The Fundamentals of Keyword Research

In this post I wanted to talk a little bit about keyword research. Keyword research is a fundamental stage in the development of any website regardless of the industry your in. Perhaps the most important thing to understand when undertaking keyword research is the buying potential of each keyword you go after.

If for example you’re in the dog training niche and your building a website where you’re planning on selling some dog training guides. You’ll be far better to go after keywords such as “aggressive dog training” or “stop my dog biting” than “puppy training”. The reason is quite simple…the first two keywords I mentioned are keywords where the person searching has a very serious problem, chances are their dog is overly aggressive and biting – this is a real problem with serious consequences that needs to be solved right away. “Puppy training” on the other hand is a keyword that may convert to sales but it doesnt have the same desperation as the other two keywords mentioned.

Product names are also great keywords to go after. If you’re selling a book called “Secrets to Training Big Dogs” then that will be a profitable keyword to go after as anyone who’s searching for that is probably with a credit card in hand ready to buy. Sure, you’ll have much fewer searches but that keyword could convert at 1:10 visitors and chances are its easy to rank for in google.

Another way to place a value on keywords is to look at Cost Per Click data from google adwords. Using the google sandbox we can see estimations for how much we’d need to pay to have that keyword in the top 3 places in Google AdWords. The more we need to pay, the higher that keyword value is (as people are willing to spend $X per click).

Heres the link to Googles Sanbox: https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Another tool that I use to get an idea for a keywords value is Market Samurai. If you want to find out more about Market Samurai, click the following link: Market Samurai Review

Another thing that you should take into account is the search count data. There is no point in going after a keyword if its not going to bring you any visitors. I generally won’t target a keyword if it has less than 1000 searchs per month. This number varies depending in the market I’m in but its good to use as a rough guide.

Taking the search count and keyword buying potential into account are 2 fundamentals that must be considered when performing keyword research – keep these in mind in your next project…