the seo keyword research

What are Keywords?

SEO
Keyword
Research

By Jon-MarcSpacther

Part One: WhatareKeywords?

So, what are keywords?

Keywordsare 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.

Forthis reason, understanding keywords and the way in which they can alter the success of your website is vital.

Choosingthe right keywords is essential to ensure you gain the right targeted traffic to your site.

In this series...

In this series ofvideosI 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.

Successcan lead to a comfortable and varied lifestyle, but failure can lead to months of wasted effort, money and ultimately disappointment.

Ihave seen people succeed in marketing themselves, their companies or their products online.

AlthoughI 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...

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.

Ihave found that the people who fail will follow a pattern.

Theysimply 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 doesnt and the majority of these sites fail.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, the sites that succeed will do things very differently.

Theywill research their market very carefully and identify the areas of a market that are the most profitable.

Theirkeywords will be specific and targeted to the market they researched.

Finally, they will follow a tried and tested plan.

I want...

I want to see more people in the second group and enjoy a fruitful online career.

Inorder 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.

Thiswill get you well on your way to success with your website.

Part Two: TheKey Elements of Keyword Research

What is Keyword research?

Theeasiest way to understand this is to think of the process as similar to panning for gold in the rivers during the great gold rush.

Whendoing 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.

Hopefullythey would be left with a few nuggets of gold at the bottom.

Thisis 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!!!

Ifyou 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.

Part Three: RelevantKeywords

We looked at...

Thefour Key elements that you need to consider each and every time you pick a keyword for your business.

Thisis to ensure that you are driving the right traffic to your site, providing you with the sales and income you want (nah, deserve!!).

Thesefour elements were Relevant, Competition, Commercial and Traffic.

Wewill be looking at the first of these in more detail Relevant Keywords.

Lack of Relevance...

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

Theywill often choose random keywords and hope that it brings in the numbers.

Thesemay even prove successful to a degree, often providing high levels of traffic or a high ranking in the Google keyword search.

Thishigh level of traffic is useless if it does not produce sales. No sales. No income.

Thisis 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.

Changethe content. Although this seems like a laborious option.

Alternatively, you could change the keywords you are using.

Using relevant keywords

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.

Forexample, dog train and train dogs will come up with completely different replies from a search engine.

By using these techniques

Alongwith 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.

Part Four: Evaluatingthe Competition

Drive Traffic

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.

Theissue here is this is prime online real estate.

Thereare 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. Theseare...

The amount of competition

Putsimply, the number of websites competing for the page one ranking using a particular keyword or phrase.

Thisvaries considerably depending on the keyword or phrase used.

Somehave high competition i.e. lots of websites targeting a keyword.

Othershave low competition i.e. few websites targeting a keyword.

The strength of the competition

Somewebsites are highly optimised.

Theyhave been around for a long time and therefore have a large number of back links into their site.

Othersare relatively new and only have a few back links to them.

Bothof 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.

What do you want?

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

Thisis obviously better than using a keyword or phrase that puts you up against many, strong competitors.

Remember...

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.

Thisis especially relevant to their Competition.

Thecompany will start to produce content for their site.

Theywill fail to evaluate the competition.

Thecompetition is too strong.

Theynever reach a good ranking with the search engines and fail to get the traffic they require.

So...

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.

Thiswill lead to a healthy flow of traffic, hopefully a good return on sales and healthy bottom line.

Part Five: 'Isthis Keyword Commercially Viable?'

To Recap...

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

Thiswill 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.

Thethird of the important Key elements is considering the commercial aspects of a keyword.

More specifically, asking the question'Is this Keyword Commercially Viable?'

What is meant by the term 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.

Akeyword is not commercially viable if it only generates a small amount of sales.

What next?

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

Imagineyou have just chosen some keywords that fit all of the key elements.

Youoptimise 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.

Yoursite gets tonnes of traffic and everything seems to be heading in the right direction.

Theonly thing is...you are not making any sales!!

Noone is buying anything!!

Thereason is you have accidently targeted a phrase or keyword that isnotcommercially viable.

How to Check...

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

Inorder to check this we need to look at GoogleAdwords 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.

Theseare placed by advertisers in order to create leads into their businesses website.

Eachtime someone clicks on the advertisement the advertiser pays Google an agreed amount of money hence the term Cost Per Click!!

The bidding war

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

Overtime, 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.

Thefigure ($) given provides us with an indication of how commercially viable this keyword is.

Therefore...

Tohelp you decide whether your keyword is commercially viable you need to check the GoogleAdwords and search for your keywords or phrases.

Themore expensive the CPC value the better the keyword or phrase.

Save yourself time...

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.

Believeme, the time you spend doing this will save you time, effort and money later down the line.

Justcompare what you would lose if your site was profitable compared to it not.

Part Six: The
Key Word is Traffic?'

To Recap...

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

Thisshowed you how to measure whether your keyword is commercially a good enough for your site.

Thefourth important Key element considers if the keyword or phrase will provide you with the suitable levels of traffic to your business.

Afterall, if you do not get the traffic then you will never make the sales you want.

The traffic

Each keyword or phrase generates a different level of traffic.

Somewill 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.

First Page of

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

Themajority of people will choose to pick the number one ranked site.

Lesspeople 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%

google.jpegThe right Keyword...?

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

Thisis relatively easy to do through GoogleAdwords.

Hereyou can add the keyword or phrase and then hit search.

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

Youcan then change the search criteria depending on the geographical requirements or competition levels.

Youcould then work out how many hits a keyword could produce if you were number one on the search results page.

An example

For example, say you were selling camping stoves.

Globallythere are 18,100 monthly searches for camping stoves.

Ifyou were number one on the search for this you would receive 42% of that number.

Thisis over 7600 hits.

Ifyou were fourth you would get 4% of the traffic which equates to approximately 724 hits.

Thisis a massive change of 1049%.

Alternatively

Thereare 49,500 global searches for stoves camping.

Theseare the same two words intheopposite order but could improve your traffic by over 273%.

Youcan see how using this tool could prove useful in assessing which keywords are key to you generating targeted traffic.

Additionally, there is 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.

Do these little tasks may take some time but will help to create long term success in your business.

To findout more go...

www.thesixfigurementorsmembership.com

to learnmore about The Six Figure Mentors andThe Six Figure Mentors Membership.

Youwill also finda FREE set of 7 video training sessions to get you started in internet marketing.

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the seo keyword research

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