Effective Keyword Research - How to Do Basic Keyword Research

Why is it necessary to research a site's topic before starting? How to do basic effective keyword research and pick profitable keywords? This article went into detail with step by step picture illustrations.

Effective keyword research is tedious and time consuming but it is the paramount step to building a successful blog or website. And so it is worth all the time it requires. If you fail here, you have failed in your dream to make money online.

Effective Keyword Research, Why So Important?

The reason we come online to publish our content whether on a blog or website is to be able to share our passion, knowledge and experience with people and make money while at it.

On the other hand, others come online to seek for information on the areas we excel in. If we just come online, set up a site and start publishing posts on topics that interest us, no one will find it to read. The web is a big place and though can be accessed anywhere in the world, no one will know your site exist except you are able to put it in their front everyday.

Everyone looking for information on certain subjects come to search engines online and enter a search term and the search engines display a list of blogs/websites with content related to that search term (known as keyword).

Meaning that if you can find out what the people interested in the topic you want to write about uses in the search engines to look for information on your niche and strategically apply those words or keywords on our site and pages, you have the chance of getting free targeted search traffic to our site.

So effective basic keyword research is paramount because :

It tells the search engines and your readers what your blog is about.

Helps the search engine to rank your site and pages high for the keywords you targeted (depending on other factors).

When that happens you will regularly be getting free targeted search traffic to your site. The more targeted your traffic is, the higher the chance of them clicking through to your money generating sites.

This is why winning at the search engines have become a daily struggle for online Infopreneurs and Internet marketers.

Now you see how important keyword research is to your overall blog success, let's discuss how to do keyword research.

Effective Keyword Research Process

Determine your Area of Expertise

Blogging helps you to brand yourself in a niche you know well and can write on. So ask yourself: What is my passion that others will find valuable? What knowledge do I have that I can help people with? what experience do I have?

The article on blogging ideas helps you brainstorm deeper on a possible blog or site topic.

Write down Possible topics

With the article above you can come up with 2 or 3 topics that you are familiar with. When you do, note them down and start your research on each of them.

How to do Keyword Research - A Practical Example

Pick Possible Site Concept Keywords

Before I started an effective keyword research for this website's topic, I thought deeply about areas I am really good at, that I can provide value rich content on. I came up with:

Relationship advice (My passion)

Marriage dating (My passion)

Blogging (From knowledge and experience)

These words I came up with at this stage is called possible Site Concept keywords. They are also called specific keywords.

The one I decided to go with later after a deep research formed my site's overall topic - Blogging (Site concept keyword or theme)

.

Effective Keyword Research - Brainstorm for Related Keywords

You are now going to research deeply on the 2 or 3 topics you already wrote down to find the one that would be most profitable generally to you using a keyword research tool.

In my case, Relationship advice, Marriage dating and Blogging

I used a more advanced and very effective tool which is the SBI Brainstorm It! tool .

With that I was able to do all 3 keyword research at once. I entered the three keywords (referred to as seed words) at once and it brought back hundreds of keywords related to the ones I entered for the search, along with informational data about each keywords.

The Demand (also known as Monthly searches) shows the number of times each term or keyword is typed into the search engines in a month.

Supply (also known as competition) indicate the number of pages currently existing on the web for each of the keyword.

Profitability column indicate how profitable each keyword is, putting demand and supply and perhaps other factors into consideration. Usually the higher the profitability number the better.

The SBI Brainstorm It! tool really makes your work easier. To pick a really profitable keyword for your site will take some weeks of deep researching but with the SBI Brainstorm It! tool you can be done in few days or a week, except you choose to take your time with it.

A good keyword research tool, naturally equals an effective keyword research because you need as many information as you can get about a keyword to make your final decision on a blog topic. And it is only an advanced tool that can give you as many information as you need.

Unfortunately the tool I used only comes with Site Build It! tools . Site Build It! is an all in one site building tool. Meaning to get the tool, you must order for Site Build It! , which I understand may not be what you're after now. So I recommend you use Wordtracker keyword research tool , it is the closest tool to SBI Brainstorm It!

You can pay for one month subscription for $69 and do your research. Currently Wordtracker offers a free full featured 7-day trial.

If you feel you can't spare the cash, then you can use free tools.

I must warn you that free keyword tools give very limited data about a keyword. Consider investing in an advanced tool if you want to be able to compete fairly in a niche. If however, you're just too tight for cash, then start with the Google free keyword research tool .

Better yet, use the Sitesell's Pet project search tool called Search It! (free for use).

It integrates different free but effective keyword research tools to ensure you do all the research necessary from one place. In fact the Search It! tool is more than a research tool. It's includes free tools that you can use for every step of building a successful site.

Some of the categories it covers for research are: Brainstorming, Competition, Domain names, Site Legalities, Reference library for content, Link Building, Monetization and much more. The Google Adword Keyword Tool is part of the tools it uses for brainstorming, so it's better you use the Search It! tool, if you can't afford an advanced tool for your research.

How to Use the Search It! tool for Effective Keyword Research

Step one is where you select the category depending on the information you want.

Step two is where you select from the drop down the search tool you want to use for the information you want.

Step three you enter your keyword

Step four you enter a secondary keyword. But this doesn't apply to all research. So when using it, just enter step 1 - 3 and click Search It!. If the step four is necessary for the research, it will tell you what you're supposed to enter there.

An illustration of how to use the Search It! tool

The research you want to do at this stage is "Brainstorming". So go to the Search It! tool, for step 1 select "Brainstorming", step 2 select "Google Adword Keyword Tool", enter your keyword in step 3 and click Search It!.

When you click Search It! it takes you to Google Adword Research Tool. Where it says "Word or Phrase (one per line)" enter your keyword, type in the CAPTHA and click "Search".

Effective Keyword Research - Keyword filtering Process

Study the data you have gathered and look out for:

High Demand/Low competition Keywords

That is keywords with high Demand (Global monthly search or Local monthly search if you want data from a specific country) but with reasonable Supply (competition).

Sorry the image couldn't show all the data.

Using Google Adwords Keyword Tool stick with keywords with Global or Monthly Searches of a little above 3,000 using the "Exact" Match Type. Usually the default is on "Broad". So un-tick that and thick "Exact".

It is important you use the "Exact" Match Type for your research because that tells you the exact people searching for that keyword as it is written. Unlike the Broad Match Type that gives the number of times people make a search that contain either of the words in the keyword entered.

If I use Broad to run a search on "Relationship Advice" it will include data of those who search for "Relationship Advice", those who search for "Relationship" and those who search for "Advice" which is not really the information I want.

After you click on "Search" in the Google Adword Keyword Tool, information for that search will be displayed in five columns:

Keyword

Competition

Global Monthly Searches

Local Monthly Searches

Local Search Trends

You can choose to add more or remove some information columns by clicking on "Columns" just above Local Search Trends.

The data you really need are:

Competition

Global Monthly Searches (could also be Local Monthly Searches depending on what you want).

Estimated Avg. CPC. Estimated Avg. CPC is the highest amount of money being bided for each keyword by advertisers.

We are adding this information because we will need it when we start evaluating the monetary profit potential of each keyword.

Go through your keyword list carefully from beginning to the end. Find and pick out (just tick each of them) keywords that has over 3,000 monthly search with a CPC of at least $1.

Effective Keyword Research - Determine Competition and Find more Related Keywords

Determine Competition and Most Profitable Keywords

Place your cursor by each of the boxes indicating competition for each of the keyword, and it will show either "High Competition" "Medium Competition" "Low Competition". It is better to stick with Low competition as a beginner so you can easily win it at the search engines.

So you will be more interested in keywords with Searches above 3000, with low competition and CPC (Cost Per Click) of above $1.

Find More Related Keywords

Re-research on some of the major high profitability keywords you picked out at step one. You do this by simply entering that keyword in the search box and click "Search".

To illustrate, say you pick out "relationship advice for men" as one of the keywords that is profitable from your first research. Now to deep in more into this keyword and find sub-topics (related keywords) that are profitable, enter "relationship advice for men" into the search box and then filter for more profitable keywords as you did before.

Do this for the most profitable keywords you find from your first keyword research. This helps you to find hundreds of related keywords to your topic. You will then pick one that is profitable and you think fits well with the overall content that your site will cover. That becomes your Site concept keyword.

While you pick out hundreds of related profitable keywords to your overall Site content keyword that you will then build pages on.

Organize your Profitable Keywords

Use Microsoft Excel to save your profitable keywords along with all the relevant information you've found about them, because every now and then you will refer to it.

You can download profitable keywords that you're interested in from each of the search you make directly from the tool. You can download keywords in CSV, Excel, TSV, XML, Zipped CSV.

Research Deeper on Competition

Your goal is to get high demand with as low competition as possible keywords.

Google research tool showing low competition for a keyword can't really be relied on. So go back to Search It! tool and choose "Competition" from the Step one drop down menu. And use the various Search type on step two to dig deeper on the competition for each keyword.

Your goal here is to ensure you can rank for each of the keyword you target. So when looking into the competition for a particular keyword, look out for the number but also investigate further on the sites currently on the first page of Google to ensure they are beatable.

When a keyword has a high number of searches but a high competition, go to your list and remove it. There's no need writing on a subject you can't rank for. Except Of course it's a critical subject to your topic.

Make sure you always read the guidelines that is associated with every research step you take. They guide you on how to make the most out of each research you choose to do.

Keep adding Profitable keywords to your List

Continue to dig deeper into interesting keywords. Your goal is to build a list of hundreds of keywords related to your possible site concept keyword that will form content for your blog for at least 6 months.

Only save keywords that you are satisfied with. In terms of your knowledge about the keyword, its demand and competition. When you have found hundred plus keywords, then you can move on to the next step of effective keyword research. That is to find out how much your major keywords are worth.

That's it on how to do basic effective keyword research. It is a tedious and never-ending task. Part of your daily blogging task will be to find more profitable keywords you can work with. It's a lot of tiring work but working with the right set of keywords is a strong factor that will determine your online success.

Continue reading Effective Keyword Research (Part 2)