Keyword Research – How to Find Keyword Variations

Finding keywords that a similar to your main keyword is
essential for expanding the audience for your business. The
ultimate goal of keyword research is to obtain high
rankings, increase traffic and boost sales.


Steps for keyword variation research

1. Ask your customer first

When researching keywords for a customer’s web site first
ask, “what are the main keywords people would use to find
his business?” You could make a guess yourself however
because your customer works his business everyday, he has a
better idea what kind of words his customers use.

2. Use the Google AdWords Selector Tool

After getting the main keyword list from my customer take
each keyword and enter it into Google AdWords Selector Tool

Example

I enter “storage sheds” as my main keyword The keyword
variations tab shows me the September search volume and
advertiser competition

The September search volume statistics show the relative
number of users searching for that keyword on Google. The
green bar is a general guide to determine competitive ad
placement for a particular keyword.

storage sheds, storage shed received the highest search
volumes for September. wood storage sheds, vinyl storage
sheds, storage building, garden sheds, etc, have similar
search volumes.

The advertiser competition statistics display the relative
amount of advertisers bidding on that keyword. If the green
bar is fully colored that means there is a large number of
bidders bidding for that keyword.

storage sheds, storage building, storage buildings, garden
shed, garden sheds, garden buildings, outdoor storage sheds
receive the highest number of bidders (full green bar).

3. Create a spread sheet

Use Microsoft excel or OpenOffice to easily display your
keyword variation research.

The first column should contain the main keywords your
customer gave you.

The second column should contain the keyword variations.

In the third column place stars next to the keywords you have chosen.

Now you can quickly view what keywords to focus on.

4. Find the number of searches for each keyword variation

Use a SEO tool such as WordTracker (wordtracker.com)or
WebCEO
to research the popularity and competitiveness of each
keyword variation. Only utilize the keywords that are
popular (high number of web sites in Google) and have
little competition (low number of searches per month).

Conclusion

If your keywords are very competitive, repeat the steps
above to generate hundreds of keyword variations. It is
often easier to generate lost of traffic from a large
number of less competitive keywords that compete with the
most popular keywords.

By building hundreds of pages using your less competitive
keywords you will create hundreds of entry points to your
web site. This will ultimately result in generating more
visitors and boost sales.

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