2 Keyword Research
Keywords are the words or phrases people enter into search engines when they’re looking for something but don’t know where to find it.
Your keyword research should start by imagining the mindset of the ideal people you want to find your website. Maybe it’s a newspaper editor, a magazine photo editor or a consumer seeking recommended bed and breakfast lodgings. You need to put yourself in their shoes and think what keywords they are likely to enter. Here are some possibilities…
- Vancouver freelance writers
- Stock photos Greece islands
- accommodations Kelowna
- bicycle travel stories
OK, those are your starting points. But, which variations of your keyword phrase are searched for more often?’
- Stock photos Greek isles?
- Greece pictures for sale?
- Stock images of Greece?
or…
- bike travel stories?
- articles about cycling?
- bicycle touring adventures?
Don’t rely on your own hunches when there are free tools available to give you the facts.
For example, use the Free Search Term Suggestion Tool at http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html to query the keywords “freelance writer” and you’ll see results like this:
As you can see, they predict the phrase “freelance writer” will be made 643 times per day. These and other tools are useful to give you other perspectives on what is happening in the real world of the Internet.
The Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool at http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php gives you a different viewpoint.
One of my favorite tools for finding “long-tail” keywords (useful in very popular niches) is WordTracker. Their full-meal deal is a bit pricey, but here is a link to their free demo: Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool
Up until today, July 9, 2008, Google had a Keyword tool that was less than wonderful regarding search numbers, as it only showed bar graphs of the number of searches per month and the amount of competition for your keyword and related phrases. Then, amazingly, they transformed it into a much more useful tool that actually shows the number of searches last month. But what I also love about it is that it shows how profitable different keywords can be. If you’re going to monitize with Google AdSense, you really ought to use the Google Keyword Tool. Here is a glimpse…
These numbers do not show how much money you would get, but rather how much you would have to pay per click if you were advertising using Google AdWords. Nobody but Google knows how much of a percentage they take and how much you get per click. Still, this tool is excellent for demonstrating, which keywords are potentially more profitable than similar ones in the same niche. That screen shot was taken a couple of days ago, so it doesn’t reflect their amazing transformation that — I’m still surprised by it — happened only today! I guess that goes to prove that any information you find on the internet, if it was written yesterday or earlier, may not be current anymore.
Before you make your final choice of which keyword phrases your site will be optimized for, you probably ought to check on two more things — your opportunities for monitization, and how much competition you will have.
The monitization part will be discussed at length in a different page. But briefly, it involves searching various affiliate websites to see what products or services are available in your niche. You would then collect a commission when someone clicks on one of your ads and makes a purchase. In the travel niche, there are affiliate programs offered by Travelocity and other online ticket brokers, as well as travel insurance companies, used suitcases for sale on eBay, and, of course, thousands of travel books for sale on Amazon.com.
To find out how many other web pages are optimized for your keyword, simply go to google.com and do a search with your phrase enclosed in quotes. My search for “freelance writers Vancouver” without quotes returned 217,000 results. With quotes, the more accurate figure of 712 was returned.
If you can find a keyword that gets least 10 searches per day, and has no more than 10,000 exact matches on Google, you can be pretty confident of getting your site listed on the first page when someone searches for those keywords you’re optimizing for.
One final caution. Never fall so deeply in love with an idea that you move on it too quickly before doing sufficient research.
After you have found the best keywords and narrowed them down to a short, short list, then you can proceed with registering a domain name.