The Four Critical Keys to Good Keyword Research

Four Critical Keys to Proper Keyword Research

As any successful internet or online marketer will tell you, understanding and then doing proper keyword research is absolutely necessary for laying a good foundation for your online business, no matter what type of market in which you seek to do business. Doing both your niche market and then keyword research correctly and thoroughly … and fully understanding everything …. before you launch your online business and marketing … will literally make the difference between online success or failure.

Understand also that these four critical keys are applicable to both SEO and Pay Per Click methods of online marketing. SEO being “search engine optimization” whereby you seek placement on the search engines organically without having to pay … and Pay Per Click as with Google Adwords where you place an ad on the search engine web site and and then pay a certain amount to them each time someone clicks on your paid ad.

Most people new to online marketing (and this was certainly the case with me about two years ago) when they first start their keyword research think it must be pretty simple … it’s just about finding and then using all the words related to your business or product in your marketing, right? That’s a good general definition, but once you actually start doing it and discover how in depth it really is and can be, it can be very daunting, confusing and frustrating.

To start off, think about discovering all the profitable keywords and keyword phrases for your business, product and market niche as if you were panning for gold in the stream beds of California in 1849. You want to sift out all the rocks, pebbles, sand, and silt and just have those little golden nuggets left in the bottom of your pan when your are done.

Now that we have drawn our analogy above, I am going to list and explain the four critical keys to understanding and performing good keyword research so that when you employ each one of these critical keys or processes as “filters”, you will hopefully be left with your “golden nugget” keywords in the bottom of your pan.

Critical Key #1 – Keyword Relevancy

Critical Key #2 – Finding High Traffic Keywords

Critical Key #3 – Assessing the Competition for Those Keywords

Critical Key #4 – Assessing the Commerciality (Monetary Value) for Those Keywords

It is imperative to your success and profitability in your business that you both fully understand and then employ ALL FOUR of these critical keys. Most new marketers will get one or two of these correct, if that, and then wonder why their business is going nowhere.

A “golden nugget” keyword will be highly relevant to your business, market and niche and to the content on your web site. It will have a good level of traffic, it will have acceptable levels of competition, and it will have a high value of commerciality or monetary value.

Finding Relevant Keywords

Identify words and phrases that are most relevant to the content on your web site and to your business, market and/or products. If you have not built or launched your web site yet, make sure you include all the relevant keywords here in the content on your web site. The real secret here is to think “targeted traffic,” not just lots of traffic. If you choose irrelevant keywords, you could still possibly get good rankings in the search engines for your web site and gets lots of visitors, but if your site is not relevant to what your visitors are looking for, you won’t make any sales AND you could end up with big hosting and advertising bills too.

Finding High Traffic Keywords

Many marketers target seemingly good and relevant keywords, sometimes at random, and as a result, receive very little traffic from them. I know, I have been there and done that. Understand that over 90% of all keywords relating to your business, market or product are going to have insignificant levels of traffic. You want to identify those keywords and phrases that have high levels of traffic associated with each every month. These statistics are easily obtainable from Google and all the other major search engines.

Assess Your Market Competition for Your Keywords

Of all the critical keys, this one is the most important. The #1 reason people fail online is that they ignore this critical key … they never take the time to assess their competition. Consider this …. OK, you now have a really good list of relevant keywords and phrases, all with good levels of traffic associated with them. Well guess what? Chances are your competition is already using either all or some of these same keywords and phrases. They are probably well entrenched already on the limited number of first page positions on the search engine pages. In other words, they are like a well trained fighter in the ring, one that you don’t want to climb into that ring and go up against. You will not win. Identify keywords and phrases where the market competition is weaker and easier to go up against. Think about the two guys on safari in Africa who find themselves being stalked by a hungry lion. One guy calmly sits down, removes his hiking boots, and starts putting on a pair of running shoes he has in his back pack. The other guy looks at him with a puzzled look and says, “Are you crazy, you can’t outrun that lion?” The guy with the running shoes says, “I don’t have to outrun the lion, all I have to do is outrun you!” And so the moral here is that you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be a little bit better than your competition.

The two important aspects of your competition that you need to consider are -

• The amount of competition or how many others are competing for the same keyword phrases.
• The strength of your competition, i.e., how well trained that fighter is in the ring into which you are going to climb. Keywords with strong competiton versus keywords with weak competition. Choose your battles carefully and choose the ones where you have a chance of winning!

Select keywords that have a relatively low amount of competition but also those that have relatively weak competition.

Assessing the Commerciality or Market Monetary Value of Your Keywords

Commerciality is the measure of the potential profitability of a keyword phrase. Think of it as a pipeline with money flowing through it. The bigger the pipe, the more money flows through it. A high commerciality keyword phrase has a higher profit potential whereas a low commercialty keyword is like a narrower pipe line with a weaker money flow.

You could get the first three critical keys correct and have your marketing and web site in place with relevant keywords, good traffic, and acceptable competition resulting in lots of visitors to your web site. If however, you have targeted low commerciality keywords and phrases, you will, in all likelihood, not be making very many sales or money from all your efforts, and that is, after all, the name of the game … bottom line!

If all this information now has your head in a spin and you’re asking yourself “How in the world am I ever going to do all this myself?”…. well, fear not, brave marketer! There are automated software tools on the market that will do all this sifting and filtering for your “golden nugget” keywords for you! The best one, in my humble opinion, is Market Samurai. Market Samurai handles all four of these critical steps when finding your keywords and keyword phrases and goes even much further with added functionality in helping you become successful in your chosen market. Understand that I am not an affiliate for Market Samurai, they do not even offer an affiliate program for their products, to my knowledge. I will not make one dime if you choose to purchase this product. This is simply a best of breed recommendation from someone who has successfully used this product. For more information, go to http://www.MarketSamurai.com. The price is $149.00 but well worth every penny. Market Samurai is available for both PC and Mac.

If I receive enough comments and requests to do so, I may follow this post with an instructional video on using Market Samurai very soon.

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Tagged as: assess market competition, find relevant keywords, Good Keyword Research, high traffic keywords, identifying profitable keywords, keys to keyword research, keyword commerciality, market niche research, Market Samurai, Online Marketing Keyword Research