How to Easily Perform Keyword Researching for Your SEO Needs
This is a guest post by Debbie of SEO New York.
It’s no secret that in order to obtain and maintain a high ranking for your web pages in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages – the pages that come up when someone searches for a certain word or phrase) you need to use targeted words, known as keywords, in specific places in your article.
This is known as search engine optimization or SEO. The problem is, you don’t know what word or words people are searching for without doing a bit of keyword research. Several people have written books and even entire courses on how to do keyword research properly, but the basics are pretty straightforward.
How to Find Popular Keywords
To find popular keywords for your specific niche, you need to put yourself in your target market’s shoes for a minute. Your target market is the specific demographic of people who really want or need your product. You need to think the way your target market thinks to come up with the most relevant keywords they might use to search for your products. Once you create a list of several keyword possibilities, it’s time to find a keyword research tool to help you determine the popularity of your choices.
Popular Keyword Research Tools
One of the most popular – and easiest to use – keyword research tools is operated by Google. The Google keyword tool is free to use and offers plenty of usable information to help determine quality keywords for your niche.
To use the Google keyword tool, you simply type in your keyword and hit the “Get keyword ideas” button. The tool will generate a list of related keywords and provide search data about each keyword. This data includes advertiser competition (how much people are paying for that particular keyword in Google Adwords), monthly search volume, (how often that particular keyword is searched on Google in your targeted country and language), the global monthly search volume (how often the keyword is searched worldwide) and whether the match type is exact or broad ranged.
By looking through the list of related keywords, you can find selections that have a high search number, but a lower cost for Google Adwords. This keyword tool can be used even if you don’t use Google Adwords. By looking for keywords with a lower cost, you are probably going to find words that have a little less competition from big business competition.
Other popular keyword research tools that work in the same way as Google’s tool include Wordtracker and SEO Book. Each of these tools has slightly different information, but they are all good tools for narrowing down keywords.
Determining Your Competition
One way to determine the competition for a particular keyword is to look at the data in the keyword tool. The advertiser competition figures and graph are great indicators for how much competition your keyword has. You can also type your keyword directly into Google search and see how many results turn up. The trick is to find keywords that have a large volume of searches and a lower volume of competitive pages. If you find a keyword with less than 500.000 competing pages, you stand a good chance of ranking for that keyword, if you optimize your content properly.
Conclusion
Keyword research can be time consuming, but it is critical to Search Engine Optimization and getting your website pages to rank near the top of the Search Engine Results Pages. Taking the time to determine the popular keywords for your marketing niche will definitely pay off in site visitors and sales.
Article Written By Debbie
Debbie Dragon is a freelance writer providing articles for Trace Media - an SEO New York company specializing in getting websites up, and making sure they perform to their full potential through the use of .Debbie has written 1 superb article(s) on this blog
October 15, 2009
4:27 pm
Google keyword too is a really helpful tool, it’s what I use.
What I do for keyword research is…..
1. Find keywords with less than 100 searches a day in google’s keyword tool. I use the exact not broad match.
2. Enter those keywords into market samurai’s keyword research tool and look for keywords in title competition to be under 1000 pages.
Blaine Bullman´s last blog ..Rookie Blogger Of The Year Contest Begins
October 15, 2009
4:39 pm
It’s good to go into the niche with very little competition rather than something which is hard to achieve.
Thanks for commenting and re-tweeting
October 15, 2009
6:36 pm
i needed that tool very badly…my keywords arent performing well at all
October 15, 2009
7:55 pm
It’s really time consuming, that’s for sure. But even if you find a keyword with less than 500,000 competiting results, you still need to make sure that there’s a lot of searches on the keyword too. Not much fun being on page 1 when competing against 500,000 other sites, if there’s only 200 searches a month for it.
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Firefox 3.6 Will Support Accelerometers – Beta Release Tomorrow?
October 16, 2009
12:04 am
Keyword targeting is very important, however, before targeting it you should do proper research. Targeting less competitive but searchable keyword is important, that is why in some webmaster forums you hear people complainning of ranking well but with less traffic, if nobody is searching for the keywords that means you are only ranking high with nobody searching it.
Thanks for the post.
Biodun @ Webmaster Forum UK´s last blog ..Data storage issue rethink
October 16, 2009
12:43 am
Good post I personally use Google Keyword Tool as I find it the easiest to use!
sbunting108@photography blog´s last blog ..Gloucester Cathedral
October 16, 2009
6:23 am
Keyword Tool is very popular for researching KW and it’s nice that Google makes it so readily available. In the long term, these long tail keywords can really drive traffic to a site and are worth optimizing for.
Mike@coolest gadgets´s last blog ..Nintendo Wii Cyberbike
October 16, 2009
6:54 am
yeah.. google keyword tools is free for everyone and yet very powerful provide by google itself.
EarningStep´s last blog ..How to Make a connection with your blog reader – increase your blog quality instantly part four
October 16, 2009
11:16 am
I use Market Samurai for keyword Research and SEO. Highly recommended.
October 19, 2009
8:37 pm
I believe using Adwords tool for keyword research is a huge mistake. I never used other tools so yes, I am using Adwords tool, but just to see related keywords. It happened many times that the real traffic I was receiving for words I was first on google, to be very far away from what their tool was “saying”. So use Adwords numbers carefully. You might spend months to rank for a word to realize than you have just a few visitors a month. Pretty not cool..
Stan The Man´s last blog ..How To Grow Taller – 7 Basic Tips
October 21, 2009
8:33 am
The Google tool with the exact match filter is the best keyword search tool available.
October 22, 2009
8:16 am
Google keyword tool is best free service which so many useful and I suggest all people always use “Exact” match when you research keyword because you can estimate search result as accuracy. Try it!
October 26, 2009
7:29 pm
Googles Free Tool doesn’t need to be perfectly accurate to be useful. It should only be used to give you an idea of search volume in relation to other keywords so you can say that “womens shoes” get double the traffic as “mens shoes”.
If you want exact numbers on searches, run an Adwords campaign – you’ll find out exactly but it’ll cost you.
Jim
SEO Software For Mac´s last blog ..How To Optimize Your Website To Increase Web Traffic
October 28, 2009
6:08 am
i use an additional google keyword tool called GOOGLE INSIGHT SEARCH. It tells me which keywords have reached a breakout search level and that helps my campaign a lot
ay´s last blog ..Adsense Money Tips: Who Else Wants To Make Money With Adsense?
November 1, 2009
8:42 pm
Google KW is a useful tool but is really only for getting a general idea of search volume in relation to other keywords. Further research might be needed to really narrow down where your words fall in terms of competing pages. Sometimes changing one word out for a similar one that is more highly searched with fewer competing pages can have big SEO results.