyword Research And Give Yourself A Chance In Google!

I cannot stress how critical proper keyword research is when it comes to SEO. It needs to be the basis of all your SEO entire endeavors. Do it correctly and you can make a lot of money. Do it incorrectly and watch your wallet burn up.

There are 3 main components of keyword research: Searches, Competition, and Commercial Value.

Obviously, if you are targeting a search term, you want people to be searching it, else you won’t get any visitors to your site. You’re going to have to balance this with the other two factors, however. You can’t just go after the biggest search terms, because those are the ones that are going to have the stiffest competition.

Even if I’m building a very small site, I still do not go after keywords with less than 1,500 searches a month. I also use the “phrase match” to determine this. Ultimately, you’ll want to rank for the “broad match” and get more visitors, but keyword tools can be inaccurate, so I like to stay on the safe side. If I’m making a large site however, and I’m planning to make it an authority site with thousands of backlinks, I would go after a term with far more searches, perhaps a minimum of 30,000 a month. Again though, you’ll need to take the next two factors into consideration to determine if it’s feasible. Some terms have a low search volume to competition ratio and those are dangerous.

One way people determine competition is number of competing pages. This is not a great measure because a two or three word term can easily show up in millions of pages but not have stiff first page competition. However, it may determine how fast you are indexed for that term. Title competition is probably a bit more important because this is better measure of how many sites are targeting the keyword. But the best measure is to look at the front-page competition and see how stiff it is. If you’re up against major authority sites and Fortune 500 companies, you may not have a chance. If you’re up against blogs and inner pages of larger sites, then you’ll have a better shot. You also need to check for backlinks and other ranking factors.

Commercial value is perhaps the most overlooked. When people search, they are either looking to buy or to do research (get information for free). To determine this, first and foremost, use your brain. Next, use the Adwords “cost-per-click” measure for that term. If people are spending or more per click, then it means they’re making money from the advertising and the term has commercial value. Some people also use Microsoft’s “OCI” tool. I don’t because I think it’s bogus and no better than common sense.

You will need to use a keyword research tool for all this. Google has a great free one and in concert with their SE, you can get most of the above info. But if you want to be able to analyze first page competition, you’re going to need a better tool. The best out there is Market Samurai. It will also significantly cut down your keyword research time.

Whatever tool you use, make sure you are extremely thorough in your research. This is the foundation on which your website lies.

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