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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Hi … My name is Suzanne Franco (Land) and I’m a wife (newlywed actually) and mother to 5 amazing kids (my 3 and his 2 – ages 9 to 16) and we live in the Texas Hill Country where we try to spend a lot of time in the water (river, boating, wakeboarding, the beach, etc.) and running from one kid’s sporting event to the other (mainly football, cheerleading, and soccer).
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i like it Keyword study Part One (Video Tutorial) now im your rss reader
Twitter: DennisEdell
February 15, 2011 at 8:17 am
I’ll have to look this over a few times, you know me and KW research.
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Hey Dennis … Yes, I do know! LOL … Still??? You do know how to reach me if you’d like any help
*huGs*
Twitter: angienewton
February 15, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Great video tutorial, Suzanne! I really enjoyed it. I have been using the free Wordtracker tool for years and will be using the paid version soon. But it’s neat to see and learn how to use others too.
So my question is, is it best to research using the quotes or not? I really don’t get it when it comes to using quotes in Google or not using them. Thanks!
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Angie … Great to hear from you! OK … I guess I’ve gotten my “system” down over the years and I personally look at the search using the quotes … only because to me that’s probably a term that these sites have optimized for. That title tag is a pretty basic (YET IMPORTANT) part of SEO … so that will usually show me that they’re interested in that term enough to include it in their title tag. This is not a perfect science because solely based on that title tag … at that point my my research I have no idea how many other sites are targeting that term using a lot of off-page work (by building backlinks using that keyword phrase as the anchor text) … but it’s a starting point for me and it seems to have served me well over the years. It also depends on the niche for me … a competing website in the “make money online” arena is likely to have a lot more knowledge in SEO and backlinking … than say the average site owner in the destination wedding niche … make sense? I hope this helps and let me know if you want me to help you look at any keyword phrases
*huGs*
Twitter: angienewton
February 17, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Yes it makes sense (I think ha ha). So searching for anything in quotes is the exact phrase, out of quotes is any of the words in that phrase that comes up in Google?
Angie´s last [type] ..9 Quirky Things About Me
Beautiful video. I really enjoy it. Keyword research is a vitally important aspect of our search engine optimization campaign. Thanks for sharing this important topic.
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Thanks for the great video tutorial.
Think you must continue this SEO video session
Great and nice video tutorial, Suzanne! I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the post.
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Great post and a great tutorial! Thanks!
Thanks Suzanne! Great video!
I really enjoy this perfect posting which you have given for us. I assure this is advantageous for a lot of people.
Thanks for the great video i learned a lot! i have one question through, whats the difference between “allintitle” and “intitle” which i have previously been using for my keyword research! keep posting these fantastic videos //Bo
One of the best post and video tutorial i have ever come across and now i am eagerly looking forward for video tutorial volume ll
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Thanks for the video Suzanne, sometimes I find it much easier to understand when I can see the process someone takes rather than reading the steps.
First of all I appreciate your work and analysis. Keyword research is basic and essential part of SEO. Thank you for informative video. I have learn a lot from this video and article.
It is really educating video on keyword research which is most important part of SEO. Thanks
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Nice article and good tips. thats useful for me which wanna be boost my traffic
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instead of doing all the hard work in excel spread sheets, you can use market samurai, which is probably the best tool for keyword research, in my opinion… and the best part is that the free version allows you to do this keyword research
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agree.. market samurai can help you save time, by offering a lot of filters, it can show a lot of info for each keyword, like seo competition, seo title competition, estimated visits per day, etc… great tool..
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Keyword researching is indeed essential to SEO as this can either be of help or could destroy your search engine results standing. Good keywords will boost your website rating and not-so-good keywords or black hat SEO strategy like excessive usage may cause your website be suspended due to spamming. As for the tools, I too is using market samurai for keyword searching and I think it’s the best keyword tool from among the rest.
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I’m a big fan of SEM Rush for keyword research, which can be used along the free version of traffic travis to get a pretty good handle on how competitive a keyword might be. I don’t think you should be put off too much by high competition or low search volume, though.
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Google has just changed their keyword page for SEO research and it sucks BIG TIME. There’s no way to get to the previous interface and the new one is awful. You can’t see the list of keywords all together like you could before.
Keyword research is very important for SEO. Once we find correct keywords it’s easy to achieve success. I really enjoyed this video tutorial.thanks.
Thanks for the tips regarding yelp listings. I was finding ways to promote my business and was opting to use yelp as a advertisement tool. However, I needed to find a 3rd party advice on how to use it because I was a little bit skeptical on the reviews. I will always keep in mind the list that you posted. Thanks again!
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Well done Suzanne. I love video tutorial and your post really help me understand keyword research.
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When doing keyword research, it’s helps to try and distinguish “commercial intentionality”. Some keywords can seem like good bets based on high search/ low competition, but the searchers simply are not “buyers”. And that’s something that software is yet to be that useful on determining!
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Susan … that’s a great point! When I do my keyword research I always first determine where I’m trying to drive someone before I choose. If I’m doing article marketing I don’t necessarily need to rank for buying terms but rather for informational terms … but for a product/services sales page I only choose “buying” phrases. Thanks for the helping comment
Thank you for superb video guide. I’m still in process of getting the grasp on all the things that need to be done correctly for my site and always hear that keyword research is a must, but too often – not enough information on how to do it.
Your video covers it well, thank you!
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Great video.Thanks for your useful sharing
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Hi Suzanne, Just wanted to say i really enjoyed this video. You present very well and made things very easy to understand.
Thanks again,
- Jenny.
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It is really educating video on keyword research which is most important part of SEO. Thanks, Well for Most and First part of SEO is Key Word Research that provide the direction of furhter.
I have just started my blog about working moms and I know that I have very high competition. To look for my keywords, I used Market Samurai. You are right when you said that keywords are very important, however, it also depends on your chosen niche. Some niches has already very high competition on good keywords.
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I still need to learn a lot about keywords research.. thanks for sharing your video.
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Thank you very much for this video tutorial Suzanne. I’m a small business owner who is trying to learn SEO and this post has definitely helped me! Please post more
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Thank you so much for such great info. Really its very helpful for me
Very interesting…It helps to understand how it woks….Today I prefer to use the special tools such as Market Samurai for such purposes
People need to spend more time doing domain research, I see some horrific domains going after pretty heavy keywords.
This really help me. I subscribed and can’t wait to your next video..thanks for sharing your knowledge.
nice to share this
I;m very interesting to learn this..thanks for sharing.
HI suzzane I really like your tutoarial and always searching for it really understandable and simple Thanks for your sharing really appreciating keep it up
Thanks for sharing this great video tutorial about the keyword research as i am a newbie blogger i got the information which i want thank you.
Hello,
I read many blogs like yours and inspired with them all. Thanks for this blog.
I have few blogs running now. I started optimizing my blog few months back.
Could you give some idea about Google’s latest PR updates? When are they usually update? Is this updated things can be accessed online?
I would like to seek your opinion about my blog sites (URLs mentioned below)
1. http://www.fitness-center.in ( Blogs about Fitness and health)
2. http://www.collegeezzay.blogspot.com (Investment blog primarily)
Awaiting for your response.
Cheers!
Salm
Like your way and tips to search keywords, now a days am learning about on-page SEO and about keyword searching, after read your post i think i better understand about these things and now i can search good keywords for rank them.
Nice write up about keyword research just want to add that you can also choose high CPC keywords if your blog will be monetizing through Adsense.
Vins
Twitter: spamsos
August 15, 2011 at 11:33 am
Hi Suzanne,
do you have some rough numbers on the percentage of people clicking on the first result? Is it realisitc to say if there are 10000 searches a month, that you’ll get 7000 visitors a month if your site ranks #1?
One thing I do is I always try to figure out if the first results that come up for a keyword have been linked to from other pages and with what keywords. A lot of times a site that doesn’t even have the keyword in the title stays on top for years and years and I find it useful to determine if it’s difficult to take their spot or not.
Hey this is great stuff for me.
I am new to SEO and have lots of things to learn now this type of post helps me a lot.
Twitter: pccarencure
September 6, 2011 at 8:11 am
Hi Suzanne,
Its a very informative post. Really great video. It helped me a lot to learn many minute things about KW research. Thanks for sharing this video.
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Do you do much SEO for long tail keywords? I have always blogged using those keywords, which is fairly successful for me. But sometimes I feel like the blog posts aren’t ranking high enough.
The smart way is to use Keywords to find keyword combinations that have a low number of AdWords and Overture campaigns. The lower the number, the less you have to bid to achieve high rankings.
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Just want to add that you can also choose high CPC keywords if your blog will be monetizing through Adsense.
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very interesting to learn this..thanks for sharing.
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