So we all know that keyword research is essential when it comes to internet marketing. Â When you’re about to embark on an epic SEO or PPC campaign, it is important to have all your keyword research done well. Â The difference between solid keyword research and unpolished keyword research is worlds apart – not doing it right can tear your campaign apart. Â So let’s get started with 3 tips:
Pay attention to the top 10 competitors
Let’s say you’ve done your research and you’ve found the perfect word — there’s almost no competition and the word is highly searched for.  However, there’s one more obstacle: the top 10 competitors.  You need to pay attention to how many inbound links these pages are receiving and examine the Page Rank.  If there is an overwhelming number of links for every single page in the top 10 and they are fortified with Page Rank scores above 5+, you might want to look elsewhere. A good tool to track Page Rank and number of backlinks is SEOQuake.
Take advantage of the long tail
Often times, we get get excited about our “money” or “golden” keywords that we neglect the long tail keywords. Â We over optimize for that one keyword we’ve been focusing on without stopping to think that the long tail can often times bring very targeted traffic that might well in fact convert better. Â Long tail keywords can be hidden gems that can help your site out greatly.
Don’t forget to use exact match when using Google Keywords Tool!
One of my greatest blunders when I first started out was using broad match for all of my keyword research queries. This proved to be a fatal mistake because I optimized for words that I thought were getting 6000 visitors a month(using broad match). I only later found out that the keyword was getting 150 visitors a month when I learned to use exact match. Making the same mistake that I made could cost you months of time!
31 comments
looking for keywords are already getting pretty hard. if the competition on keywords is just, let’s say, less than 500K, i would go for that. work with long tailed keywords too. they work pretty well.
I use market samurai for all my keyword and seo needs and it does the job extremely well.
is market samurai a free tool ?
No I think it costs about $150. It does a lot more than just keyword research though. So it is a very worthwhile product to purchase.
$150 is a good amount..need to check if its really worth that much amount…
what are its other uses..
Yes $150 is lots of amount it would be nice if there free or demo version is available for test drive.
Market Samurai has a free version and I used to use it for KW research before, I still prefer using Google KW Tool =) Some stuff that we need to realize in piking a KW to use are
1. long tail KW are being typed by those who are researching
2. shorter ones with product name are for the ones that are considering buying
3. I found out that using KW with “buy” + KW is more effective.. coz people searching for it are already in the “buying mode”
Hope that helps =)
yes I also use marked samurai and for comparator is using keywords elite 2.
Hi Eric,
The longtail is one of the best way to get new clients, write 4-5 article about the same thing, but use all the keywords who is not the best and popularly words for the title, don’t be afraid to sometimes use words with a little less visitors, because you will often come first or second in SERP directly then and you get much more visitors than to have the best words with harder competitions and you maybe only is 6-8 in the SERPS. My site has over 3.000 first and second positions in the SERP by the longtail system and we get many, many clients that way.
good tips, when you looking for keyword be sure that is that top 10 has not many backlinks and they are not authority sites.
The exact match is really useful and gives u real idea about the keyword usage and stats.
Yes it is amazing how many people naively use broad match for their keyword research. It is partly Google’s fault for defaulting to broad match, but they want to inflate their numbers to advertisers. I do still use broad match for some of the initial research to see where there are clusters of overlapping keywords to target.
You are right about that.
I am thinking that Google SERP algorithm might also be doing a broad match to show the results. That way, even if your keywords doesn’t exactly match but you still have chances of getting displayed.
hmm..exact match is the one should be looking for..
thanx for this nice article…some nice tips..
Good tips! It would’ve been enough had you only mentioned #3. It is absolutely essential when doing keyword research that you use “exact match”. I’ve found that using SEO Powersuite is a tremendous help in overall SEO work. It is pricey (at least for me!) but cuts hours off many basic SEO tasks. Thanks for the tips.
Marty
Thanks for all the wonderful comments guys! 🙂
@Property Marbella – I agree, targeting any relevant long tail keywords will help in the long run. SEO should never really stop as there are always new opportunities waiting 🙂
I never tried long tail keywords….i used to think they are not as effective as the exact keyword.
Thanks for sharing keyword research tips.
Excellent tips. I will also add that paying attention to the avg cpc can tell you a lot about the keyword.
Great tips here. I am still pretty new to keyword research and SEO, this article has certainly highlight a few good points. Market Samurai? Okay, will check that out!
Keyword is most important to get ranked any website in top search engines.
Having a broad a list of seed keywords is extremely important, because if you don’t start your keyword brainstorming off broadly, you might miss some great keywords that are easy to rank for.
I would like to thanks for providing these keyword research tips.
having longtail is an advantage in ranking since short ones are already saturated , 2nd assessing the comepetition is something you learn by experience …
nice article
Excellent keyword research tips. Keyword selection is important part of seo and exact match is good feature.
Nice article Eric..With time one thing which I learned by targeting long tail keywords you can drive more search engine traffic..Though one need to understand which long tail word keywords are going to most effective..and convert your traffic into sale..!!
Keyword Research is the most important aspect of any marketing campaign.
Nice article…long tail keywords helps a lot to get good traffic…
One thing I always kept in my mind while doing research on keyword and is that to focus on long tails keywords as its related exact or competitive keyword will automatically optimize in search engine. So, I search some long tails keywords and work on that.
These 3 Important Tips On Keyword Research is really good.I wiil keep then in mind…
Thanks
Raj……..!
Keyword research for a newcomer can be an over whelming task especially if you are in a heavily concentrated niche or vertical. That list of keywords and long tail phrases could easily span out a few thousand words and it can happen very quickly.
Agree with ericosiu,
Keyword research is so important for your business.
Without it you can finish up with beatufully built website and zero traffic.
Very interesting article eric, keywords like you say are massively important in getting you website up to a high ranking in seo but are equally as useful to customers as when they hit a page they can straight away see relevant terms in the right places and not lots of randam text which could be irrelevant or in many cases duplicated.