Web Marketing Strategies To Help Grow Your Business
If you don’t research potential keywords correctly you won’t get the desired results you’re looking for. For instance you may spend hours creating a list of keywords using your favorite keyword tool, only to find out later it didn’t generate new traffic or convert into sales.
So what are the top 3 mistakes marketers make while conducting keyword research?
Before writing any content for your website it’s very important to research the keywords people enter into the search engines to find information. If you don’t do this first your content won’t attract the search engines which means you’ll receive little or no search engine traffic.
What is keyword research and what will it tell you?
Are you only using one tool for keyword research?
Do all keyword tools give you an accurate search count?
Which tools should you use to find new niches?
Search engines find websites based upon keywords contained in there web pages. If there are thousands of search counts for a specific keyword each month and your web page ranks at the top or on the first page of Google you’ll receive far more traffic than if it’s ranked on the second or third page.
So how do you find keywords people are searching on every month?
Why is Keyword Research so important?
How do you find the right keywords?
Which keyword research tool is best?
Without understanding the importance of keyword research your online business will not be successful. For instance when I started marketing my web design business by writing articles and submitting them to online publications I wondered why I wasn’t receiving much traffic. Only when I began weaving keywords into my content that people were searching on did my traffic increase.
Understanding the importance of keywords
Most internet marketers will tell you to ONLY carry out keyword research to find a niche or develop a product. If you follow this advice you could spend lots of time and money developing your niche only to realize months later it was not profitable. Even if your keyword receives a high number of searches each month there is no guarantee it has commercial value.
Example
Some time ago I created a Google AdWords campaign centered on “italian recipes” because the average cost per click (CPC) was very low and there were several clickbank products available to sell as an affiliate. At the time the CPC was around 10 cents so I only had to spend $10 for 100 clicks. I ran the campaign for several weeks trying the different keywords I’d researched. I achieved a 2% click through rate but didn’t make one sale.
Why didn’t I generate any sales?
A search for “italian recipes” generates 1000s of free italian recipes. Why pay for an italian recipe cookbook when you can get the information for free from the Net? The keyword phrase “italian recipes” receives 1000s of searches each month but has little or no commercial value.
Irrelevant keywords Waste Your Time and Effort
Many keywords that receive a lot of traffic have no commerical value therefore you should only target profitable keywords.
90% of most keywords are too competitive to get top search engine rankings. You should only target keywords that receive a high number of monthly searches and small number of competing sites.
How to research the market value of any keyword
Every day I receive emails offering services which guarantee top rankings for my website in the search engines. This can be achieved very easily if it’s a keyword phrase no one is searching on or has no competition. For instance if you do a search on “tuatara schizophrenia” with quotation marks you don’t get any results. If I created a website on this topic it would immediately attain a top ranking however you wouldn’t get any visitors because there are no competing sites . When doing keyword research you need to find keywords relevant to your niche to attract search engine traffic. Irrelevant keywords can be costly.
What is a profitable keyword?
If you write lots of content you sometimes run out of of article ideas. This can become frustrating because you want to provide content to your readers that relates to their needs, wants and desires. If you stray away from this focus they’ll lose interest and unsubscribe from your newsletter, stop leaving blog comments and stop purchasing your product recommendations. One of the best ways to prevent this from happening is researching new keywords using the free keyword research tools listed below.
How to Generate Fresh Article Ideas with Free Keyword Research Tools
Are you currently generating free traffic to your website?
Are people finding your website in the search engines?
Is your website search engine friendly?
How can you increase your current rankings?
These are just some of the questions you should be asking yourself if you want to build a profitable business on the Internet. The best free traffic you can receive is from an organic listing in the search engines (websites listed on the left). Ideally your site should be listed on the first page for a specific keyword. If your website appears on the second page or beyond no one will see it. There’s no guarantee you’ll get a first page listing (because search engine formulas change and more competitors come online everyday) therefore you need to create a list of many keywords then integrate them into your web pages.
Step by step process on how to do keyword research:
1. Create a list of keywords
Use the free keyword research tools such as WordTracker or the Google Adwords suggestion tool to create a list of at least 100 keywords. For example here are the first 3 monthly results when you enter “keyword research” in Wordtracker..
keyword research…………….. 1,018
keyword research seo…………… 44
keyword research tool…………… 44
seo keyword research………………2
The longer your list the more keywords you can use in your website content. Your goal should be to dominate your niche by obtaining good rankings for all your keywords.
2. Select long tail keywords
Long tail keywords don’t have a high number of searches per month and have less competition than the popular keywords. Therefore it will be easier to attain high rankings for the them. In the above example you would use the second and third results instead of the first because there are less competing websites.
3. Create a list of competing websites
Enter each keyword into the Google search box with quotations around it to view the number of competing websites. The higher the number the more competitors you have.
Example
“keyword research”…………………11,500,000 (competing sites in Google)
“keyword research seo”……………41,910,000
keyword research tool………………1,410,000
“seo keyword research”……………….432,000
After doing a little more research you’ve discovered the first 3 searches have too many competitors but the fourth one has much less. You should now check the number of backlinks of the top 10 websites for this keyword. This will determine what you need to do to rank above a competing website.
4. Analyze the backlinks of competitors
These are links that point to a website. It’s one of the main factors Google uses to rank websites. The quality and quantity of backlinks will determine your rankings. If you can outnumber the backlinks of your competitors you will outrank them in the search engines.
Use Yahoo Site Explorer to check the number of backlinks for a web page or website. For example if the first website you check has 6000 backlinks you’ll need to get over 6000 to outrank them. That would take too long. If the second result only has 20 backlinks you could outrank them by building more than 20 to your own web page containing the same keyword.
5. Use the keywords in your content
Only use one or two keywords in the content of each web page. Include it in your meta tags, headings, sub headings, paragraphs and links. Don’t over do it otherwise the search engines will think you’re spamming them and lower your rankings.
6. Build backlinks to your website
Build backlinks to all your web pages using a combination of article marketing, video marketing, commenting on blogs, forums and social networking. Avoid getting backlinks from unrelated websites. Focus on sites that compliment or relate to your own.
7. Add unique content
As you add more content you increase the places visitors find your website. Instead of just finding your business through the home page they find it from other pages. Therefore make sure you optimize each web page plus build backlinks to it.
Related Article
How to Optimize Your Website for the Search Engines
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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com
Web Design, Hosting, SEO
One of the most difficult tasks of creating a profitable AdWords campaign is finding keywords that have few competing ads. If you can find alternative keywords to the ones your competitors are using to sell the same product you can run a profitable campaign.
Benefits of finding profitable keywords
1. Spend less money
If there are no or a only a few ads using these keywords you won’t have a high cost per click (CPC).
2. Find a different path to the sale
Instead of using the same keywords as your competitors you use alternative keywords to sell the same product.
3. Faster profits
If your keywords have a high search volume and your ad is the only one showing your profits will be faster than if you were competing with a full page of ads.
4. Avoid the double serving rule
If you write an ad that contains the same display URL as another ad that is already running on Google AdWords you’ll incur the “double serving rule”. This means your ad won’t get displayed until this is corrected.
A simple way to avoid the “double serving rule” is to research alternative keywords from your competitors. This enables you to create ads for the same product without worrying about the competition.
Read 7 ways to avoid the Google AdWords double serving rule
Since your way is not as common as the normal way keywords are discovered, chances are the words you find are not used by your competitors. Fewer competitors will you give you a better chance of creating a profitable campaign.
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So you’ve found a niche you’re passionate about but you don’t know if it will be a profitable one. You’ll waste a lot of time and money building a web site and writing lots of content for your niche only to find there’s no demand or interest for it.
This is why you need to do keyword research first before you write even one word. The number of searches will determine if it’s worthwhile pursuing the niche you’ve chosen. If it doesn’t receive many searches move on to another niche your passionate about. This is why you created a list in the beginning.
Camping is my passion
Let’s go through the exercise of doing keyword research for the keyword “camping” since it’s one of my passions.
1. Enter “camping” (with the quotes) in the search box of the free keyword research tool…wordtracker. It will list the first 100 keywords and show the number of times people have searched on that word in one month.
Tip: Your main keyword should get 500 to 1000 searches. If it’s less than that move on to another keyword (topic) you’re passionate about.
Here are the first 10 keywords:
1280 camping world
1119 camping
645 camping gear
466 camping tents
441 camping supplies
314 camping equipment
218 motorcycle camping trailers
178 camping rankings
164 camping costa brava
161 camping trailers
130 camping recipes
2. List the top 10 web sites in Google
This will give you a bird’s eye view of your competition. I chose “camping gear” as my main keyword because camping is too general and “camping gear” receives over 500 searches.
Here’s the top 10 web sites in Google (this may change anytime)
www.rei.com/
www.cabelas.com/
www.campmor.com/
www.summitcampinggear.com/
www.camping-gear-outlet.com/
www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=4128
www.coleman.com/
www.camping4less.com/
www.usoutdoorstore.com/
www.campingcomfortably.com/
3. Check the number of backlinks of competing web sites.
Backlinks are the links that point to your web site from another web site. The number and quality of backlinks determines the rankings of your web site. A great free tool to check backlinks is Yahoo Site Explorer
Enter the top web site…www.rei.com/ in the search box. In the inlinks drop down box at the top of the page select: “except from this domain” to “only this URL” It says this site has 114,510 backlinks. If you want to compete with this website you’ll need to get more than 114,510 links pointing to your own web site.
Do the same for the other top 9 web sites. Ideally you want to find web sites that have only a few 100 backlinks otherwise you will spending all your time finding backlinks to outdo your competition.
Do this same exercise for at least your top 10 keywords that were generated from wordtracker until you find one with few backlinks from the top 10 Google list.
Once you’ve found your ideal keyword phrase you need to do market research. This will show you where your customers go online to find information related to your niche.
Related Articles
How to Optimize Your Article Before Publishing It
Research the Best Keywords Using the Google AdWords Tool - Part 1
Research the Best Keywords Using the Google AdWords Tool - Part 2
How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines – Part 1
How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines – Part 2
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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design and SEO Services
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