Keyword Research

CHAPTER SEVEN

Keyword Research

What Is Keyword Research?

In a nutshell, “keyword research” is just trying to find out what people are searching for online. There are quite a few ways to do this. I’ll introduce a few basic ones and a few advanced ones in this book, but just keep in mind that if you are writing stuff on your blog that you think people are looking for, then you are doing the right thing.

Even if you are very familiar with your niche, keyword research can give us more insight into what’s going on inside search engines every day. You might know that people are searching for ways to lose weight, but you might not have known that there’s a group of people looking to lose weight before a high school reunion. It can also help you find out which phrases and niches have more/less traffic/competition.

First I’m going to talk about some basic concepts, then get into some tutorials on how to actually conduct the research part. Detailed keyword research tactics are beyond the scope of this book, but I will link to some resources I’ve created so you can dig in once you get started with your own website.

Don’t skip this chapter (or the next one)! Using keywords properly to get your website ranked in Google is one of the most important things about building a Wordpress site that makes money through blogging.

Also, keep in mind that if some of the number stuff we’re about to go over makes your head spin, just use them as a general guide for now. High traffic is good. Low competition is good. That’s pretty much all you need to know to get started.

How To Do Basic Keyword Research

When I start a brand new site, the keyword research I do is not very organized.

I just find anything and everything that looks interesting, and put what I find into a spreadsheet based on the metrics.

High Traffic, High Competition

High Traffic, Low Competition

Low Traffic, High Competition (But still a good keyword)

Low Traffic, Low Competition (The majority of your keywords will

land here)

This gives me a long view of where my site is heading. What are things that people are searching for related to this niche? What are topics that I will probably be writing about in the future?

I sometimes even get into closely related topics just to see possible future expansion possibilities for my site. For example, if I’m doing a site about barbecue grills, maybe I want to look into camping keywords, or RV keywords.

That’s because people who do those activities will probably want to barbecue at some point.

Without even looking, I can guarantee that there are some juicy, low competition keywords related to RV grills or portable grills. In fact, the whole RV niche I think is ripe for money! Think about it – retired folks with money wanting to live out their dreams of traveling, but not without the comforts of home. When else is a better time to splurge on a nice things?

This concept applies to any website topic. What if we had a website about vegetarianism? Visitors wouldn’t blink an eye if your domain is called vegetarianrecipes.com and you have wine reviews or organic gardening tips.

Some wines are not vegetarian because they use animal products for fining agents. That would be a great discussion for a vegetarian niche website.

Gardeners grow vegetables, and that’s what vegetarians eat. Makes sense, no?

You can also use these keyword stats to pick a domain name if you want.

I talked about this in a previous section, but if you do find a high traffic keyword with a .com available, that might be a smart choice to pick up the domain.

At the very least you can sell the domain at a premium later, or flip a very basic site with lots of potential.

But as I mentioned in the domain section, a good keyword will not make or break a website. The best niches will have a good mix if high traffic keywords and low competition keywords. If you find that all your keywords are high traffic high competition, you may be going too broad with your niche. For example, something like “lose weight fast” is not going to reveal a lot of opportunities to muscle your way in, and you probably want to refine your target audience a bit.

On the other side of the coin, lots of low competition low traffic keywords but nothing in the high traffic area could mean that while there’s opportunity here, the potential for growth may lie in broadening your keyword pool at some point.

Any niche will have an unlimited set of keywords if you are really passionate about the topic, though sometimes they take a while to reveal themselves!

You can also use keywords to confirm or change the running themes for your website.

Maybe your niche is “backpacking”, and one of your running themes was “choosing the correct luggage”. But then you find out that it’s very high competition and actually not that many searches. You may want to tweak this core page on your site to be “choosing the correct rucksack”, which can actually be an in-depth topic if you talk to the experts!

Or the opposite can happen. You may find that there’s not enough searches for something, and you weren’t too hot on the idea to begin with. Research and open up some new ideas, and maybe make some changes based on what you find.

At the end of the day, it’s not like you are actually limited to just 3-5 topics per site. That’s just a guideline to get you started. You can always change links, update pages, add more pages, or alter the general direction of your site as you grow.

Keyword Tools

When comes to keyword tools, let me first say that I have my preferences and I will base the training in this book based on that. Before we get started, let’s take a look at some popular keyword tools so you know what’s out there.

Market Samurai

This one was the “go to” tool a few years ago, but after some Google changes, I found it less effective. I used it for about 6 months in 2011 or 2012. It does give a lot of data, but that data can be complicated to read. I also found it very slow, and had lots of annoying updates every time you used it. It’s a software based meaning you download it to your computer.

Personally, I don’t recommend Market Samurai but I know it’s still available and some people do use it.

Longtail Pro

This is the tool that most people in the “niche site” community use. The creator of this tool is very involved in the niche site building community so it gets a lot of exposure there. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income (a famous website and podcast) also uses this, so they have plenty of case studies, tutorials, and bloggers that also promote this tool.

It’s a good one. I don’t have extensive experience with it, but it does provide some useful insight into competition power, and uses a lot of data from Moz, a reliable site for SEO analysis.

I personally found it slow at times, and didn’t really care about all the data it was giving me. Also, it was using Google’s search numbers which aren’t really accurate as far as I understand.

Jaaxy

This is the tool I use. It gives me the basic metrics I’m looking for, namely more accurate traffic estimations, and it uses QSR (I’ll explain that in just a moment) for competition ratings. It’s easy to use, it’s web based, and is easy to export my data into a simple spreadsheet that I can edit, use for Adwords, or send via email.

Again, this is just a tool I’m more familiar with. You can see my full comparison of Jaaxy VS Longtail Pro here http://onemorecupof-coffee.com/jaaxy-vslongtail- pro-keyword-tool-niche-site/ because those are pretty much the only two tools that I would really recommend. But for the rest of the book I’ll be talking about data according to Jaaxy.

Traffic Travis

This is another tool that I have heard about, but not one that I’ve personally used or heard much about. I’m not very familiar with how it works or what data it shows.

Google Keyword Planner

This is a free tool that lots of people use. I do not use it, so cannot provide much insight into how it works, but at the very least it’ll help you think of some keyword ideas and give you a general idea of high vs low competition and traffic.

Search + Traffic Numbers

What are good traffic numbers to look for? Actually…Anything. Seriously. Why are you being so picky?

Sure, if you wanted to build up a quick niche site with impressive numbers so you could flip it to an investor, maybe you would want to look at creating some content with higher traffic stats, but since we are creating a long term business for ourselves here, any traffic number will do.

If you write one hundred articles with one visit per day, that’s one hundred extremely targeted visitors to your website every single day that you can count on. My current website has almost 1,000 blog posts on it, which would mean I can pretty much count on one thousand visits per day (if I had a keyword for each post).

Actually, I have much more traffic than that, but that’s besides the point.

If you could fast forward three years and have a thousand-post website with a thousand visits a day you could funnel to a list or to affiliate pages would you do it? Heck yeah! You can do it, but you have to build it one post at a time (which is a huge pitfall for many people by the way).

Talking about specific numbers though, anything with above 300 searches per month (using Jaaxy) is doing quite well. Above 500 or 1000 is fantastic. Even 100 or 200 a month is doing alright, but under 100 is pretty low. Don’t count out those keywords, but do consider the amount of work you have to do for that traffic.

I always consider: Is the keyword attractive? I mean, does it makes sense, and what type of visitor do you think it will attract?

Examples

Time to use your brain! Let’s talk about some examples of good and not-so-good keywords we could potentially use on our website. Before you flip out, yes, coffee enemas are a real thing, and I actually have a website about it that does make money. It’s a thing that’s gaining some traction in the alternative medicine community. You learn something new every day, right? Ha! coffee enema blog – 32 searches 25 competition

The amount of searches aren’t great, but QSR is low. I could probably rank for it, but why? Maybe I could write a post about the Top 10 Coffee Enema Blogs Online, and it could generate some traffic, but this is not an awesome keyword.

People coming to my site probably want to leave right away! coffee enema frequency – 56 searches 23 competition Slightly more searches than above, but still pretty low. This might be more attractive as people landing on my site will see that I have some knowledge on the topic and are interested in doing their own coffee enemas probably.

I could then direct them to products I recommend like organic coffee. organic coffee enemas – 128 searches 190 competition More searches, but also more competition. Competition is still within the range of what we consider to be “low”, but the keyword itself is quite broad, and may be harder to rank for. Don’t count it out! It may be good for a core page on your website. You can also look for related keywords like “Where to buy organic coffee for enemas” or “Do organic coffee enemas work better than nonorganic?” are coffee enemas safe – 136 searches 44 competition Grammatically correct, higher traffic (compared to other keywords in this niche), and very low competition. This would be a perfect blog post title. The other keywords shown above are OK, and I would target them eventually, but this one would be my #1 choice.

The examples above are all pretty mild as far as searches go, because this is not very popular topic. However, it’s a great niche because the audience is very passionate. It takes an issue (illness or discomfort) and solves it (waste evacuation, caffeine stimulation).

For popular niches or high traffic keywords, you can expect searches to go into hundreds or even thousands per month. However, the majority of keywords you find for any niche are not going to be that high, and are probably going to land somewhere between 0-500.

Let’s look a few more examples carp fishing pole – 112 searches 120 competition A decent amount of searches, but higher competition compared to the number of searches. Something I would consider going for, but I may find a lower competition keyword like best carp fishing rods review. It’s showing less than 10 searches per month, but I see that bass fishing rods reviews has 32 searches per month and only 9 competition. I’d rather try to rank for something easy I know I can get some traffic from than tougher keywords.

children fishing poles – 256 searches 121 competition

A lot more searches compared to the previous example, but the same number of competition. Kids stuff is always a winner, so I would write a big post comparing some of the top fishing poles for kids, and defining which ones are best for which ages.

hello kitty fishing pole – 120 searches 27 competition

A good number of searches and very low competition. Worth writing for, but because it’s a very specific product, I think I would have a hard time writing about it. I would instead write a post called [brand] Hello Kitty Fishing Pole Review, and make it a product review post rather than try to write a general article about Hello Kitty fishing poles.

ice fishing pole – 306 searches 195 competition

Many more searches, but also higher in competition. I could probably do several posts on lower competition keywords like comparing different ice fishing pole brands, or explaining how ice fishing poles are different from other types of poles. I’m not sure I would target this keyword as-is, but would definitely use it for a series of blog posts about ice fishing gear.

Portable ice fishing shelters – 348 searches 206 competition

Tons of searches for a potentially very expensive item. Competition is a bit higher, but I don’t care. This is something I would definitely try to rank for!

Crappie ice fishing techniques 79 searches 5 competition

A great example of a very specific keyword with super low competition. Traffic is lower, but still OK and worth targeting. This is a great chance to write a tutorial, then link off to a crappie fishing pole review or #1 rated fishing pole!

Ice fishing shanty plans 160 searches 94 competition

Pretty good searches and pretty low competition. What’s most exciting about this keyword is that there is probably a digital info product you could promote related to this topic. Rank on page 1 for this term, and you might have hundreds of ice fishermen visiting your website every day buying shanty plans through your website!

Competition (QSR)

Competition is a complicated subject because there are just so many metrics that go into ranking a page. Not only that, but what those metrics are and how heavily each is taken into account is a complete mystery! Literally. Google doesn’t tell us how they rank pages, otherwise it would be easy for people to get to the #1 position and stay there.

The #1 reason to never trust a product or service that guarantees page 1 rankings is that no one can actually guarantee this. If they can somehow boost you to page one with ‘black hat’ (bad) SEO tactics, it’s only a matter of time before you lose that spot, and maybe even get a site penalty that damages individual pages or even your entire website.

What is QSR?

QSR stands for “Quoted Search Results”. It’s a metric that is not measured by a lot of the so-called professionals, but it is a competition metric I watch closely, and pretty much the only hard number I pay attention to when assessing my competitors.

Other factors that come into play when assessing competition include the age of the website, frequency of posting, the size of their social media following, engagement in the comment section, use of keywords, and whether or not they are a marketer, or just a blogger that stumbled upon a good ranking position.

The “quoted” part comes from the fact that we do a Google search for the phrase we want to target with quotes around the phrase. Instead of searching for how to make money online, we search for “how to make money online”.

The number of results that turn up are much smaller than if we did a broad search with no quotes. This shows us precisely how many websites indexed in Google have the exact phrase somewhere in their pages.

ATTN! The initial page will display something like 57 million results, but this is just an estimate. Scroll through the pages of search results as far back as you can go. Very often, especially for particularly long phrases (long tail keywords), we only get to page two or three before we reach the end of the results. Then we are shown a very precise number of how many results are indexed with that exact phrase.

The lower the better. Ideally we are searching for something with less than 300 pages. Anything under 100 is considered very low competition and is probably going to be easy to rank for.

Jaxxy is currently the only keyword tool out there that displays this information so you don’t have to search for it manually each time.

Other Types of Competition

Look at the next section Ranking for Keywords to see a list of factors that can affect the rank of your page. Those are things that I generally look at when sussing up the competition.

In the beginning, you’ll probably look at everyone that’s ranking and think to yourself, “Wow, I’ll never be able to beat them!”. But anything is possible, and I’ve seen plenty of newbie bloggers outrank sites like Mashable, Amazon, or even Wikipedia. Don’t fear the competition, because at this point in time, you might not be 100% sure who your real competition is!

Sites you might look at now as “ranking” might not even be ranking for keywords you discover later on down the road. It’s hard to imagine which direction your business will be heading in 6 months, so don’t stress too much about who your competition is right now.

For example, Wikipedia might rank for the term “History of Ford Mustang” and the MotorTrends website might rank for “Fastest Mustang in 2015”. But who cares? There are hundreds of other better terms that you’ll be able to find that you can rank for that will probably be better for making money. Being a small website means you are more nimble and can cover more detailed topics.

For example, “ford mustang clothing accessories” currently only has 10 websites in the whole world with that phrase on them. Easy to rank for! “Car covers ford mustang” and “ford mustang ignition” are also very low competition phrases that you could do simple blog posts on and rank pretty easily.

Speaking about competitive phrases that you want to rank for, what do you do if there really are a bunch of great looking websites ranking for terms that you want to rank for? Personally, I write an excellent post on the topic, link back to myself (discussed in the On Page SEO section), and then forget about it. It’s really not worth stressing over the rank of a single page on your website when you could be working on new pages.

Yeah, I may re-visit it from time to time to try to improve the rank over a longer period of time, but it’s not something I would re-visit on a weekly basis. It’s very possible that your website is just too new, and doesn’t have the “authority” to compete with other, more established sites at this time.

Last thing about competition – how do you know if someone really is tough competition? I mainly look at how often they post, how good their website looks, and how much engagement they get in the comments. I also like to snoop their monetization strategies. Are they building a list? What products are they promoting? Do they have a sales funnel set up?

You should stop seeing them as competition and start seeing them as peers. They are worth much more to you as a potential buddy for future joint ventures than someone you just dislike because they rank better than you!

Ranking For Keywords

Possibly one of the most talked about topics in the world of making money from websites is how to rank for a phrase you want to rank for. There are thousands of guides out there that claim they have discovered the secret formula, and if you just follow their steps, you are guaranteed a #1 spot in the search results.

No matter who is saying it, or how they phrase it, if they tell you they have a guaranteed way to rank, they are yanking your chain. No one knows. Even with my own recommendations for how to use keywords in order to rank, I have surprised myself by not being able to rank for things I though would be easy.

I have also surprised myself with excellent rank on articles that I basically wrote willy-nilly.

Sometimes, it’s kind of a guessing game.

That being said, I do have a set of rules I try to adhere to, to increase my chances or ranking highly in search engines (mostly Google). Let’s use the keyword phrase “best way to grow hydroponic tomatoes”. It has an average of 100 searches per month and a QSR of 10.

1. Use the keyword in the title. For example, the title of your post will be: “The Best Way To Grow Hydroponic Tomatoes In The Winter”. That’s pretty simple right? Oh, and your permalinks should be set to create matching links to your titles. I mentioned this before in chapter 6. Normally, you won’t have to change anything, but it’s worth mentioning. This means when you publish your post, the URL will be http://website.com/the-best-way-to-growhydroponic- tomatoes-in-the-winter.

Some people prefer to shorten it to something like website.com/best-way- growhydroponic- tomatoes-winter or even website.com/grow-hydroponic- tomatoeswinter.

Both of those are fine too.

2. Use the keyword in the first paragraph. For example: Tomato lovers looking to grow their own vegetables with hydroponic systems start around spring time, looking forward to harvesting their food in summer. But seasoned growers will want to keep a crop moving all year round. For you guys, I’ve come up with the best way to grow hydroponic tomatoes in the winter. This has worked for two winters for me already, and I’m happy to share my secrets with you.

That’s pretty much it! Shocking, I know. But I currently rank for thousand of keywords using this method. But before you close this book and write me off as a hack, hear me out.

You are not ‘banned’ from using your phrase again later in the pages. These are just the minimum rules I set for myself for keyword targeted content. If you write about anything naturally, the phrase will occur more than once over the course of a 1000 word article. Not only that, but you will be naturally using synonyms and related phrases without even thinking about it.

Rather than try to stuff your phrase in there to hit a 2% density which creates an unnatural feel to the article, just write from your head, and most of the time you will write something that is at least eligible for the first page…if you play our cards right.

Some other optional things you can do for on page optimization for a phrase include:

1. Adding an image with an alt tag using your keyword

2. Use a heading with your keyword (h2, h3, h4, etc)

3. Use the keyword once more in the last paragraph

4. Use text formatting for an LSI keyword phrase

5. Create an external link to a relevant resource with a related phrase

6. Create an internal link to a relevant resource with a related phrase

I realize that there are some things in that list that you might not understand right now. Honestly, it’s not worth the discussion at this point, because I don’t recommend you start off your blogging journey worrying about minute details that may or may not even work. You can come back to this portion at a later date and look each over the things you don’t understand, as they’ve been written about many times over on different websites, including my own.

For now, just keep in mind, “Keyword in the title, keyword in the first paragraph”. If you are aiming for appropriately low competition phrases, ranking for some, if not most of what you target, should be easy.

Other things That Affect Rank

Let’s talk about a few other things that I believe can affect the rank of a specific page on your website.

1. Blog Activity. The more active you are and the more fresh content you post to your website, the more Google will come to crawl your site. More content = more authority = more rank for your website as whole, thus affecting individual pages

2. Content Volume. Related to #1, the length of your posts also matters. For competitive keywords, it’s rare to see a post that’s less than 500 words make it to the first page. Even for medium competition, longer, more details posts will (pretty much) always outrank ones with ‘thin’ content.

3. Social Signals. Facebook likes, Google +1, Tweets, and shares on other social media websites are well known to contribute to the authority of pages on your site.

4. User Engagement. The comment section of your posts can be very important!

To Google it simply sees that each time it’s returning to your page, you’ve updated it with new, fresh content.

5. Keyword Density. Though I don’t shoot for any specific keyword density, I do believe it can affect your rank positively or negatively. Not enough density and your post isn’t focused enough. Too much density and it’s over-optimized.

6. Keyword Usage. Where and how is the keyword used? Is it bolded? Is it an h3 tag? Is it used as an alt tag or image title? Is it the exact phrase or a derivative? If you use a keyword 10 times in one paragraph that will have a different effect than using it 10 times evenly spaced out.

7. LSI Usage. LSI means Latent Semantic Indexing. It basically means “related words”. If my keyword is “how to make an authentic Italian pizza”, then dough, pepperoni, bake in the oven, and make pizza sauce would all be part of the LSI list. It’s words you use when talking about your subject choice.

8. On-Site Anchor Text. This is when you link internally from pages on your site to other pages on your site. Using the keyword phrase as the text part of the link (called anchor text) can definitely boost your rank over time.

9. Off-Site Anchor Text. This is where other websites link back to you.

The phrase they choose to link to your page is also called anchor text. When other sites link to you, it’s also called getting a ‘backlink’, and is the subject of much discussion in the online business community. Getting high quality backlinks is great for ranking, but getting unnatural or low quality backlinks can poison your site and destroy it (I know from personal experience).

We will talk more about keyword rank and search engine optimization in the next chapter.

Research Without Tools

Getting down to the basics, we actually don’t need any keyword tools to figure out what people are searching for. Technically, if we were familiar enough with the topic we chose we could just write off the cuff and search engines would find our site. It’s not “required” to do research and target a phrase in order to rank.

We just do it to increase our chances of ranking.

If you don’t want to invest the money into a keyword tool right now, here are a few ways to find out what people are searching for in your niche.

Google Instant

This is probably the most fun, and easy to decipher. Simply start out with any word or short phrase related to your niche. Type it into Google. Hit space, and then type a letter. Yup, any letter. Google will automatically try to guess what you are searching for based on other people’s similar searches. You can also type the letter before the phrase or in the middle.

Using this tactic will give you some serious insight into what people are searching for because Google creates these predictions based on what real people are searching for. It’s also much more up to date than any keyword tool

because most tools use some kind of historical data. Not only that, but you will end up with a ton of long tail keywords, which tend to have very low competition. *NOTE: “Long Tail Keyword” simply means a keyword with more words in it, usually 3-5+

Q&A Websites

Yahoo Answers is probably the most famous and well ranked, but Quora and a few others exist. Reddit would fall under this category as well. See where people are asking questions and discussing your topic. Notice which topics get the most comments, cause controversy, or are asked several times.

You can not only get insight into what makes people in your niche tick, but you also get some real answers, and start to gain more knowledge that you can use to create original articles for your own website.

Forums

Forums

Join a forum and see what new topics are getting posted. See who’s answering the questions, and how they are answering them. Notice what the brand new people are asking, and what’s frustrating or confusing them. What are they excited about?

People dedicate time out of their day to participate in discussions on these forums. They are not paid, and the vast majority of them have get no monetary value out of participating. It’s like spying in on your potential customers to find out what they are passionate about.

Remember! A keyword can be a simple question. If someone posts, “How Do I Replace The Fuel Filter In My Honda Shadow vt1100?” in the forum, that’s a perfect idea for a YouTube video or blog post tutorial.

Other Blogs

Browse some other blogs in your niche. See what their most popular posts are and which ones are getting the most comments. Take note of what new stuff they’re posting. Get on their email list and check out what they are talking about.

You can even investigate what stuff they are promoting on their website and get some ideas of what you can promote on your own.

I don’t advocate copying at all! But there’s nothing wrong with doing research and seeing what works for other people. Don’t just creep one persons blog and drool over their traffic stats. Keep an eye on a few big players you see ranked a lot, borrow some ideas from each, and keep in mind that you want to work on developing your own brand over time.

I have seen a lot of people copy my websites in the past (or currently) and it’s annoying. Please just use this for learning, not leeching.

Making Up Keywords

The more familiar you are with your niche, the more you can just write anything you think of and have it stick. Seriously. Some of my most popular posts were done just by using my brain. Sometimes, this is the only choice!

When news comes out this week, you won’t find it in any keyword tool because they rely on historical data. For example, when I was living in China and promoting VPNs, Gmail got blocked one week. So I wrote a post, “How to unblock Gmail in China”.

The post was ranked within a week, and doubled my traffic over night.

I probably made a few thousand dollars just from that one post over the next month. Of course, I eventually got pushed out of the #1 spot by websites like Mashable and Lifehacker, capitalizing on the traffic and ad revenue, but it was nice to know that I truly was on the top of my game, and had real insight that only I and a select few could provide.

This tactic isn’t as available for newbies, and for people entering a niche they aren’t very familiar with. But don’t worry – as you grow, you will eventually have more ideas than you could ever write about. I’m now approaching 1,000 posts on One More Cup of Coffee and still have tons of ideas I want to publish over the next couple years.

Chapter 7 Summary + Tasks

Keyword research is something that you will never stop doing. It’s important that you understand the basics because it will help you discover what your potential customers care about and are searching for. You can use a tool or do it via basic research methods. When using a tool, keep in mind that high traffic, low competition should be your focus. When doing manual research, look for longtail keywords related to popular topics.

Tasks For This Chapter

1. Find 3 high traffic keywords or popular topics related to your niche

2. Find 3 low competition keywords or longtail keywords related

to your niche

3. Find 1 forum related to your niche you can join for research purposes

4. Find 2 blogs related to your niche you can subscribe to or read

for research