Anyone who has read anything about SEO(Search Engine Optimisation) knows that keyword research is important. You probably know that ranking for certain keywords will bring you a lot of traffic. But what else do we know about keyword research? What other factors should we look for when selecting keywords?
Keyword research is probably the most important step for success when trying to Make Money Online, and yet it is probably the step that most people get wrong. Some people don’t consider SEO important, so they don’t do keyword research at all. This leaves things up to luck. Maybe someone will link to their site using a relevant search term, and they will do well. But most likely no links will mean no love from the search engines.
Then there are the people that understand that SEO is important, but are too lazy to do it properly. In most cases they select keywords which they haven’t researched properly, or that they copied from someone who they want to have a site like. In the end they will end up having too much competition, and will struggle to rank.
Good research will find keywords that have lower competition or at least comparable competition for the level of your site, for terms that will bring enough traffic to justify your efforts. There is no point creating and optimising a site, and ranking for a term if it won’t bring you much traffic.
Other factors
Not all keywords are equal. Some are well worth ranking for while others will bring you lots of useless traffic which will be hard to convert. A good way to ensure you are using the right sort of monitization for your traffic is to consider what users are searching for.
Information keywords
An information keyword is a keyword that suggests the searcher is trying to find something out. They are not looking to buy a product. You need to have contextual or CPM ads on sites where you target these types of terms. An example might be: Start a Small Business Online
Buying keywords
Buying keywords are keywords that suggest the searcher is looking to buy a product. You should use affiliate products, Ebay or Amazon ads to make money from sites targeting these terms. Buying terms are going to have a much lower search volume and they are often much more specific, but as the visitor is looking to spend money you can make more money from them. Good examples of buying keywords would be terms like: “42 LCD TV For Sale” or “Buy 42 LCD TV”. The searcher has used the terms “Buy” or “For Sale”, which suggest they are shopping. Other great buying keyword terms are: “Review + Product”, “Scam + Product”.
The Adwords Keyword Tool
The Adwords keyword tool is the best free keyword research tool. Here’s some tips to help you use it correctly.
The first thing you will notice is that I have changed a few of the default settings. I want to see the “Exact” term matches for my keyword, to know how much traffic ranking for that exact term could potentially bring. I also want to see the estimated “CPC”. This tells me how much I would have to pay to buy traffic, I am more interested in how much I would make from a click. The money you make from an AdSense click is normally about a 3rd of that price that the Adwords will will give you. Google take some of the cut, and content ads (ads on your site) cost less than ads directly on the search engine results.
The idea is to select terms which have a healthy global search volume, then search for that term in Google to see what sites your would be competing against.
Competition
Search for the term in Google. What sites do you see? SEO quake is a free browser plugin that will show you the sort of information we need to make decisions. How high is the PR of that site, and how many backlinks does it have. The sort of sites to avoid competition with are typically high authority domains with a lot of backlinks, domains that are government owned (govt), and exact match domains with authority (weightloss.com when targeting the term “Weight Loss”).
What sites do we like to see? Depending on what site/page you are trying to rank with different sites in the ranking can be very encouraging. For example if I am creating a hubpage, I am love to see other social sites or article sites in the rankings. e.g. squidoo pages, e-zine articles, go-articles etc.
Keyword research is really where the money is at. Let me know what you think?
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