What is “Keyword Research”

What is “Keyword Research”

Keyword research is the core of your Social Media Marketing Campaigns. With good keyword research leading your content you will jump out ahead in search results leaving your competition behind. This is important because search traffic is what online marketing is all about. The SEO industry has a saying it goes “If your not on the front page, your not being seen.” Key research is long hour’d work, but done effectively it will remain relevant for long periods of time.

Good keyword research would be analyzing  your market and verticals, choosing the words that people will use to search online to find your product, service, restaurant, bar, store, etc. Then researching those words to find ones that are high in monthly traffic search and low in competition.

There are literally thousands of tools claiming to give you the edge over your competition. I have used lots of them, but I have found what it comes down to is monthly searches verses competing pages. the tools will help you get there but final select of keywords should be left to manual work.

TIP: Start the keyword research process in the Google keyword tool with a keyword phrase. 3 or more words so that competition for that keyword phrase goes down. Often you will find that there are no competing pages for long tailed keywords and thousands of searches per month!

Part 1 – Find search volume for keyword research.

Lets pretend our keyword research we are doing is for  “water filtration system”.

1. Go to Google Keyword tool. CLOSED

2. Enter keyword in search box.

3.Check Only show ideas closely related to my search terms

4. Make sure the Advanced Options and Filters are

Untied States

English

Desktop and Laptops

5. Left menu unselect “broad”

6. Left menu select “phrase”

7. Hit enter.

TIP: Use the advanced search settings to filter unwanted results.

TIP: Left menus bar offers many extra search query options.

8. click “keyword ideas page” Your results will be the global and local monthly searches for that keyword phrase.

This means on a monthly basis 33,100 searches are made globally and 27,100 are made monthly locally for the keyword phrase   “water filtration system“.

Take your time here and get familiar  with Google Keyword tool it is the best tool out there for keyword research, don’t be fooled!

Keyword groups and data can be downloaded in many formats including, Excel, CSV and Google spreadsheet.

TIP: Log-in with your Google account , to avoid filling out the captcha.

TIP: Download your keywords in excel format from Google keyword tool. Add Intitle, inurl, inanchor as columns.  Fill in the search results for each as you get them. Save data you will you often.

Part 2 – Find competing page volume for keywords that are on page, in the URL, in the Anchor text, in the title, or in the domain name.

So, how do you tell how many competing pages there are for your targeted keyword phrase? In order to do that you have to search for those pages. Think about how people optimize when they are targeting a keyword. The keyword would be in your title, in your URL and you would be linked to the page with links that have the keyword phrase in the anchor text of that backlink.
Luckily, Google provides you with some search operators or Query’s that will help.

In order to tell the true competing websites for your keyword, you will want to use a combination of all three of these and see which sites come up in common. Then compare those to the results you get when you simply type the keyword research phrase into Google search. This would be your real competition.

1. Go to Google search and type in:

The first is “intitle” and this will show you the pages that have your keyword in the title. You use it like this:

intitle:”your keyword phrase”

The resulting search will have the number of pages that have your keyword phrase in the title, that doesn’t necessarily, mean that those sites are competing for your keyword. They may be but then again they may not be. Also, they may not be optimizing the page well or even have any backlinks to it.

Tip: Fill in the search results for each as you get them. Save data you will you often.

2. The next is “inurl” which shows you the pages that have your keyword phrase in the url. You use it like this:

 inurl:”your keyword phrase”

Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean those pages are optimizing for your keyword phrase and there might be other pages that are optimizing for it that don’t have the keyword in the url, but are otherwise optimized.

Tip: Make a note the amount of search results in your spreadsheet for this keyword.

Tip: Fill in the search results for each as you get them. Save data you will you often.

3. Finally, the last  is the “in anchor” operator. You use it like this:

 inanchor:”your keyword phrase”

It will show you the pages that have links pointing back to them with your keyword phrase in the anchor text.

As you go through your keyword list note the results in a spreadsheet and keep it organized you will add to this spreadsheet on a regular basis when choosing new keywords. Use Excel it will be easy to sort to find the best keywords out of your list.

Tip: Fill in the search results for each as you get them. Save data you will you often.

4. What are the Best Keywords?

High monthly search / low competing pages.

Pick the best number spreads out of your list. Mark those.

Ask yourself Questions like this:

Which of them will goes best with your product,service?

What is the most used search by my customers out of that group?

What is mind set of my customer?

Your ready to move on to Creating your business Profile.

TIP: This is only one method to find keywords there are thousands. Search for the one that produces  the best results for you.

TIP: Keyword Research is like mining for Gold. You never know when you going to find the keywords that are under used but when you do the return is great.

TIP: Keep your Data you will use it over and over and over.