Fridays with Vicky 14

Where to Get Keyword Ideas and How to Use Them

In today`s post, Your Guide: Keyword Research Explained, we will be talking about keywords.

• 5 ways to get keyword ideas
• How to decide if it is a good keyword or not
• How to use Keywords

Keywords are simply words used to help Google and other search engines find your content and list it under certain relevant words.

Before we dive into the keyword research there are 3 important things to remember:

1. Keywords are important BUT don`t over do it or over think it. Always let the content be in focus not the keywords.

2. There will be REAL people reading your content. The experience for those readers should be your main focus, make sure the keyword make sense.

3. Don`t over use the keyword, no keyword stuffing. It`s not good for the readers and it will not benefit your search engine rankings. You do want to keep the article relevant to the keyword though.

 

Why Keywords?

When you do a search in Google and other search engines, you type in your search phrase in the search bar. In this case I used ”make money with stocks”. For Google to know what to list in the organic listings they look at a lot of things and one them is keywords.

The organic listing section in Google is free and this is where you want your site to show up.

 

5 Ways to Get Keyword Ideas

1. Websites

There are many ways to get ideas for keywords. You can read blogs you enjoy to get new ideas. NEVER EVER steal content or copy though. Get an idea, research it and turn it into your own material with your own spin on it.

 

2. Google

Google is another good place to get ideas. Type in what you are looking for and Google will generate more ideas for you. Let`s use the make money idea again

As you can see Google suggest – make money online, from home, fast…

I would suggest that you have a word document where you write down all the keyword ideas that you find. This will come in handy when you research if they are good keywords to use or not.

You can also use the alphabet soup technique with Google. In our example we would type in make money a

As you can see Google now gives you suggestions starting with A

Make money at home, apps, as a teen and at home online.

Continue with B, go through the alphabet and you will have tons of suggestions.

This can be a time consuming way to go through the alphabet using Google. There is an easier way to do it…

 

3. Ubersuggest

A free tool that I use on occasion is Ubersuggest, it will help doing what we just used Google for. You type in a keyword and it will line up suggestions alphabetically.

If I type in “make money” into this program they give me 370 suggestions.

As you can see this is a very helpful tool that will give you tons of ideas with the click of a button.

 

4. Keyword Researcher

Keyword Researcher can help you with tons of suggestions. It gives me angles I never though about. After a while when you have been writing for your blog you might find it hard to come up with new content ideas or angles. If you use the Keyword Researcher tool you will never run out of ideas.

If I ad the keyword “make money” to the Keyword Researcher tool I can choose if I want suggestions before, after or in the middle of the keyword.

 

I can also choose the search dept. In this case I chose A-Z. If you pick Aa – Zz you will get thousands of suggestions, I would suggest starting with the A – Z, if you run out of ideas then go a head and use the more in dept version.

I must say that this is one of the most in dept keyword idea tool that I have found.

Click the blue arrow and the search begins…

520 suggestions…

It will give you a lot of different angels on how to make money.

Keyword researcher is a premium tool and there is a lot more to it than just getting keyword ideas but that will be another post. I have found the keyword tool to be very useful and well worth the money.

You can check out the keyword researcher tool here.

5. Jaaxy

Although I use Jaaxy to find new ideas this is my main source to decide weather the keyword is a useful / good one or not. But more about that in a bit…

Jaaxy will give you ideas and alternations on keywords as well. Let`s use the same keyword as above “make money”.

A long list shows with suggestions;

The list goes on, the great thing with Jaaxy is that you can dig deeper within a specific suggestion. So say that we want more suggestions on “ways make money fast” if we click that we get more suggestions.

There you have even more specific suggestions.

Jaaxy is a premium tool but they do have a free trial so you can try it out and see if it is for you or not.

So now when you have tons of keywords how do you know if it is a good keyword or not?

 

What`s a Good Keyword – What Keywords to Use

The ideal keyword has a high search volume with little competition.

Even though a keyword does not have a high search volume, if it is highly targeted it can be very beneficial to try and rank for anyway. These keywords are usually longer and there are many names on them, long tail keywords, low hanging fruit are just two examples.

These longer keywords are often easier to rank for + the search is very targeted.

If you go after a very broad keyword like ”make money” for example that will be very hard to rank for in the search engines because of the competition. Sure it has a lot of traffic but if you have little chance of ranking for it then you might as well focus on something with less traffic and less competition.

Also the more targeted the keyword is the more likely your content will relate with the visitor. If somebody search for ”make money” they could be looking for many different things, it could be make money online, it could be stocks it could be make money with a lemonade stand.

If you target a longer keyword you will attract visitors looking for something very specific . If you rank for ”make money with a lemonade stand”, if somebody search for that and land on your page the content will be highly relevant to what they are looking for.

Think about your own search habits. Think about the last time you purchased/looked for something, what did your searches look like?

Often times the longer the keyword is the more specific the search is.

 

Use a Keyword Tool to Analyze the Keywords

When you have found all these great ideas and keywords how do you decide if they are good keywords or not?

I use Jaaxy to analyze the keywords that I find. It is very easy to use plus it gives me all the information that I need to decide if I should use a keyword or not.

Say that one of my ideas generated was ”ways to make money at home for moms”. I want to analyze the keyword and see if I want to use it or not.

I type the phrase into Jaaxy. When I type that in I get all kinds of numbers that I need to take a closer look at.

Let`s look at the numbers.

Let me explain what all these means:

Avg – This is the average search volume for this keyword / month.

Traffic –  This is the estimated traffic you could get for a first spot listing in the serach engines.

QSR – Quoted search results – so this is the competing websites in the search engines.

KQI –  Keyword quality indicator – Green light means that it`s a good keyword, yellow it`s an ok keyword and red means it is a poor keyword in terms of rankings.

SEO– This is a score based on traffic and competition, how likely you will be able to rank the keyword on first page, 100 is great 0 is poor.

Domains – here you can do a domain search on that keyword.

So the average traffic is 96 monthly, if I land the number 1 spot I get approximately 17 visitors from this one keyword monthly. I have 21 competitors, green light and a pretty good 93 SEO score. This is a keyword I will go after.

I usually aim for a little higher search volume and try to stay under 100 – 150 competitors. Obviously the more traffic the better :). You can check out Jaaxy here.

 

It`s a Numbers Game 

The key here is to rank for multiple long tail keywords and through them get good traffic over time.

If you submit 2 articles a week that`s around 100 articles in a year… It all ads up.

If your content is well written and helpful the search engines will not only rank you for the specific keyword but also for other related keywords.

 

How to Use the Keywords

So now when I have found a keyword to use, how and where do I use it?

I use most my keywords for content on my own site. I write posts and pages targeting the keywords.

There are 3 places in posts and pages, where I use my keyword:

1. Title
2. First sentence or paragraph
3. Last sentence or paragraph

Depending on the length of the article I might use it in one of the subtitles as well. It also depends on the keyword it self. If it is a product name for example you will be using it through out the article. Don`t over do it though, even if it is a product name try to use it in variations.

So if we take the example ”ways to make money with a website”.

I would come up with an engaging relevant title to my article. Something like this:

7 Ways to Make Money with a Website or Blog

I hope you found this article helpful Your Guide: Keyword Research Explained – How to Get Keyword Ideas and How to Use Them.

What are your keyword tips and tricks? I would love to hear from you please leave a comment below. As always if you have any questions I will be happy to answer them.

Have a productive day,

Vicky