The SEO Keyword

Research

Series

By

Jon-Marc Spatcher

The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part One

So, what are keywords? - Keywords are the words (or phrases) that someone types into a search engine in

order to find results about a particular niche. However, different keywords bring up different results.

Additionally, the number of people using a keyword differs making certain keywords more valuable than

others. For this reason, understanding keywords and the way in which they can alter the success of your

website is vital. Choosing the right keywords is essential to ensure you gain the right targeted traffic to your

site.

In this series of articles I will be exploring what you need to consider when picking the right keywords for your

site to ensure your site receives the traffic it needs and you enjoy the success you deserve.

The line between success and failure online is a thin one. Success can lead to a comfortable and varied

lifestyle, but failure can lead to months of wasted effort, money and ultimately disappointment. I have seen

people succeed in marketing themselves, their companies or their products online. Although I have seen more

people fail.

I have found that the fate of a website depends on two key areas – The market they choose and the keywords

they target.

More often than not, people enter a market and fail to do the market research that is necessary to check

whether the idea they have for their business is completely viable or not. I have found that the people who

fail will follow a pattern. They simply rush in and pick a random market to target. Then, they pick random

keywords (or sometimes no keywords at all!!) and then cross their extremities and hope that it all works out.

Sadly, it largely doesn’t and the majority of these sites fail.

On the other hand, the sites that succeed will do things very differently. They will research their market very

carefully and identify the areas of a market that are the most profitable. Their keywords will be specific and

targeted to the market they researched. Finally, they will follow a tried and tested plan.

I want to see more people in the second group and enjoy a fruitful online career. In order for you to be a

success online I have produced a selection of articles that will guide you step-by-step through the process and

key elements you need to consider when picking those all important keywords. This will get you well on your

way to success with your website.

See you in Part Two of the series – The key Elements of Keyword Research.

Thanks for reading.

Jon-marc

Jon-Marc Spatcher is an internet marketer and mentor. He worked his way up the financial services

corporate ladder before deciding that it was no longer for him he set up his own online business. Since

this life changing decision he has ‘worked’ from home trying to inspire and educate others to leverage the

power of the internet and generate traffic and income to achieve their own success.

Jon-Marc enjoys socialising, football, golf and generally any sport going. He is a keen networker and

enjoys the simple delights of family and friends. Most of all, he believes in positivity and living life to the

full.

For a FREE 7 DAY BOOTCAMP visit Jon-Marc's website where you can receive a free set of video marketing

tips which will show you how to market on the internet and improve your chances of online success. This

will also give you unique access to all his latest blog posts. Alternatively, catch up with his previous posts

here.

The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part Two

The ‘Key’ Elements of Keyword Research

Welcome to Part Two of the SEO Keyword Research Series. We will be looking at the key elements of the

Keyword Research process and the important areas for you to consider ensuring that you pick the right

keywords for your website. This will give you the targeted traffic for your business to succeed.

‘What is Keyword research?’ - The easiest way to understand this is to think of the process as similar to

panning for gold in the rivers during the great gold rush. When doing this you would take a pan, you would

filter the larger rocks out and you would look to sift the heavier gold from the dirt, sand and rocks that remain

in the pan. Hopefully they would be left with a few nuggets of gold at the bottom. This is what you need to do

with Keyword Research, only your golden nuggets are the keywords to use on your website.

‘What are the Characteristics of a Keyword’ – Well, your ‘golden nuggets’ have four key elements that need to

be considered whenever you are choosing a keyword that is best suited to targeting your online business.

These are:

• Relevant – The keyword you have must be highly relevant to your business, your products or market

place you are promoting.

• Competition – It must have a level of competition that is acceptable.

• Commercial – The keyword must be commercially appealing. I.e. It must be profitable.

• Traffic – Perhaps the most obviously of the four - The Keyword must generate traffic!!!

If you fail to look at these four key elements when considering which keywords are right for your business you

run the risk of missing out on the right traffic that could produce a healthy income.

In parts three to six we will now look at these characteristics in more detail so that you understand them in

their entirety.

Thanks for reading and see you in Part Three of the series– ‘Relevant Keywords’.

Jon-Marc

Jon-Marc Spatcher is an internet marketer and mentor. He worked his way up the financial services

corporate ladder before deciding that it was no longer for him he set up his own online business. Since

this life changing decision he has ‘worked’ from home trying to inspire and educate others to leverage the

power of the internet and generate traffic and income to achieve their own success.

Jon-Marc enjoys socialising, football, golf and generally any sport going. He is a keen networker and

enjoys the simple delights of family and friends. Most of all, he believes in positivity and living life to the

full.

For a FREE 7 DAY BOOTCAMP visit Jon-Marc's website where you can receive a free set of video marketing

tips which will show you how to market on the internet and improve your chances of online success. This

will also give you unique access to all his latest blog posts. Alternatively, catch up with his previous posts

here.

The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part Three

Relevant Keywords

In Part two of the SEO Keyword Research Series we looked at the four ‘Key’ elements that you need to

consider each and every time you pick a keyword for your business. This is to ensure that you are driving the

right traffic to your site, providing you with the sales and income you want (nah, deserve!!). These four

elements were Relevant, Competition, Commercial and Traffic. We will be looking at the first of these in more

detail – ‘Relevant Keywords’.

More often than not, people will over look the need to ensure that their keywords are relevant. They will

often choose random keywords and hope that it brings in the numbers. These may even prove successful to a

degree, often providing high levels of traffic or a high ranking in the Google keyword search. This high level of

traffic is useless if it does not produce sales. No sales. No income. This is all because the people coming to

your site are not interested in your content.

The secret is not just ‘traffic’. It is ‘Targeted Traffic’!!!

To avoid this, the content on your website needs to be directly relevant to the keywords that you are

targeting. So, you can do one of two things. Change the content. Although this seems like a laborious option.

Alternatively, you could change the keywords you are using.

To ensure you are using relevant keywords you need to consider the following:

• See what sites come up when you are entering in your keywords into a search engine. For example,

Google.

• Ask yourself – Bearing in mind your key search words would you find this site useful?

• Remove irrelevant keywords from any phrases that you are using.

• Think of the order of the words you are using – What order would a searcher put these into a search

engine in?

• Think of some positive phrases that you can use. Focus on different lay outs of words in these

phrases that are directly relevant to your niche or market. For example, ‘dog train’ and ‘train dogs’

will come up with completely different replies from a search engine.

By using these techniques, along with the other 3 ‘key’ elements, you are able to pan through the keywords

and obtain a more definitive set of words that are highly relevant to your product, business or market place.

Ensuring that the traffic you get is accurate, relevant and targeted to provide you with the sales you need.#

Thank you for reading and see you in Part Three – ‘Evaluating the Competition’.

Jon-Marc

Jon-Marc Spatcher is an internet marketer and mentor. He worked his way up the financial services

corporate ladder before deciding that it was no longer for him he set up his own online business. Since

this life changing decision he has ‘worked’ from home trying to inspire and educate others to leverage the

power of the internet and generate traffic and income to achieve their own success.

Jon-Marc enjoys socialising, football, golf and generally any sport going. He is a keen networker and

enjoys the simple delights of family and friends. Most of all, he believes in positivity and living life to the

full.

For a FREE 7 DAY BOOTCAMP visit Jon-Marc's website where you can receive a free set of video marketing

tips which will show you how to market on the internet and improve your chances of online success. This

will also give you unique access to all his latest blog posts. Alternatively, catch up with his previous posts

here.

The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part Four

‘Evaluating the Competition’

In Part three of the SEO Keyword Research Series we looked at ‘Relevant Keywords’. To ensure that you are

driving the right traffic to your site, providing you with the sales and income you want. This time around we

are looking at the second of the important ‘Key ‘elements. This is ‘Evaluating the competition’.

It goes without saying that one of the easiest ways to get a steady source of traffic is to get your website onto

page one of the Google Keyword Search. The issue here is this is prime online real estate. There are only ten

spots on the front page and far more than this competing for these positions.

There are two important things to consider when thinking about competition. These are:

• The amount of competition – Put simply, the number of websites competing for the page one ranking

using a particular keyword or phrase. This varies considerably depending on the keyword or phrase

used. Some have high competition i.e. lots of websites targeting a keyword. Others have low

competition i.e. few websites targeting a keyword.

• The strength of the competition – Some websites are highly optimised. They have been around for a

long time and therefore have a large number of back links into their site. Others are relatively new

and only have a few back links to them. Both of these websites may still obtain a page one ranking on

a Google keyword search depending on the keyword or phrase they target. I.e. they both target

different keywords.

Clearly, you would want your keyword or phrase to put your business up against others in an area with very

few weak, competitors. This is obviously better than using a keyword or phrase that puts you up against many,

strong competitors.

Remember, in part one I said that one of the key areas for people failing in online businesses is because they

fail to do their market research. This is especially relevant to their ‘Competition’. The company will start to

produce content for their site. They will fail to evaluate the competition. The competition is too strong. They

never reach a good ranking with the search engines and fail to get the traffic they require.

This is sad as some of these businesses have worked extremely hard to build an often very good website.

For this reason, it is imperative that a business picks it battles wisely and only chooses keywords or phrases

that give it a good chance of obtaining a front page ranking. This will lead to a healthy flow of traffic, hopefully

a good return on sales and healthy bottom line.

Thanks for reading and see you in Part five: 'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?'

Take care,

Jon-Marc

Jon-Marc Spatcher is an internet marketer and mentor. He worked his way up the financial services corporate ladder before

deciding that it was no longer for him he set up his own online business. Since this life changing decision he has ‘worked’

from home trying to inspire and educate others to leverage the power of the internet and generate traffic and income to

achieve their own success.

Jon-Marc enjoys socialising, football, golf and generally any sport going. He is a keen networker and enjoys the simple

delights of family and friends. Most of all, he believes in positivity and living life to the full.

For a FREE 7 DAY BOOTCAMP visit Jon-Marc's website where you can receive a free set of video marketing tips which will

show you how to market on the internet and improve your chances of online success. This will also give you unique access

to all his latest blog posts. Alternatively, catch up with his previous posts here.

The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part Five

'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?'

In Part four of the SEO Keyword Research Series we looked at ‘Evaluating the competition’. To recap, to

ensure that you are getting the right traffic you need to find relevant keywords and evaluate the competition.

This will ensure you are well on your way to driving the right traffic to your site and providing you with the

sales and income you want. The third of the important ‘Key ‘elements is considering the commercial aspects

of a keyword. More specifically, asking the question 'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?'

So what is meant by the term commercially viable? Well, we are looking at the financial concerns of a

keyword or phrase here. Basically, a keyword is commercially viable if it brings with it a strong flow of money,

sales or profits to your business. A keyword is not commercially viable if it only generates a small amount of

sales.

Here is why you need to consider this when choosing which keyword or phrase to target. Imagine you have

just chosen some keywords that fit all of the ‘key’ elements. You optimise your website with your new

keyword or phrase and (low and behold!!) you manage to obtain a page one ranking on the Google Keyword

Search. Your site gets tonnes of traffic and everything seems to be heading in the right direction. The only

thing is...you are not making any sales!! No one is buying anything!! The reason is you have accidently

targeted a phrase or keyword that is not commercially viable.

For this reason, it is imperative that you check whether your keyword or phrase will be profitable. In order to

check this we need to look at Google Adwords and Cost Per Click (CPC).

You will have noticed on the right hand side of the Google search page there is a list of advertisements. These

are placed by advertisers in order to create leads into their businesses website. Each time someone ‘clicks’ on

the advertisement the advertiser pays Google an agreed amount of money – hence the term ‘Cost Per Click’!!

As there are lots of advertisers wanting to use this service it turns into a type of bidding war - similar to the

stock market. Over time, the market will decide what the cost of each keyword is depending on how popular it

is in both search engines and with the advertisers. The figure ($) given provides us with an indication of how

commercially viable this keyword is.

Therefore, to help you decide whether your keyword is commercially viable you need to check the Google

Adwords and search for your keywords or phrases. The more expensive the CPC value the better the keyword

or phrase.

This is not a quick process and it is not full-proof although it does give you a guide to work from. Admittedly,

you can also buy software that will do this process for you although when you are starting out this is

something you may not be inclined to do. Believe me, the time you spend doing this will save you time, effort

and money later down the line. Just compare what you would lose if your site was profitable compared to it

not.

Thanks for reading and see you in Part six: ‘The ‘Key’ Word is Traffic’

Jon-Marc

Jon-Marc Spatcher is an internet marketer and mentor. He worked his way up the financial services corporate ladder before deciding

that it was no longer for him he set up his own online business. Since this life changing decision he has ‘worked’ from home trying to

inspire and educate others to leverage the power of the internet and generate traffic and income to achieve their own success.

Jon-Marc enjoys socialising, football, golf and generally any sport going. He is a keen networker and enjoys the simple delights of family

and friends. Most of all, he believes in positivity and living life to the full.

For a FREE 7 DAY BOOTCAMP visit Jon-Marc's website where you can receive a free set of video marketing tips which will show you how

to market on the internet and improve your chances of online success. This will also give you unique access to all his latest blog posts.

Alternatively, catch up with his previous posts here.

The SEO Keyword Research Series – Part Six

‘The ‘Key’ Word is Traffic?'

In Part five of the SEO Keyword Research Series we looked at 'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?’ This

showed you how to measure whether your keyword is commercially a good enough for your site. The fourth

important ‘Key ‘element considers if the keyword or phrase will provide you with the suitable levels of traffic

to your business. After all, if you do not get the traffic then you will never make the sales you want.

Each keyword or phrase generates a different level of traffic. Some will provide a high level whilst others will

provide a low level. Unfortunately, over 90% of keywords have almost insignificant levels of traffic to them.

Additionally, people will pick random keywords for their site when they first establish resulting in poor traffic

levels. It is therefore important that you find the right keywords to ensure that you do get the traffic.

Few people fully realise the difference between finishing first and seventh on the first page of Google. The

majority of people will choose to pick the number one ranked site. Less people will choose to pick the other

websites on that page. The breakdown is as follows:

• Number 1 – 42%

• Number 2 – 12%

• Number 3 – 8%

• Number 4 – 6%

• Number 5 – 5%

• Number 6 – 4%

• Number 7 – 3%

So, how do you measure the amount of potential traffic you will receive from a keyword? This is relatively

easy to do through Google Adwords. Here you can add the keyword or phrase and then hit search. This will

show you how many searches are completed on a particular keyword or phrase OR derivatives of those

keywords. You can then change the search criteria depending on the geographical requirements or

competition levels. You could then work out how many hits a keyword could produce if you were number one

on the search results page.

For example, say you were selling camping stoves. Globally there are 18,100 monthly searches for ‘camping

stoves’. If you were number one on the search for this you would receive 42% of that number. This is over

7600 hits. If you were fourth you would get 4% of the traffic which equates to approximately 724 hits. This is

a massive change of 1049%.

Alternatively, there are 49,500 global searches for ‘stoves camping’. These are the same two words in teh

opposite order but could improve your traffic by over 273%.

You can see how using this tool could prove useful in assessing which keywords are ‘key’ to you generating

targeted traffic. Additionally, there are software packages that you buy that will provide the information you

require although it may be beneficial to manually do this initially.

I hope you can see that this, in conjunction with the other three ‘key’ elements, is essential for you get the

ranking and success you require in your online business.

Thank you for reading and good luck.

Jon-Marc

Jon-Marc Spatcher is an internet marketer and mentor. He worked his way up the financial services corporate ladder before

deciding that it was no longer for him he set up his own online business. Since this life changing decision he has ‘worked’

from home trying to inspire and educate others to leverage the power of the internet and generate traffic and income to

achieve their own success.

Jon-Marc enjoys socialising, football, golf and generally any sport going. He is a keen networker and enjoys the simple

delights of family and friends. Most of all, he believes in positivity and living life to the full.

For a FREE 7 DAY BOOTCAMP visit Jon-Marc's website where you can receive a free set of video marketing tips which will

show you how to market on the internet and improve your chances of online success. This will also give you unique access

to all his latest blog posts. Alternatively, catch up with his previous posts here.