Keyword Research Tips
Hey, a question that often pops up in the Wealthy Affiliate forum (and loads of other places) is ‘how can I compete on competitive keywords terms’, particularly in relation to articles.
Or maybe there is already an Ezine article or Squidoo lens in place using the keyword term you want to use.
Often times, the answer will be to try another keyword phrase but that’s not always the right answer.
Let’s take a step back…
- First chose longer tail keyword phrases (3 – 5 words)
- Then, use the Google Keyword tool to check on the number of monthly searches.
- Then type your keyword phrase “in brackets” to check out the number of competing sites.
- If you have a few hundred searches a month and less than 5000 competing sites you are good to go, right?
Well, that’s a good enough guide to get you started but it’s not the whole picture by any means.
First, and very important, all keyword data, no matter where it comes from, is historical. That’s important if you are promoting something that’s hot or a ‘new’ angle on something. If your research tells you people will be searching on your keyword phrase but Google is coming up with the old ‘not enough data’ line, go with your instincts.
If, however, you are coming up with the right combination of monthly searches and competing sites, you still need to assess the competition.
How Strong Is Your Competition?
In, other words, how well optimised are those other sites for your keyword phrase?
There may well be other articles or lenses, etc but they may only be using the keyword phrase in the title, or maybe just the description (as displayed in the SERPS), or maybe just the URL…
The trick, whether you are writing an article, a Squidoo lens or Hub, a blog post or, indeed a web page itself, is to think how it will appear in the SERPS.
And you want your keyword phrase to appear in the title, the description and the URL. (And in the body of your text as well.)
Sometimes, you’ll find the competition has all the bases covered but not always. So, just because a keyword phrase has tens of thousands of competing sites doesn’t mean you can’t beat it out.
One little cheat Thad and I always use is to run our keywords through Micro Niche Finder first. MNF has a Strength Of Competition indicator (SOC). It’s runs a complex algorithm against all the competing sites for a keyword phrase and gives a score. It’s a very neat ‘trick’ and saves us a ton of time and wasted effort. You can check out our Micro Niche Finder Review for more information.
With keyword research, brain can usually beat brawn!
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Finally took the plunge and bought micronichefinder. I thought it was a expensive when so may tools are free but it does point you at keywords I wouldnt have though of and saves loads of time. I notice though that you get locked out of Google if you do a full soc search on all your keywords. Bound to happen I guess.
Yeah, you need to be careful with doing a full SOC (Strength of Competition) search using MNF. Google is sensitive to ANY kind of bot search and MNF runs a complicated algorithm to assess SOC.
What I do is just check only likely looking phrases for SOC or run it ‘overnight’ in the background. That works fine and it’s really valuable information to have. You can run it in the background while you work on something else.