Keyword Research Made Simple – How to Pick the Keywords That Will Explode Your Business

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the proper way to do keyword research. Stuff that people often get confused about includes which tools are best for keyword research and what’s considered a good keyword to go after.

There are many keyword tools out there, free and paid. For the average Internet marketer, the free ones will do just fine. One of the most popular keyword tools is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It doesn’t provide the most accurate of statistics, but it does a great job in giving you good keyword ideas. When it comes to keyword tools, you don’t need excellent accuracy or fancy bells and whistles. All your research needs to reveal to you are keyword ideas and rough statistics which will tell you whether a keyword is worth pursuing or not.

The starting point for your keyword research should be to identify a broad keyword in your niche like “learn Spanish”, “dog training”, or “panic attacks”. The next step should be to modify that broad keyword so that you get what’s called a long-tailed keyword, which is simply a more detailed version of your broad keyword. An example of a long-tailed keyword would be something like “how to get rid of your panic attacks”. Long-tailed keywords usually have far less competition, so you’ll have a much easier time dominating that keyword, whether you’re a pay-per-click advertiser or trying to get a website to rank in Google through search engine optimization.

Broad keywords like “weight loss” often have millions upon millions of search results. If you’re doing SEO, you could spend months or years trying in vain to get onto the coveted first page of Google for that search term. If you’re doing PPC, you could easily spend a few dollars per click for such a competitive keyword.

The two statistics that should interest you about a keyword are its approximate monthly search volume and the number of competing pages in Google. There is no such thing as a “perfect” number of monthly searches or competing pages because each keyword and niche is different. Your job is to find a keyword with a healthy balance, one which has few enough competing pages for you to have a chance with, but enough monthly searches to make your efforts worthwhile.

Generally, keywords with less than a million search results are relatively easy to rank for. If you’re lucky enough to find some keywords with only a few hundred thousand results but with at least a few hundred searches per month, then you’ve found yourself a potential goldmine.

The most important tip I can give you about keyword research is to pick the right keywords. It sounds obvious, but picking the wrong keywords can waste a whole lot of your time and/or money. For example, if you pick a keyword for which a searcher would not have a high commercial intent, like “free golf tips” for example, then you will be wasting your time. However, if you find a keyword with low competition, decent search volume, and a high commercial intent, then pounce on it.

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