When writing your content for your blog or article you want to do some keyword research. The reason for doing keyword research is to know roughly how many people are looking for what you are writing about and also to give you an idea how much competition you have.
I don`t see any reason to target high traffic keywords if they have high competition and are almost impossible to rank in Google and other search engines. Keywords that consist of one or two words often have a lot of competition and are hard to rank. Targeting long tail keywords with 3 + words will be much easier to rank.
Another reason I like going after long tail keywords are that people are often further along in the buying circle. Let me give you an example.
If I am looking for running shoes, my first search in Google will most likely be ”running shoes” at this point though I am just looking around to see what`s available read reviews and so on, I am not very likely to buy anything.
My next search might be ”womens nike running shoes” now I am getting closer to know what I want and also closer to purchasing. Searching for NIKE Women’s Lunareclipse +3 now I know what I want and I am likely to buy.
Now the keyword “running shoes” will have lots more traffic than “Nike women`s lunareclips +3” but the last keyword is more likely to earn you commission…
High traffic, low competition and late in buying cycle is of course the ultimate. I will target keywords though with low traffic, low competition and late in buying cycle as well.
Get Keywords Ideas
There are many places to get keyword ideas. Here are 3 places I use.
Google Search
I use the search in Google to get ideas.
I type in my main keyword in this case “running shoes for women” and Google will give me additional ideas.
This technique is often referred to as the Alphabet soup technique.
I also use some free tools.
Google Adwords
Here i type in my keyword idea and the Google Adwords tool will give me a whole list of new ideas to dig down into and research.
Here is an example using Google Adwords.
You can sign up for a free account. This will not only give you keyword ideas. This is also the tool I use to see how many people are searching for certain things. This is an estimate but it will give you a rough idea at least.
Keyword Researcher
Another tool that I use is Keyword Researcher. This tool is kind of based on the alphabet soup technique, it`s a little bit more advanced though and will give you lots of great ideas for your niche.
They have both a free version and a paid version. The free version will give you keyword ideas upto a certain letter, where the paid version (1 time fee) will give you all the ideas.
So in our example this is some keywords this tool came up with.
It will go through the alphabet and give me many useful ideas.
What I do is I use this tool to get the ideas. The keywords are all based on people typing these keywords in to Google so people are searching these. I then take the massive lists that I get from the tool within seconds and head over to Google Adwords to see how many people are searching each keyword…
This will give me a great list to work with.
Competition
So when I have my keywords how do I know if they are high or low competition keywords? If you do a search in Google this is the number that will show for ” NIKE Women’s Lunareclipse +3”
23,200 results that is a lot of competition.
If we want to check the ”real” competition, sites that are actually targeting this specific keyword then the number is different.
To do that we type in “nike women`s lunareclipse +3” using the “”.
Our real competition is only 4…
With 4 real competitors it should not be very hard to rank some content for that keyword.
So that`s how I find keywords, check how much traffic they get and how much competition they have. Hope that answered some of your keyword research questions.
What is your preferred keyword research technique?
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