This is a guest post by Matthew Hooper of MatthewHooper.com.
Keyword research is a great way for you to discover potential content ideas for your website. Very often, blog owners either don't know the right phrases to be targeting or they target the wrong keyword. Great headlines, great content and a great message all sound, well, great but if nobody is finding your blog then you're talking to yourself. Furthermore, your efforts are all going out the window. This is where doing a bit of research can go a long way. Search traffic will keep coming long after you had published the post.
Free Keyword Search Video
In order to demonstrate, below is a short screencast on how to search for targetable keywords. The focus of this video is to identify keyword phrases using Google's free keyword search tool and then hone down the phrases in order to end up with a phrase that is less competitive.
(Can't see the video? To watch on YouTube, click here.)
A Word of Caution
The video above is just the start of the process. There are additional factors that you should consider when you are carrying out your phrase research. You will also need to make sure that you take a look at the strength of your competition and not just the number of competitors. You want to be racing against weekend warriors and not Olympic athletes.
For example:
- Page Rank: The overall page strength assigned by Google. If the first 10 results are full of PR3 and above, you should probably head back to the drawing board.
- On Page Optimization: Is the page ranking high in Google just because of low competition or has it been optimized to do so.
- Backlinks: The amount of other pages already linking to the competition's sites. Is it hundreds of links or thousands of links?
Website Keyword Research Tools
Additionally, you might want to look at a few more tools. The following tools will help you to analyze your competition better.
I am a big fan of the browser Chrome and it is available for Mac, Windows and Linux computers. The SEO Quake extension for Chrome will give you many details about your competition. You will even get more information than you need. SEO Quake is also available for other browsers but I haven't had the chance to test them.
Do you spend much time researching your blog posts? Do you have any tips or tools for that you like to use for doing this type of research?
About the Author: Matthew Hooper helps individuals, small businesses and organizations build an internet presence. Don’t forget to get his free report on building an internet presence. You can also check out his WordPress Course full of step-by-step videos so that you can learn WordPress in a single weekend.
Wonderful information Mathew…Before i heard about this but not have well knowledge about that…But your video shows more to me…Excellent job you did…Well done…
Great video on using the Google Keyword tool! And thanks for the tip on using it correctly with exact and phrase matches. I really don’t know why anyone would actually use broad match.
Broad mach is more for advertiser that are trying to just be everywhere. A brand like Nike might want to show up any time someone does a search for anything remotely related to shoes. They also have the budgets to do these types of blanket campaigns.
Matt, thanks for a great post. I use a paid keyword tool but also keep coming back to the google adwords tool for quick research. I have had a problem whilst searching and I was wondering if you could tell me, if I find a great keyword but it also happens to be someone’s domain name can I still use it?
There is no problem with using a keyword that is someone’s domain with a few exceptions.
If were to try and register a new domain with a term that is a trademark or copyrighted, then you could have a problem. As an example, if you wanted to compete against Nike for some reason and registered the domain NikeShoes.com then you could have legal problems if Nike wanted to pursue it. Right or wrong their lawyers have more money. However, if you want to write an article about Nike shoes and you were to have a URL like http://www.your-domain.com/NikeShoes then you should be fine. That said, I’m not a lawyer so if you are really worried about legal repercussions, talk to a lawyer first.
Alternatively, you might be going after a keyword phrase like “running shoes” and someone may already own the domain http://www.RunningShoes.com. Since there is no trademark or copyright on the term “running shoes” (that I know of) you would be fine to use it and post your article at the URL www.your-domain.com/running-shoes. With that said, search engines put a large weighting on domains that are exact match. Google claims to be reducing this as a ranking factor but in practice it is still ringing true. So this means that in order to out rank the term running shoes in search engines, you will have to work harder to do so. At this point it all comes down to how much effort you want to put in to it.
Also, someone may have the exact match domain but is putting in no effort in order to rank it in search engines. This would be low competition for you and I’d say go ahead and try to out rank it.
Finally, if you already have a site that has high authority then something like http://www.your-domain.com/running-shoes might be easier to rank than starting out with a fresh domain.
As you can see, the simple answer is yes but there are other variables to consider as well.
Sorry to ramble on.
– Matt
Matt thank you so much for the reply – I don’t mind you rambling on at all it is super information and confirms what I thought. My domain is 6 years old so will go after the term with gusto!
Sounds good! Good luck with your efforts!
I’m a big fan of Alexa, which offers a free Chrome tool bar, too. Alexa offers you “high impact” keyword ideas based on your blog’s previous searches. Always good to check in with Google’s keyword tool — interesting which synonyms get more searches.
The Alexa toolbar is also a very good tool. Thanks for the suggestion!
– Matt
Hi Dan,
You’re right! Google has given us such a great tool and most people either don’t take advantage of it or don’t even know about it. It is worthwhile to spend a little bit of time with the Google Adwords tool.
– Matt
Good tips that you share on researching keywords Matt. And if you keep it simple and easy to understand I find that more newbie marketeres will take the time as keyword research really is an very important part of your online marketing. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Lynn,
I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s amazing how a bit of research can go a long way. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
– Matt
Wow, Matthew!
Really great post on the Google Keyword Search Tool! Very nice. Really gives people a feel for how to research keywords without being too broad or narrow and how to use the proper keyword phrase. Totally great introduction for people that have no idea bout this stuff and very helpful even to people that do!
Thanks again!
Jupiter Jim
Thanks Jim!
I’m glad that you found it useful. Thanks again for taking the time to stop by and leave a comment.
– Matt