Before we get into the SEO (search engine optimization) training I really want to make sure you get some understanding of keyword research. There is no sense in optimizing your site using a term or terms that you will probably not be able to rank well for so this should help you get started with finding the correct terms to tackle.

Go ahead and watch the video and below the video I’ve also added some more info and a link to the spreadsheet I’m using and referencing  in the video. The video file is large so depending on your connection speed you might want to hit “play” and then “pause” … this will let the video buffer and you’ll have a better chance of getting it to play through when you watch it:

 
Link to Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

When I do my keyword research I try to find what I call the “sweet spot” which for me means to find the terms with the combination of … the most searches with the least amount of competition. Everyone’s idea of “competition” is different so in the video I explain how I find what I consider my competition (I use the search query: allintitle:”keyword phrase in quotations”). These are the pages I assume have actually optimized for that phrase and who have (or might have) done the work that I’m also willing to do to rank for this phrase (which I will be teaching you to do).

When I used to do this process manually I used a spreadsheet (which hopefully you can download here: Manual Keyword Research Spreadsheet) to input, sort and organize the keyword phrases that I’m considering. I no longer do this process manually but I wanted to teach you this method so that you understand what I’m looking for and for those who don’t have a budget for any paid tools. In an upcoming video I will be sharing the tools I use now to automate this process so make sure you’ve subscribed to the blog RSS.

As I mention in the video, I often get asked exactly how I decide on my keyword phrases. I have some guidelines I go by and then the rest is just experience and my gut. It is very, very different for each of my niches but this is a broad overview just to give you an idea of what I look for. For a main term for an index or main page I try to look for terms that have between 2,000 and 10,000 searches per month (or more) depending on the niche. When I went into my destination wedding niche I saw there were 150,000 – 200,000 monthly searches for the term “destination wedding” and I could see there was a ton of competition. I wanted to tackle something a little more doable. After using these methods I discovered the phrase “best destination wedding” had around 10,000 searches (currently 9,900) and “best destination weddings” currently has 12,100 monthly searches. I would rather go after those two terms and try to master them … then to spend the next decade (literally) trying to rank for “destination wedding.” After doing the work and using the methods I will be teaching you I have achieved page one rankings for both of these terms and I usually stay in the top 5 pretty consistently for these terms. Of course it is my ongoing goal to get as high as possible for these terms.

I hope the video was helpful in teaching you a little bit about keyword research. I will continue with a couple more videos on keyword research and I’ll show you the tools I find invaluable to my business.

I would love to answer your questions so please let me know what you need help with in the comments section below. If you have a specific question and don’t like to share your niche or keywords here … you can also reach me using the contact page.

If you enjoyed the video, please share it using Facebook, Twitter … your favorite social bookmarking site … wherever … I’d really appreciate it *SmiLes* Suzanne

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There are so many factors that go into starting and promoting a successful site/blog. If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time (if you’re new to the blog welcome!) then you already know how I feel that keyword research and SEO (search engine optimzation) or two of the most important factors to being successful online.

Whenever I’m doing keyword research I also do some “competition” research right along with it. I go look at the top 5 to 10 results and I “size” them up. One of the things I’m looking for is the number and quality of inbound backlinks to the pages I’d be competing with … make sense?

This video i found on YouTube does a great job showing exactly what I do to analyze backlinks for the pages I plan on competing with and it’s worth the watch.

So … Do you do keyword research? Do you also anaylze the pages that come up first in the search engine results? Do you check the backlinks to those pages? Will you from now on? LOL. Let us hear from you. *SmiLes* Suzanne

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I honestly feel that keyword research is one of the most important skills you can have as an online business owner.

I decided to use a video from my Blogging for Bucks BootCamp and I think you’ll enjoy it. If you did not make it into BootCamp you can click HERE and see if I’m still accepting new attendees.

Since the video will “show” you what I do and why I won’t go into a ton of detail here in the post.

I use a combination of tools and I honestly feel  you can get most all of the information you need by using Google’s free tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

I start with a very broad term and then use the results from the tool to drill down until I find a keyword phrase that will work for my needs. I use keyword phrases for the main title of a blog, my domain names, my file extensions, for each individual post, for anchor text, for tags and keywords … for any aspect of telling the search engines (and readers) what my site, page, or information is about.

After I find some potential keyword phrases I move on to checking out the competition. I need to know how many other pages I’ll be competing for if I use that phrase.  You want to find that “sweet spot” … enough searches to bring visitors vs. the least amount of competition for that particular term. Make sense?

So … I’ll share some of the ways I look at the competition in an upcoming lesson.

Was this video helpful? Do you have any questions? Do you have any ideas or tips that I’ve missed? Do you need help? Share your thoughts and ask your questions below and if you’d like some one-on-one attention please see my services page. Let us hear from you below and please Retweet this post if you’ve enjoyed it. Thanks! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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A lot of times we think we’ve got the perfect “niche market” when what we actually have is a product we’re already selling (or would like to sell) … and now we’ve decided it’s a “niche market.” Derek Gehl said it perfectly when he said, “A niche market is a group of people who are searching the Internet for a solution to their problem – and not finding many relevant results.” Most people go on the Internet to find information … not to purchase something … so that’s what we need to give them.

Let’s use the vitamin and wellness business as an example. A representative who is selling these type products might think that their target market is … well … everyone walking the face of the planet because “everyone” should be taking vitamins. Well, they are going to have a very tough time being successful with that way of thinking.

In fact, ideally your online business would start this way: 

1. Write down all of your hobbies, interests, and passions
2. Do key word research on all possible terms related to each and every subject
3. Look at the competition for the subjects that have a market
4. Look at forums and blogs for a hungry market (what is their problem and can you find a solution) 

But, for this example our representative is already in business so let’s see how we can back into finding them a niche market.

I would start by brainstorming every word that I personally associate with health and wellness. You want to use subjects that are important to you because it will be a whole lot easier to be passionate and stay interested in something that matters to you personally. For me that would be: healthy, sickness, allergies, back pain, joint pain, fibromyalgia, weight loss, fatigue, kid’s health, immune system … that’s a good start.

Now I would go to my favorite keyword research tools and plug them in one at a time. I usually keep a Word Doc open and copy/paste my results so I can compare my findings. If I find fibromyalgia has good traffic I would then do a Google search for fibromyalgia + forum and fibromyalgia + blog and see what I find. I would probably also go to Yahoo Answers and see what I find there. I’m looking for a common thread … what type of information are these people online looking for? What are the symptoms of fibromyalgia? How do you control fibromyalgia pain? What do you take for fibromyalgia? This will give me my niche market … my target market … people who want to “control fibromyalgia pain” for instance.

Now I can further research my key words and phrases, I now know what type of content I need, I have a marketing approach, I know where to hang out to help my target market … and I can help solve their problem … and in this case it would be with the supplements I sell that are known to help fibromyalgia.

Of course then you would want to “rinse and repeat” with allergies, weight loss, etc.

Do you have a niche market … or just a product? Share your thoughts … we’d love to hear from you! *SmiLes* Suzanne

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As I work on my outline for this blog (it’s ongoing of course) I can’t help but notice how many topics hinge on good … no … make that great … keyword research.

To be able to choose the best domain name, proper meta tags, internal linking, inbound linking, social networking and/or bookmarking, write effective ads, article writing and submission, directory submission … even forum signature lines … just about everything I will teach you on this blog will be most successful if you know the ins and outs of proper keyword research.

I like to use a mixture of tools and methods and I think it would be best to tackle them one at a time.

Be sure to ask any questions you have. I don’t write this stuff for myself so be sure and let me know that you’re reading it and what you think. Your question will almost certainly be on someone’s mind too so that will give us a chance to help others together as a team. Check out the posts below … I will add to the list as I get to each tool:

Google AdWords Key Word Tool

Word Tracker Key Word Tool

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Word Tracker

Word Tracker’s free tool is pretty good and we’re going to take a look at how it works. Open a browser window and do the search for yourself so you can follow along.

When we put baby items in the search tool it will bring back results for the approximate number of searches done for the term baby items. The number to the left of each phrase indicates approximately how many times each day the key word or key word phrase is searched on the internet.

The first result is baby items and we can see it’s searched about 134 times a day. A fair amount of traffic … but remember that we’d be competing with over 17 million web pages. Baby boutique is next with 42 searches per day, personalized baby items 25, discount baby items 17 times and so on. Here we are just doing some preliminary checking on our key words and this list should also give you some other ideas for words and phrases that might work well on your site.

You can also dig deeper for each of these phrases. You can either take a term you find and enter it into the search bar or you can simply click on the phrase and it will re-search using that term. If you put in (or clicked on) low priced baby items you’d see a search for “where can I find low price used baby items.” This phrase only had 3 searches. This is what we call a long tail key word phrase. The more words in a search – the more specific a search – the better. These searchers know exactly what they are looking for. Not only do you stand a much better chance at earning page one results on Google … these searchers are also much more apt to actually buy once they find you (more on this later).

It is much better to attain page one or two position with 20 – 30 words/phrases that might get 3-10 searches then to try to get positioning for a word/phrase that gets 300 searches. So how do you do that? You keep researching until you find the long tail (more words and very specific) key word phrases and you optimize your pages for each of those.

Give Word Tracker a Try Today!

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Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google has an awesome free tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal that they offer. Let’s take a look and see what else we find using our term baby items. Leave the “Descriptive words or phrases” checked, put the key word phrase in the box, and hit the “Get Keyword Ideas.”

The graph bars after each phrase will show (1) How many people are paying Google to place their ad for that phrase (Google Ad Words) … your competition, (2) Average number of searches for the previous month … potential customers and, (3) Total average search volume. It doesn’t display actual numbers but it will give you an idea of what’s going on with that term compared to other terms.

As I look down the list I want to point out that a term like “Donate baby items” shows that there are searches for this term yet there aren’t any paid advertisers. That’s because a term like that does not yield a profit … therefore we don’t see any paid advertisers. If you had a site that wanted to offer a list of places to take donations and you could put paid advertising on that page then it might be a phrase worth looking at.

But for now we are going to stick to terms that “buyers” are looking for. Remember the more specific the search term … the more likely the searcher is ready to buy. Someone who searches iPod is looking to do research where someone who searches best price on ipod nano 8gb pink has their credit card in hand and is ready to buy!

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Key word research is the most important foundation for any and all marketing efforts you do online. It should also be used when you chose titles for any articles you write, when you chose your signature lines in forums, make comments on blogs … well just about anything you do online from here forward should take key words into account.

There are several free tools you can use to research key words and we’re going to take a better look at some of them. Once you get in to more advanced marketing and SEO techniques you might want to invest in some of the more advanced key word tools that are available. For now, I feel these free tools will work just fine.  

It’s a good idea to start a folder in your favorites named “Key Word Tools” so you can bookmark each site as we look at them.

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