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Utilising the power of the keyphrases that people use online has enabled me to make a full-time income since February 2009. I’ve spent the last two and a half years of my life doing nothing but using my own tactics, coupled with powerful resources, to analyse industries in order to get more website traffic. And, in-turn, make more money. This is known by many as Keyword Research.
It is this keyword research that has allowed me to get 981,000 unique organic search visitors to a 3 month old website, grow blogs faster than I ever thought was possible and – more than anything – allowed me to be free from a boss and the 9-5 grind.
I say this because I want you to understand how important keyword research actually is. You may know one or two places where keyword research can be applied, such as in deciding on a keyphrase to build an affiliate website around or when generating blog post ideas. In reality though, keyword research involves so much more than that.
My aim with this article is to show you the dozens of uses that keyword research has, unique ways to find popular terms, and how to capitalise on your findings. After all, keyword research ultimately allows us to see exactly what consumers are looking for online. Until the internet came along there was no way to get such important insights in so many industries.
As I hope you expect of me by now, I have dedicated days to this blog post and given it my all. As such I have no doubt that you’ll learn something new, and hopefully get a lot of value from what I have to share. Ready? Let’s get started…
The Three Types of Keyphrases
Though keyphrases can be used for much more than just focusing on certain terms and trying to get search engine rankings for them, that is personally a big part of my own strategy (and my income). Keyphrases in this sense are simply queries that people type into the likes of Google or Bing in order to find whatever they’re looking for online.
Most SEO’s generally split keyphrases into two main categories. The head, and the tail. I tend to side with a smaller group of people and prefer to split the billions of keyphrases out there into three groups. The head, the body, and the tail.
Head Keyphrases are generally just one or two words, and very popular. Terms like Facebook, Marketing, Forex and eBay are examples of this.
Body Keyphrases are generally two to three words, and get searched for less than Head keyphrases, but there are more of them. Examples of Body keyphrases could be Facebook Banners (surprisingly popular), Online Marketing, Forex News and eBay Motors.
Tail Keyphrases usually contain three or more words and individually get searched for less than Head and Body keyphrases, but again, there are more of them. Examples of tail keyphrases include Online Marketing Expert San Diego and Forex Trading Software Online.
I have made a graphic to represent this information which you can find below:
(Note: Graphics in this post are not to exact scale)
To be even more specific, in this example model let’s say that Head keyphrases account for the top 1,000 keyphrases used online while Body keyphases make up the top 1,000 to 10,000 keyphrases. Anything beyond that, in my own model, is known as the “Longtail”. Even though each long tail keyword is generally searched for just a few times per month, long tail searches surprisingly make up over 70% of all queries.
To help you visualise this, I’ve made another graphic:
To take things even further, it may surprise you to learn that keyphrases with 7 words in them actually make up around 1.78% of all searches performed online. While that’s a tiny fraction, remember that it’s a tiny fraction of a number which exceeds 90 billion (searches per month) in total, for Google alone.
Finding Keyphrases for Traffic and/or Money
When finalising which keyphrases I want to focus on for various projects, I never focus on Head terms. Since these are the top 1,000 searches online each month, they’re often brand names (e.g. Yahoo) or broad terms (e.g. marketing), where it’s not so obvious what the searcher is looking for.
Instead, I personally focus on Body and Tail phrases. As a rule of thumb, I view body searches as anything getting between 1,000 and 200,000 exact searches per month (I’ll show you how to find this out in a moment). Tail phrases then will get less than 1,000 searches per month each.
We’re going to begin by looking at my most popular sources for each type of keyphrase, and then look in-depth at how to apply keyword research to both blogging and affiliate marketing.
My Most Powerful Long-Tail Keyphrase Source
I haven’t heard anyone else online talking about this strategy (I discovered it by accident) and I’ve never revealed it before on ViperChill so you’ll definitely want to keep reading. Forums, by default, are one of the best types of websites you can own in order to get maximum search engine traffic. The pure mass of user generated content that is created on them, in an organised and crawlable way, can bring millions of free visitors to forum owners around the world each month.
Don’t worry though, this tactic does not involve owning a forum. It involves utilising a popular plugin that many of them have installed. I don’t know the name of the plugin, but basically it adds a section to all forum threads which shows the queries people typed in Google to find that page.
You can see an example of this on the bottom of a random thread on a fishing forum:
Using this little tactic you can view the exact keyphrases that are driving traffic to other sites in your niche. Many of them are long-tail, and many of them are very easy to make money from.
Simply search for the following phrase in Google (replacing niche with any industry you want to):
- “visitors found this page by searching for” niche
Scroll to the bottom of any of the search results that you open and you should see terms which drive traffic to these other webmasters.
Like I said, I haven’t heard anyone talking about this and I’ve never spoken about it before. I’ve recently been using this to generate keyphrases for content ideas and backlink efforts and they have aided my own traffic levels considerably. That means that if you want to really benefit from this, then take action sooner rather than later. I have a large audience here at ViperChill (we’ve just passed 16,000 subscribers, thanks!) and the majority know a great opportunity when they see one.
Useful for: Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
A Little-Known Way to View Wikipedia’s Analytics
One little-known tool I like to use when finding out how popular a niche really is can be found at Stats.Grok.se. This resource shows you how many views each Wikipedia article gets per day. This is useful because the majority of visits to any Wikipedia page are sent by search engines. And, since Wikipedia usually ranks in the top 1-3 results (usually number 1, let’s be honest) for Head and Body terms, you can get an idea of how many searches are being made each day.
Here is the daily view count for a term I’m targeting with this website, “viral marketing”:
You can even check how view counts changed over time, and view stats for literally any page on the website. This has been useful to me on a number of occasions.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
Google Keyword Tool
The Google Keyword Tool is the most popular and talked about tool when it comes to keyword research. Created primarily for people who use Googles’ Adwords service, it allows you to enter search terms and get an estimated number of monthly searches each term receives.
You can filter your results by exact match and broad keywords, and even drill down search volumes for specific countries and people speaking certain languages. I personally enter a few of the top phrases related to my niche into the search box here and then organise them by exact match results, and by the highest search volume.
“Exact match” basically means people are only searching for the term as it is shown, and it’s not missing or adding any words to the figures (like with broad match). Since I build sites for an English audience, I leave on the tools’ default setting to target anyone speaking English.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
Google Webmaster Ranking Terms
If you sign-up to Google Webmaster Tools (free) then one section of the console allows you to see which phrases people are entering into Google where your website turns up as a result. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people are clicking on your link, but that it is showing in the top results for certain terms.
This information can help you see which pages on your site could do with a little SEO help in terms of on-site tweaks or link buidling, which can in turn get you more search engine traffic. It’s often easier to focus on terms that just need a little “boost”, rather than starting totally from scratch with a phrase.
Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool
Though I used to use this tool a lot more in the past than I do now (I rarely build new sites), the Wordtracker Keyword Tool was a staple in my research arsenal for quite some time. Second only to the Google Keyword Tool in my opinion for stats that actually come from sources, the offering gathers its data from Dogpile and MetaCrawler.
According to SEOmoz, Wordtracker also get their data from search queries performed on Yahoo. I can’t actually find any information about this on the Wordtracker website, so hopefully someone can clarify in the comments. The thing I like about this tool the most is that it’s much easier to dig down into phrases to find even longer and less searched variations. Variations that could help get a lot of traffic if actioned upon.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
Google Trends & Hot Trends
If you’re a member of the VIP forums, go and check this thread on “How to Find a $10,000 Keyphrase in 30 Seconds“. I recently sent out the content inside to cloud niche subscribers and many said it was the best email they’ve received from me.
Otherwise, check out the post on how I got 980,000 visitors to a site I owned from free search engine traffic. All thanks to Googel Trends (and the site was only 3 months old).
Google Trends and Google HotTrends basically show you which terms around the world are popular right now. Since around 20% – 25% of searches in Google every single day have never been searched for before in the history of the search engine, you can conclude that many of the items in HotTrends are going to be based around current events.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
The Power of Questions (Yahoo Answers)
A large majority of searches performed online each day are questions. Questions are often centered around problems, and problems are something that can generally be monetised with ease. Yahoo! own a huge knowledge-base of questions and answers on the aptly named Yahoo! Answers.
Simply enter any terms relevant to your chosen industry into the search box and you’ll see relevant questions around that topic. You can even sort these by which are the most popular, to find out what that audience is really passionate about.
Useful for: Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
SEOmoz Popular Searches Tool
A bit like with Google Trends, SEOmoz gather the top terms from a number of sources around the web each day to give you a fuller picture of what really is “Hot” online. Data is gathered from Delicious, eBay Pulse, Amazon Most Popular Tags and Technorti Popular, among other resources.
The data changes each day and you can go back as far as 2009 to see which trends were popular this time last year. You can start by viewing a recent days data with the tool over here.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases
Market Samurai Desktop Software
In all honesty, I had never needed Market Samurai (no affiliate). It is one of those tools that I would hear about all of the time, but didn’t think I would find much use for it in my research arsenal. I was wrong, but only slightly. I haven’t digged into Market Samurai as much as I could, but for quick research it certainly saves me a lot of time.
One of my favourite tool features is analysing how competitive search results actually are. Though I enjoy doing this manually to verify what I’m seeing, MS allows you to see tons of factors about every page that ranks for certain terms, enabling you to quickly diagnose reasons why you may not be ranking.
At $149 it isn’t free nor cheap, but I definitely think the price is worth it. I know how much work going into creating and supporting software, and Market Samurai has already been updated a couple of times since I purchased it.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
Alexa Search Stats
Though Alexa is highly scrutinised for its inaccuracies and ranking bias towards sites in the marketing industry, one feature you can find on their website does provide some interesting insights into your competitors. Simply enter any site URL on their search form (here’s ViperChill’s page) and then on the bottom right of each page you’ll see top search phrases used to find that site.
Now and then I will find examples of this where the phrases were definitely not popular on my site but they’ll show on Alexa. For the most part though, it’s fairly accurate for most of my websites.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases
Page Comparison Tool
I came across this little tool recently in my hunt to make sure I hadn’t missed anything cool from this article. The idea behind Aaron Wall’s Page Comparison Tool really intrigued me. Basically it tells you the most popular two, three and more keyword phrases that can be found across multiple URL’s that you input.
The idea is great, but the tools execution isn’t so much. It was picking up a lot of HTML code in the results which really messed up the stats. That being said, it’s free, and there’s a chance you can find some great terms with a bit of digging.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases
Compete
Just like Alexa (two above), Compete share what they believe to be the top 5 search terms that send traffic to certain websites. You could then enter the URL’s of the most popular sites in your industry and see what is working for them.
Again keep in mind that these are very rarely accurate, but can often give you some good keyphrase ideas.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases.
Google Suggest
Whenever you type a fairly popular term into the Google search box, suggestions for other keyphrases related to your term appear. These are shown by Google to help you find what you’re looking for, quicker. Based on this, it’s easy to assume that the related keyphrases are the most commonly searched over a period of time.
There have been quite a few “Suggest Bombings”, where people continually search for certain search terms to manipulate the suggestions Google displays. This gives more evidence to the belief that the suggestions here are what people are really searching for.
Useful for: Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
Google Sets
Though Sets is a basic tool, it’s simplicity perhaps gives it more value since such few distractions are rare in most online tools. All you have to do is enter a few terms that you know are related in a specific niche, and Google will tell you more of them.
So, if you’re trying to think of what aspects of a niche you may be missing, Sets can fill in the blanks for you.
Useful for: Head Keyphrases, Body Keyphrases
Mine Your Own Analytics
I’ll admit that I haven’t used this for content ideas, but I’ve definitely used it for niche ideas. When I started to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing it was because I stumbled across a popular group of keyphrases that were really easy to rank for.
Even better was when I realised that these popular keyphrases could be applied to any niche (just change the niche modifier) and the search results were equally uncompetitive.
You don’t always have to use other resources to give you ideas. You could just use the data from the traffic you already get to your site to see if you can tap into other industries or write more in-depth content on certain topics.
Useful for: Body Keyphrases, Tail Keyphrases
In Summary
I know that 15 resources as interesting as these are a lot to take in at once, so here’s a little table that you can refer to in the future (or scan now for reference) to help you decide which tools to use. Please note that the table looks much better if you actually read this article on ViperChill.com…
Source |
Head |
Body |
Tail |
| Forum Referrals |  |
 |
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| Wikipedia Analytics | |
|
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| Google Keyword Tool | |
|
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| Google Webmasters | |
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| Market Samurai | |
|
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| Wordtracker Keyword Tool | |
|
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| Google Trends / Hot Trends | |
|
|
| Yahoo Answers | |
||
| SEOmoz Popular | |
|
|
| Alexa Search Stats | |
|
|
| Page Comparison Tool | |
|
|
| Compete Stats | |
|
|
| Google Sets | |
|
|
| Google Suggest | |
|
|
| Mine Your Analytics | |
|
|
We’ll now be looking into two strategy specific applications for keyword research. I’ll first take you through how keyword research can be used in blogging, and then share how I apply it to affiliate marketing.
The Blogger’s Guide to Keyword Research
Keyword research can be useful in many aspects of blogging. There are four main topics that I want to cover in this section, but before I do that I want to share a little tip with you. If you’re using WordPress and have a search box on your blog, go and install a plugin like Search Meter to see exactly what your visitors are entering into that box.
If you use a Google Custom Search Engine on your site then you’ll be able to see this data as well. If you find that a lot of people are searching for a certain term or asking a certain question then you can write about that topic, as it’s clearly something people are interested in.
The three main sections that I’m now going to look at are:
- Your homepage title
- Your post headline and titles
- Resource pages
I’ll show you which type of phrases work best for each element and which tools can help you find them.
Your Homepage Title
Many bloggers make the mistake of thinking that their blog title has to be a description of what your blog is about, or should only include their blog name. Doing so is not inherently bad, but it could mean that you’re missing a lot of search traffic.
As is the case for most blogs, your blog homepage tends to be the most powerful on your site. By powerful I mean that search engines will view it as one of the most authoritative pages on your site, since it’s likely that page will attract the most links from other websites. This makes the page better to rank for more competitive terms.
Since I plan on running a blog for years when I start it, there’s no harm in picking more competitive keyphrases which are going to be harder to rank for.
When I was running a personal development blog, I decided to use the phrase “Personal Development” in my homepage title tag. The keyphrase was targeted to what I was writing about, and received 30,000 exact searches every single month. Thanks to some backlinking efforts, I was able to rank 5th in Google for the phrase, and receive thousands of visitors each month for doing so.
It took me around 10 months in total to rank on the first page of Google for the term, but the wait is worth it since it brings in so many visitors each month. When choosing your own title phrase, I recommend that you pick a term which has between 5,000 and 60,000 exact searches per month (according to the GKT – Google Keyword Tool).
More popular terms will generally be harder to rank for, and anything with a lower monthly search count is not utilising the power of your homepage in its entirety. Try to pick something that is related to what you’re writing about.
On that note I should add that this is not a guide on how to choose a niche for your blog. If you’re looking for information on that, CloudBlogging is probably your best place to start. Instead, your aim is to find a keyphrase around the topic you’re writing about.
I easily came across the term Personal Development because that was the exact topic I was writing about. Viral marketing, which is the phrase I have in ViperChill’s homepage title tag, was not as easy to come by. I don’t actually write that much about viral marketing. I simply found that the term (which was found, again, with the GKT) received a lot of monthly searches and wasn’t too competitive.
I was right when I was quickly able to rank 4th in Google for the term (I currently hover around 4th and 5th) and now receive close to one thousand visitors per month for the phrase. Visitors that would probably never have found me otherwise.
The Quick Win Title
I’ve wrote about quick wins a few times on this blog so I won’t go into them in too much detail here. Quick Wins, in the way that I view them, are basically extensions of your main keyphrase that you use in your homepage title tag. For example, a long-term keyphrase (more competitive) could be viral marketing, whereas a quick win keyphrase for my homepage could be viral marketing case study.
Since the phrase is longer and less popular, it’s likely that the phrase will be much easier to rank for. You can even help your efforts towards a long term phrase – like viral marketing – with link building for the longtail phrase, since they mostly contain the same words.
I find that Quick Wins apply more to affiliate ventures than they do to blogging, however, since the longtail version of a keyphrase is rarely smart to have as the branding phrase of your blog.
Post Headlines and Titles
Some of the keyword research tools mentioned above are excellent for coming up with post ideas for you to write about. Two of my favourites, for this specific purpose, being Yahoo Answers and Google Suggest. The Google Keyword tool, as usual, is also a great tool to help you with brainstorming.
When I was looking for post ideas a few months ago, I returned to the GKT and started entering some of the broad topics that I cover here on ViperChill. “SEO”, “Split testing”, “Affiliate marketing” and others were just a few of my queries. One query which let me to taking action, was “Social Media”.
Through this I found that the related keyphrase – social media strategy – gets searched for 6,600 (exact) times per month. At quick glance the search results didn’t look particularly competitive and social media strategies were actually one topic that I wanted to cover.
I contacted a number of friends online to see if they would share their best tactics with me, and then compiled all of the resulting answers into one huge blog post. It gained a ton of links and, in time, started ranking on the first page of Google for ‘social media strategy’.
One thing I should add is that the headline I used for the post and the title that is shown to search engine spiders / web browsers is not the same. The headline for the blog post is actually “Social Media Supremacy: [...]” as shown below:
Whereas in the title tag of your browser, or in Google search results, you’ll see “Social Media Strategy“…
I did this on purpose, simply because I couldn’t find an easy way to use the actual term, social media strategy in an enticing way that was likely to help me get eyeballs on the post and backlinks in return. I changed the title using a free WordPress plugin you can find on my huge guide to WordPress SEO.
I’ve managed to attain other rankings for popular keyphrases by following a very similar strategy. ViperChill currently ranks 2nd for the phrase WordPress SEO, which gets over 6,000 searches per month. Below you can also see me ranking first for the term “Guest Blogging” which also gets a few thousand searches every single month:
My best advice for your posts headlines is to use all of the tools (above) that you have available to you. Any one of them can spark ideas which can help you write on popular topics. I’ve personally found that really covering a subject in-depth is the best way to ensure that you get backlinks to your post and start ranking for your related terms.
It’s not just the internet marketing niche where I’ve had success with this either. I ranked 2nd in Google for the phrase ‘Personality Development’ when I used to own PluginID, from following the exact steps I’ve just outlined. The phrase received 30,000 exact searches per month and while it wasn’t something I had previously heard of, was a topic I decided to research and write about.
At the end of the day, i always recommend that you write for your readers instead of search engine spiders. But if you can add some little tweaks to your approach and get more search engine traffic, that doesn’t affect readability, then there’s no reason not to in my opinion.
Your Resource Pages
The final blogging area that I want to look at is actually something I need to implement a lot more myself. Since your homepage is your most popular and powerful page, it makes sense that you generally go for the most difficult keyphrases with that page. But, as mentioned, not something too difficult.
Instead of just writing posts about certain topics, you can also create strong resource pages which are then targeted with internal SEO efforts. Just like with the post ideas section, any keyphrases you come up with here should be relevant to what you’re talking about and generally a word or two more than your main keyphrase, as they are likely to be less competitive.
A good example of a blogger using Resources pages coupled with internal SEO for search traffic is Brian at Copyblogger. Brian knows that people are going to be clicking on the navigation bar links a lot, so he wants to direct people to pages that are going to show the true value of his site, and get people to take some form of action.
You can see from the graphic above that the site is targeting some very competitive keyphrases with the terms found in the navigation bar. Though the terms are competitive, the site does actually rank on the first page of Google for most of them.
Look for keyphrases which can help you create a great resource for your readers on topics that people actually search for. You can ‘sculpt’ the pagerank of your pages to focus on passing their juice to these second tier terms and get more search engine traffic in return.
The Affiliates Guide to Keyword Research
My keyword research guide for affiliates does have similarities to the bloggers guide above, but contains a few fundamental differences. Before we get started, I want to say that I’ll personally be focusing on researching keyphrases as an affiliate who relies on SEO, not PPC. I’ve made the majority of my income online thanks to affiliate keyword research and free search traffic, so have never really needed to delve into the world of PPC.
However, there will be quite a few things I say in this section that do apply to Pay Per Click marketing, if that is your area of focus. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll highlight the main sections were going to cover here:
- A Dose of Reality
- Finding What Drives You
- Shortening Your Keyphrase List
- Checking for Longevity
- Analysing the Competition
If this five step process sounds interesting to you, then keep reading.
A Dose of Reality
When I first got started in affiliate marketing, I did so purely because I wanted to make money. Though I was partly working in industries that I cared about, for the most part I really didn’t care about the product I was recommending. At the time I hadn’t really made any money online, so was skeptical that a solid income each month was attainable.
If you haven’t made much money yourself, then maybe you can relate to that.
Though I did have some success in industries that I didn’t care about, I want to make it clear that it wasn’t for me. I eventually discovered that there are tons of ways to make money in affiliate around your passions so there’s no reason not to try and do so.
That being said, there are popular ways to make money without having to care about the niche you’re in. Since I want to keep my personal biases aside, I should really talk about them as well. One popular strategy employed by a lot of internet marketers is to “intercept” sales that are made online.
It’s not easy to take a cold (read: new) website visitor and convince them to buy something. But, it’s very easy to make money from someone who is already looking to buy something. Do you know what most people do when they want to buy a product?
More often than not, they head straight over to Google and look for reviews about that specific item.
Marketers caught onto this so they build review sites, intercept the sales process, and then convince people to purchase the product through their affiliate link. Because the customer is already on the verge of buying something, you can convert them very easily, and make a lot of money for doing so.
This isn’t a totally new idea, but the application of this idea is something I think people go about in the wrong way.
A Real-Life Example
(This example was sent to CloudNiche subscribers two weeks ago)
If I head on over to Clickbank now, I can see the top product in the Make Money section is a product called Commission Crusher and the top product in the Health section is Diet Solution.
- There are 388,000 (!) results for “Commission Crusher Review” in Google
- There are 260,000 results for “Diet Solution Review” in Google
Just change the niche and you’ve already eliminated one third of your competition. Still, there’s two problems to point out here.
1. Focusing on make money products means there is a ton of competition
2. Focusing on anything in Clickbank ensures there’s a lot of competition
Fortunately, you can implement this review strategy for literally any product out there. An easy way to find these products is to use Amazon. A good friend of mine, who is currently teaching English in Thailand, is making a good income from selling kitchen appliances on Amazon. Seriously.
If you sell enough of a product, Amazon increase your commision rate, so you make even more money per customer you send their way. The greatest thing about Amazon is that you can see the most popular products in any category, and products people are looking to buy. With just 30 minutes research you can usually find popular items where there are no results in Google for their review related keyphrases.
I won’t reveal the keyphrase I sent out, since there have to be some perks to getting Cloud Niche emails from me ;).
Finding What Drives You
The reason I don’t focus so much on industries I have no interest in is not only because I can make money writing about what I love, but because doing so makes the overall affiliate process far harder to follow. If you’re using a guide like Cloud Living then sure, it’s easy to pick a random niche in the beginning stages, but it’s not so easy when you have to build a website and write articles around a topic you have no interest in.
Most people online are looking for something to fill a need. People playing games might just want to avoid the school or office work they could (should?) be doing. People reading weight loss blogs may be doing so because they want to attract members of the opposite sex.
Some people really want to quit their day job and leave the rat race, so they read sites like this one. Generally, everything anyone does online is to help them personally, whether you like how that sounds or not. This is probably why Seth Godin refers to eMail as Memail. We care about ourselves, naturally.
To understand what other people might be interested in online, I look at what I’m interested in.
What are my passions?
- Travelling
- Internet marketing
- Driving
- Reading useful, non-fiction books
- Partying (I think my “record” is around 36 nights out in a row)
After I have these written down, then I’ll do the same for fears and problems I have in my life, or I’ve had in the past. Things that I know about. Generally I don’t need to write down these things as I know what I like, fear, and have issues with. However, it’s useful to have a written record for the next step of the process.
Shortening Your Keyphrase List
Once you pick a few topics that you’re interested in, it’s time to find popular keyphrases around those topics that people search for online. The best tool I can recommend to you for this is, just like in the blogging section, the Google Keyword tool.
Simply enter all of the passions, fears and problems that you’ve listed down and then run them through the tool. You’ll then get back a list of keyphrases which are relevant to your initial input. Ideally you’re looking for phrases which get between 2,000 and 20,000 exact searches per month.
This is on the lower scale of the body keyphrases, and usually means terms won’t be too competitive (there are exceptions, of course).
After your first filter (how many searches the term gets), start removing keyphrases based on ones that don’t really interest you. The phrase “make money online” may be relevant for this blog, but it’s not personally something that I would want to try and rank for, irrelevant of how competitive it is.
You should be left with two dozen or so terms. The next step I take is to ask myself whether the keyphrase entered in Google would result in a targeted visitor that I could monetize. In other words, does the keyphrase indicate that someone is likely to purchase something?
Trust me when I say that not all traffic is created equally. I would rather have 100 highly targeted visitors landing on my websites each day than 10,000 people who are not actively seeking the information that I have to offer.
Checking for Longevity
With all of the phrases you have left, run them through the Google Trends tool. I made the mistake of not doing this when I started out in affiliate marketing a few years ago (though in my defence I don’t even think the tool was available then) and spent a lot of time focusing on markets that were getting smaller over time.
To show you what I’m talking about, let me give you an example. A couple of months ago I noticed that the domains MinecraftForum.com and MinecraftForums.com were available on Namecheap.com for $1,800 in total. Minecraft is a game where the focus is on playability, rather than visual effects. It has made it’s sole creator, Notch, millions of dollars over the past year alone.
If I run Minecraft through Google Trends, I can see that at the moment this is one of the hottest games on the internet. I almost purchased the domains the very second that I loaded up this chart (and the Alexa graph for active Minecraft forums that already exist):
However, the pattern that Minecraft is going through generally tends to die down pretty quickly. The popularity of the game can only keep growing for so long. Maybe it would have been a good investment, and it still may be (since the game is coming out on iOS and Nintendo 3DS), but other popular games have not always maintained their huge growth…
The last thing you want to do is focus on a term that is not going to be popular in a few months, so make sure you don’t skip this step.
Analysing the Competition
This step is to simply find out how difficult it is to rank in Google for the terms I want to get traffic for. I’m only going to get a good portion of those thousands of searchers if I’m somewhere in the top five results. If my site is back on page two, I would only get a trickle of search traffic each day. If you don’t know already, the major factor which defines where a page ranks on Google is the number of backlinks that the site / page has. Backlinks are simply hyperlinks from one page to another, like me linking to my about page in this sentence.
My next step was to find out how many backlinks the top searches for this page had. Here are the steps involved:
- Search for your desired keyphrase in Google
- Take the URL of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd results
- Head on over to Yahoo or OpenSiteExplorer as they’re far better at showing links than Google
- Type (without quotes): “link:oneofyourURL’sgohere -site:thedomain.com“
- Write down the number of results that Yahoo shows
Note for step four that after -site: you type the domain name. So, if a result for personal development was johndoe.com/personal-development, that would be my URL, but “johndoe.com” would be after -site:
Run this five-step process for all of your keyphrases and you should have a good idea of how many backlinks it will take to rank for them.
If the top three sites all have tens of thousands of backlinks, it’s unlikely I’m going to try and outrank them as that could take me years. If they have a few thousand, on the other hand, I still might give things a try. I don’t believe that I can get thousands of quality links to my site (although, saying that, ViperChill has 25,000) but I do believe I can get far better quality links than my competition.
I’ve written a huge guide to link building (not as huge as this one, don’t worry) that should teach you all you need to know.
A New Record
The length of a post doesn’t really matter, as it’s very easy to write 6,000 words of poor quality content. That being said, this is the longest blog post I have written in the history of my life (6,530 words at this point) so I really hope the effort I put in led you to getting something out of the post.
I would appreciate some Twitter and Facebook love below if you did learn something, but of course that is not a necessity. The fact that you’re a reader is enough for me. See you in the comments?
RSS Subscribers: 
Apologies if there are any annoying spelling and / or grammar mistakes. Microsoft Word kept crashing on me for this post
Besides that…enjoy!
Keyword research doesn’t need no spellin’!
Thanks Glen. I think you should retire after this post – can’t possibly get any better.
Tyrant
Haha agreed, better follow up this post with a personal update or something because this one is going to be hard to beat!
Done
I think the Tyrant said it right. Now go to a corner for a time-out
Really amazing stuff here and honestly, giving it a quick scan would do it injustice. I plan on printing this baby and you bet I’ll be using this guide to target my next set of keywords/sites.
Thanks Glen.
Does that go for your SERPs too? It’s “optimization” not “optimisation”.
Not everyone is American
No z required.
I imagine “Search Engine Optimisation” is something you’re trying to rank for? Have you found it easier with the “s”?
“z” is pretty flooded.
13,000,000 to 111,000,000…
Hey Glen,
Wow insane post buddy. I’ve seen you spend 12+ hours making this and I can see why it took so much time. The graphs alone are sufficient for a post.
Keyword research has always been a vague subject to me, especially determining whether a keyword will convert visitors. I remember having put weeks into ranking certain sites only to find that the keyword doesn’t convert at all.
This post will surely help! I hope everyone appreciates your efforts as much as I do
Cheers!
Diggy
Hey man,
Hah yeah. Sorry for being so anti-social
Drinks on me when you get back!
Hey glen,
While i know most of this from prior experience. The amount of effort that went into this post and the fact that there is zero shit being sold to people (from your or affiliate links) says leagues about your desire to help people. You could of sold this to people for thousands, yet you gave it away for free.
Your flat mate is also a nice fellow
-Two Step
Excellent post Glen, as always
Dankie Carla!
Mother of a post! Digging in right now! Thanks Bru!
Hah. No worries sis
Wow Glen, this is a loonnggg read!
It is full of great information though. I especially like the forums idea on finding keywords!
Keep up the good work, and thanks for writing it!
You’re welcome man.
Thanks for the comment!
Ahh your ultimate guides are so killer!
Great timing as well as I was thinking of tackling a new site could always use a refresher and some new tips on le keyword research.
Thanks glen!
Thanks Vinay.
Glad you find it useful!
Wow, this post is incredibly valuable!
Thanks a lot!
Thank YOU Robert
One word: EPIC mate …… Whoa 15 sources thats amazing! By the way you still planning on coming to the UK?
Hey Usman
Yep, it’s my brothers wedding in a couple of weeks so I kind of have to
Fantastic read as always. You really take keyword research to a new level, very inspiring!
Thanks Carl, I appreciate that!
This indeed is the ULTIMATE keyword research guide Glen!
You did a great work writing this post and I’m just stumbling on a lot of great tools for the first time (most notable the Wikipedia traffic tool) and also love how you made this post and the points in it highly practical through the use of graphs.
I was also skeptical about purchasing Market Samurai at first but once I did, I could say it is my best business purchase and I keep on using it everyday – I’m now on page one for some of my top key phrases because with Market Samurai I could easily keep track of each keyword and see what it takes to rank.
I just changed my blog title to “Internet Marketing Advice from a Unique Perspective” and I now want to be targeting the keyword “internet marketing advice” but now that I read your example about Viral Marketing and Personal Development I think I can be ranking for “internet marketing” in the next 1 year if I try harder
Thanks so much for the great post bud!
I’m off to spread the word!
-Onibalusi
Hey Oni,
Glad that you think so
That’s a competitive phrase, but best of luck to you!
Appreciated as always.
Apologies for grammar and spelling?
I was too engaged to notice.
What a great post.
Many Thanks.
Amen to that.
Thank you Claude!
Another great future reference post Glen, Thanks! I am going to print it out and use as a guide the next time I put up a new site.
Awesome!
I always love hearing that for some reason. Totally surprises me
Holy donkey balls, thanks for a couple surprises, Glen. Particularly the forum tool.
Haha it has been a while buddy!
Thanks for stopping by
I find interesting that the first source of keyword you mentioned was not Google keyword tool. Thanks for doing that. I have some problem to trust Google. Have you ever compared the stats for the traffic generated by a keyword on Wikipedia according to Stats.Grok.se with the number of impression for the same keyword on google adwords?
I did that on purpose as I knew people are most likely to read the first few ;). Thanks!
The only issue is that you can’t see exactly how many visitors to Wikipedia pages are from search.
I am brand new to SEO, and your site. I have to say that this was more valuable than just about any other article I’ve read on keywords. I bet there will be plenty of people reading this post who will have wished they had this info as early on as me. How do I thank you for the hours/days you just saved me?
Thanks Glen!
Hey Jackie
Commenting is more than enough. Thanks for taking the time to do so
Wow you’ve outdone yourself Glen! I’ve been a fan since near the beginning and I’ve never seen so much content in one place
Some was familiar from CloudLiving and emails, but there was a whole lot that I learned too. Especially the ideas for finding new keyphrases like forums.
Just want to say thanks. I appreciate it.
Hey Mike,
Me either
Thanks for the comment. No problem!
Good stuff as usual Glen,
Effective keyword research is the primary reason why all of my websites are consistently on page one of Google in their respective niches. Love the additional tidbits and I will definitely be applying those to further increase effectiveness.
All the best,
Sunil
Congratulations!
Let me know how things work out
Bloody hell Glen, you’re going to break WordPress one of these days with your ginormous posts
I read it at work, it was a really good read and very informative!
Haha!
Yeah I had Word crash on me a couple of times when I tried to spell check the post.
Damn this post is loooooong. Took me a while to finish, but it’s obvious you put a lot of time into this post. Great content! I see most keyword research articles skip Google trends, which I think is a mistake. It can be very important for determining the longevity of your niche, or catching the upcoming popular keywords.
Hey AE,
Yep, it’s pretty big! Thanks for reading, and I’m glad you enjoyed it.
phewww…you have reveal everything that every marketer used to say their secret how to do keyword research blablabla……..as always, nice post again glenn…keep on rockin’
I will try my best!
Thanks Sofian.
Glen…this couldn’t have come at a better time. I have been in a rut doing keyword research, and this gives me a bunch of ideas on things to try…Great info, as always…Thanks for posting it.
I love hearing that.
You’re very welcome.
Um, is this a post or a thesis?
I wish I could have completed stuff like this over a week-end instead of the papers I produced last-minute in university.
It’s great. You could have sold this as an e-book, almost.
Don’t forget to spend some time on real life, tho. You know, go out with friends, have some beer-downtime, …go hit on some unsuspecting women
I hope you find time to feed Junior too 
Thanks G. (I can call you, “G”, right?
Shaun
Hey Shaun,
Hah, sure, I guess? Only my Dad calls me “G” so it is slightly weird
I’m taking two months off at the end of July, so don’t worry, I will be having some downtime!
First of all congrats for setting a new record @ viperchill
The article as usual is pretty awesome, got to know many keyword research tips and ideas.
Thanks for this wonderful post ….
You’re welcome TC,
And thanks!
Hi Glen – Epic Post!
Very useful indeed – thanks for creating those fab visual graphics – that really sets it apart
They took a lot longer than the writing believe it or not.
So, I’m really glad to hear they helped
Awesome…………as always
Gracias.
For the plugin it might be STT2 (Search Term Tagging 2), But it seem google panda was banned sites that use that plugin. Might be its because become some keyword stuffing.
Glen:
I dropped all of my other “subscriptions” a while back. Yours is the only one I read and this post is why. Your going to be at the top for a long time to come.
Hah, wow.
Thank you Gustavo. That’s all I can say.
Thanks for this great information. I am surprised and happy to see this information, it is going to be especially helpful now since I am trying to understand more about keyword search.
What I like that you cover “everything” to one degree or another, thus I get a balanced look at the various strategies and tools. Otherwise, I am getting a specific post, video, or product just on “Market Samurai” or the Google Keyword Tool or anyone of the many specific possibilities. And I never know for sure which is better, which is more important for ME at this moment. So kudos and what a great contribution and value.
Glen,
Here are two of my best tips.
(1) With keywords, the plural often converts better than the singular. I like to verify this with Google Analytics. I’m always surprised by how often it’s true.
(2) I found a tool that uses what you said about Google Suggest and turbo charges it. It’s called Uber Suggest. They tap into Google Suggest. You enter one keyword and they give you a long list – it’s the list of search phrases that Google suggests when you type that keyword into Google.
I wrote a blog post that describes how to use Uber Suggest. I hope it’s cool to link to the post here. I don’t sell anything on my blog except a coffee mug, and the profits go to a non-profit called the Audubon Society, which helps birds and the environment.
http://analyticsexamples.blogspot.com/2011/05/keyword-discovery-find-new-keywords.html
I’m one of those that can’t sit in front of a computer and read long posts…so I usually print these out. Anyway, it’s 19 pages long. (I use Print Friendly). Looking forward to the read!!!
You always provide high quality content, Glen and that’s the main reason why i always love your blog.
I already know about that “forum searches” thing on most of the warez, nulled script sites but never thought of using it. So thanks for the awesome suggestion.
Keep up the rocking work
~Dev
Wow thanks for the huge post, about 6 months ago this would be the type of post I would print off and read at work. Luckily though I don’t have to work anymore, thanks partly to your awesome blog posts!
There is a lot of valuable information here and it is comforting to know that I am already doing a lot of this, but still found a few good tips
Insane post. Seriously. It could easily have been part of a paid product. (I’m glad it wasn’t!)
Thank you Richard,
Without being egotistical, I think so too. But, I’m happy to give it away for free.
I appreciate the comment
Great and very detailed post on one area that really gets me confused. At last someone has broken it down step by step.
Thanks
Have a great day
This is a great post! I use Google Keyword Tool a lot, I really wish there was a tool that took terms and gave me a breakdown of the backlinks for the first 5 pages returned. That would be awesome, it would cross-reference expected traffic and search competition.
Wow, Glen. Thanks for this great info!
I will have to print this out and read at my leasure, since I simply cannot read this much of great quality material off the screen!
The best of luck to you!
A great post about keywords, better than some paid products! Thanks.
Hah, thank you Manie
Hey Glen,
Really timely article here. I appreciate how much research must have gone into this and can’t wait to read more posts from your SEO category now that you clearly know what you’re talking about.
Keep up the good work!…
Well done Glen. A really useful review and tutorial on keyword research. It was so good, I hardly skimmed at all!
Hey Adrian,
Funny, but I actually really appreciate you saying that!
Keep well
Thank you for the list. I would like to add the site http://www.soovle.com/. You type in your base keywords or “head keyphrases” and it gives you the ‘suggest’ phrases for Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Answers and YouTube.
That’s awesome! Thanks for the addition
If Nobel had blogging as a category to nominate people, you’d have definitely made it by now! You inspire me! This one easily the best Keyword Research guide I’ve ever come across!
Thank you Sushant!
Incredible post, as always, Glen. I’ll definitely be sending anyone I know with a question about keyword research this way.
BTW – anytime I can find new tools or strategies that I hadn’t read about already or thought of, I’m impressed. I picked up a few tidbits once again . . . you are a true master of your craft!
Thanks Joshua,
That’s always good to hear. Thanks for the support
Glen, this post is a beast!!
There’s so much actionable information here that I had no clue about like the Wikipedia analytics and the Webmaster Tools feature.
May I ask why you don’t include your affiliate link to Market Samurai and others inside your posts?
Good Vibes~
Vic
Outstanding! need I say more? Thanks for sharing your insights with us mere minions. LOL.
Is this an article or an Ebook?!?!
Wow, Glen. You continue to bring an amazing level of quality to what you do.
Thank you.
I’m printing this bad boy!
Amazing post, Glen!! Thank you for taking the time to put it together.
A few more social bookmarking buttons (especially, Digg, Stumble, and +1) would’ve helped us make it go viral a bit easier/faster.
Hey Geno
Thank you and no problem.
I like to keep the focus narrow so people don’t get too overwhelmed. You’re welcome to share the posts around though
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS POST. It was priceless.
You’re welcome man.
Love the way you can utilise wikipedia, that’s a new one for me.
Thanks Chris,
Quite a few people have said that which was surprising. Now I’m glad I put it so high up the post
Glen, thanks for the great tips. I’ve been doing Keyword research for some time, but you just presented some new methods I haven’t heard of or tried before. Can’t wait to do some keyword digging to find the gold I left in the dirt.
Awesome.
Just keep what you find to yourself
wow have to say this post justifies the title you gave it. Just immense!
Great post Glen!
However, It’s safe to say that i’m actually scared about reading your next blog post (if it’s as long as this) haha.
Hey Ted,
Thanks buddy. Don’t worry, I have no plans of writing anything this long anytime soon
Awesome post man, thanks for the information and revealing some of your secrets!
Another killer post Glen! That may have been the longest post you have ever written, and to be honest, I think that was the longest single blog post that I have taken the time to read from start to finish, but it was pure gold!
A couple tools that I had never heard of before in here and I loved the idea of taking forum searches and using them to find new niches.
Thanks!
Glen,
The amount of work you put into this is incredible!
Awesome stuff for your community. In the ambiguous IM game out there, you’re one of the most transparent guys.
I’m sure a bunch of karma is about to flow your way.
Thanks for this!
Jordan
Hi Glen,
Long time reader, first time commenter!
Fantastic post mate. Will definitely be the resource I turn to when I finally get off my ass and launch an affiliate site!
Thanks!
Holy crap!
umm yeah, that’s all I got atm
‘
Flabbergasted.
Glen Allepic indeed!
Believe it or not, I stumbled across this post while I was on the bus back home from work, and wow did time just fly. This was a very resourceful article thanks for sharing it!
And congratulations on setting a record! It was long, but a nice read.
Where is your next stop on the globe?
Jackson
Hey Jackson,
That’s very cool! I’ll be in England next
This is the best in-depth article written in simple language about keyword reasearch I have read so far. Used it immediately.
Pretty awesome.
Thanks Vijay
Glad you enjoyed it!
OMG Glen, you outdid yourself this time!! I been a long follower of your blogs (pluginid and Viperchill) and this is by far the best I seen and just in time for what I was looking for!!! Thanks bro!
You’re welcome buddy.
Thanks for the support.
Thanks Glen! Yet another well written post!
I’ve been implementing your strategies and the results have been satisfactory. Today after reading this post I tweaked my blog again to make more efficient SEO.
Great work indeed!
Wow, stunning post, this sparked up the idea in my mind how important and beneficial SEO actually is!
As usual Glen another great post and at the usual great price.
Thanks.
Wow! Glen, this is one of the most comprehensive and well laid out blog posts I have ever read. Thank you for all of the effort and time you put into this post! I have recently been really trying to learn more about SEO and playing the google game and this site really gives a great foundation into keyword research. I am already looking forward to going through the rest of your site, signing up for RSS and connecting on Twitter!
Thank you for all of your great content, Glen!
Cheers,
@TyrellMara
Hey, Glen. Thanks for the post! It’s a really long one, but I don’t find it hard to finish it.
In additional, I’d like to check competitors’ backlinks in Majestic SEO (www.majesticseo.com), which could show even more results than yahoo. Though it’s a bit confusing about the fresh and history data, it’s still another great tool to check competition.
Thanks Zach
I know of Majestic but haven’t really looked into it that much.
ok, for the first time I officially have to admit that the length of your post is over my commando-mode-reading-during-working-hours skills
I scanned only section titles and few sentences from each of them but rest will have to wait until I come back home.
You are forgiven
Thanks for this HUGE blog post ! I thought I will never read it in one shot, but i did !
Thanks again for the great value you’re giving, it’s inspirating !
Wow, I’m not even sure I could myself.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the comment.
My personal opinion: the most comprehensive and “generous” guide. I would just add a search with a tilde. Thanks Glen!
Thanks for your input Chiara.
Man, that was a read and a half!! All good stuff though as always. I’m just getting into a niche where the Google trends graph looks just like your Minecraft one, only, I know my niche isn’t going to die down anytime soon! Woohoo!
Hah that’s awesome
Glad you enjoyed it Loren.
As so many have said before, great useful information. Thankyou.
What I can add is that the style of the post, written with passion from your personal experience, makes it all the more engaging. I really got the sense that you were sweating blood and tears and pouring your heart and soul into it. This makes for a great connection with your reader, well me in this case, and increases levels of trust which is a great place to do business from.
You have shared information that is of great use not just regards keywords but as a benchmark for blog posts. What do you get in return? In my case it’s my trust, engagement and my signup. I suspect that you have seen an increase due directly to this post?
Thanks
When one is thinking Glen has done his worst, then he releases a deadlier bomb. What kind of machine is this? Well, thank you so much!
That made me laugh
Thanks RTO.
That is a MASSIVE guide and took a while to get through but all of it is gold. I’m using quite a few of the techniques but there are some new ones there too so thanks for sharing.
Re: Yahoo searches being included in Wordtracker’s data. Not seen that on SEOmoz but perhaps it’s a misunderstanding about the nature of metacrawlers. The search is made on the metacrawler (Wordtracker’s data) but the results come from a number of search engines including Yahoo, Google and Bing.
Thanks for a bunch of wonderful ideas (like the Amazon one). It’s impossible to cover everything, of course, but I would consider adding a few concepts and matching techniques …
1) As well as look at head, body and tail searches for all keywords, use the same categorization to:
• your target market so that, eg, viral marketing becomes the head term.
• your target keyword so that every target keyword is a head term with its own body and tail.
2) When targeting any keyword, always have your focus on the bigger goal of that keyword’s body and tail.
Many is the time I’ve targeted a keyword and got more visits and response from its body and tail.
So ‘target the head and exploit the tail’.
For more info on this technique search ‘sell more donuts’ or ‘Wordtracker Strategizer’ (Glen: please remove this sentence if you think it is too commercial.)
3) On analysing the competition:
• Instead of counting inbound links (like Yahoo) count the number of domains that link. That way multiple links from single sites only count once (available on Majestic SEO and LinkBuilder).
• Also count links that contain your target keyword in their link text (In Anchor) and links that contain both your target keyword in their link text *and* your target keyword in the their page title (In Title). That way you get a measure not just of competition but optimized competition. This data is uniquely available on the Wordtracker paid-for tool using Majestic SEO data.
Google Ad planner can also help to find keyword ideas (interest, competition…)
I use it for my website and SEO rather than using it for display ads
Same as that but there is plenty I can take from this post to add to my own research efforts. Great detail on keywords and the difference between them in terms of value.
whoo!
This is a great information , i have been spending more time on your site to understand a lot of things i don’t know before. thanks a great deal for providing such a huge resources that would have worth $$$$ for free.
Glen,
I have a website that ranks on the first page of Google for many competitive keywords including head and long tail but I get less than 50 visitors a day. The site’s been up and running for over 1 year, the niche is very popular and I rank higher than older more established sites in the niche. (And those sites get thousands of visitors per day). Why is it that my site doesn’t get that kind of traffic?
Some people would make a PDF out of this and call it a $47 eBook. Amazing.
M
Joseph: either they aren’t such popular keywords as you think (all keyword research tools make mistakes) or your ranking is misleading (eg, you are seeing personalized or local results).
Test the former with pay per click but first test the later by making your searches on a ‘clean’ browser (clear all cache and cookies, don’t log into Google and search from a different ISP than you usually do).
Thanks a lot for this Glenn. You could have even had this come out as a three part post ,but you chose to give us all everything at one time and leave us satisfied. You really delivered. I don’t want to look at a keyword research post again for a long time. I mean that in a good way!
dubliner saturday gesuip times tell dirkstar nevermind nampa just need to stop nerding it up so hard (speaking for myself but clearly you too
)
p.s. this article was my wonderwall. jokes TL;DR.
Amazing..that’s it..! Nothing more to be said..I think that some folks have the gift to right..There are two site I refer to or learn from regularly. This is one of them…The best post I’ve read thus far on the subject.
Joseph: I agree with Marks excellent advice to you. If you are logged in to your Google account when searching then Google builds a picture of your searching habits, if you visit your own site a lot which you probably do then it will rank high for you when you are logged in.
The other thing to check is your meta description that appears underneath the underlined title in the Google results page. Is that really reaffirming that your site will provide the answer to the search query? Make the searcher think yes thats the one! In fact I have seen descriptions that are completely off because the description meta tag has not been set for the page so Google just takes some random text, you don’t want that, or even where the description is the default text that just says something about the tool that was used to build the page, you definitely don’t want that!
Set up descriptions carefully as that is often what determines if the searcher clicks or not. Hope you get it sorted.
Pete
Without a doubt, the best post I’ve read in the last few months across ALL internet marketing/business sites! Great work as always. Keep it coming…
Thank you Ryan!
G O L D M I N E
Jon
Hey Glen, this is really one of the awesome posts you’ve ever written, I honestly got a lot out of it, amazing how one can optimise $$$ with free keywords, we appriciate man, big ups. Amazing info indeed. Thanx!
Hi Glen,
Excellent post as usual. The question is how many times do you used the “keyword research” in a post? For example, if you are targeting “online marketing,” how many times do you make sure it is listed in the article? Also, it would be a good idea if you can write a post on how to increase conversion rate
Thanks Glen for sharing
wow, this is very detail keyword research tips.
thank you very much
Glen, I tried “visitors found this page by searching for Tallahassee” and could not find the search terms. I did this on google using chrome. What am I missing?
By the way, great post. It might take me a whole month to get through it.
Take Tallahassee outside of the quotes.
Wow! Amazing tips, thank you very much! This is the best comparison and tips I have read on keyword research. I have tried several tools that I did not like and here you have an amazing list of stuff. Thank you!
Really it’s very helpful and detail information. Thanks for Sharing
What a post, mate, really made my day. Two of your ideas I find absolutely brilliant:
one. search for “visitors found this page by searching for” niche.
two. the little known wikipedia tool,
cheers,
gnarls715
@Marks and PeteS_UK:
Thanks for the input. Just to make things clear: I’m not logged into my Google account when I check my placement in the SERPs. The site about which I started this discussion is a weight lifting/strength training blog, it ranks above bodybuilding.com t-nation.com, stronglifts.com, Livestrong, etc. for a number of keywords. Yet the traffic is nowhere near where it should be. I have absolutely no idea why this is the case.
My flagship site is health and wellness. I publish articles 7 days per week on that site (once per week on the other site), with good meta description. Interestingly, last May I published an article about a common health problem. I quickly began receiving a lot of traffic from Bing, my article ranked on the first page of the SERPs placing it above wikipedia for a keyword phrase (prior to publication, Bing was at that spot) and above webMD and MayoClinic. The next day it was pushed to page 13, then went back to page 1 (bottom of the page) then a day later it was down to page 15. I asked Bing Webmaster Tools about it, and they said many factors come into it including good keywords and placement. The articles are science based (but written for regular readers) and all of my sources are checked and re-checked. I also site ALL of my sources. I wonder if webMD, etc. pulled weight to get my article pushed down. (Incidentally yahoo Slurp has been crawling that article during the past two weeks).
I have another article published on the health and wellness site that receives traffic for a certain health tax. My article ranks at the top of Google’s SERPs for a phrase related to that tax. There are approximately 4,530,000 results for that phrase – that’s telling you how competitive it is. Yet, my site doesn’t get traffic in high numbers.
I check stats against GA, quantcast, statcounter and the results are all the same. Low traffic for both sites, the strength training site is just over 1 year old, the health and wellness site is almost 4 years old. What could be causing this? I comment on other blogs/websites, post articles on directories and even contributed a guest post. (Interestingly my first and only guest post was to another website in the health and wellness niche. My article immediately went viral, one of the owners of that site said that my article almost 400 retweets in less than 24 hours, which were in the owner’s words, a record for them. Yet, it didn’t get me a boost in traffic.) I also joined a blogging network and many of my articles are featured there. What happens is they repost the articles from my site on the featured article section of their fitness blog network site. When my articles are reposted there, they receive hundreds of stumbles (shortly after posting), yet those same articles barely get stumbled on my own site. Why is this?
Regarding Bing, they said factors that determine placement are keywords and relevance. I accidentally typed “placement” instead of relevance.
Thanks for sharing your tips and tactics on keyword research. Good stuff. I’ve seen traffic spikes on specific celebrity names (Asian celebrities) on some of our sites however these are usually trends that disappear over time. Subjects like “affiliate marketing” or “wordpress seo” are much more stable, I think.
What a wealth of info – awesome post and i wish i had found this post when i first started working online. Great blog – thanks again.
Lee
Wow! Thanks for this insane article. i haven’t gone through it all but skimmed it, and it seems legit.
I also use market samurai, it saves me a buck load of time on finding keywords and also figuring out the seo competition. I also agree on finding niches that you are passionate about. There’s nothing worse than forcing yourself to write about something you have no interest in.
Good work, interesting stuff and well put together!
If it hasn’t already been mentioned in the comments, I think the vb plugin you mention is “FUZZY SEO Booster” http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=234192
I just came over this post again and read most replies to it. I just cant help to say, You are now certainly on the “most hated list ” of the “gurus” now…
You gonna get them out of biz soon.
Gotcha
Thank you for putting together this AMAZING resource. I’ve read so much on keyword research over the years, but this is PURE GOLD!
Awesome tips on keyword research. You helped me spark some light bulbs now
A bang of information…thanks for the post
Wow. You covered a massive amount of information. I can see you’ve definitley done your homework. Thanks for all the great resources.
Great job again Glen, this post definitely lives up its name. I have been trying to explain keyword research to a couple of my buddies recently (without much luck) so now I’ll email them this post to show them that keyword research is NOT a robotic process. Keywords can be found almost everywhere and being good at it comes from practice, intuition and a bit of luck.
That forum trick was completely new to me, but I feel stupid because it seems so obvious!
Cheers,
Alex
Wow. You have really outdone yourself Glen.
This is insanely valuable.
Even though I feel I know a few things or two about this topic, It’s a great read and I definitely gotten a few golden nuggets.
Outstanding stuff, Glen, thanks so much. I finally know what “long tail” keywords are, and I’d never heard of the wikipedia analytics technique before! Good work.
Hi Glen,
is it ok to purchase a domain name such as http://www.namesurname.com and have it redirected to a personal blog such as http://www.blog.domainname.com
Does it do any harm to either of those sites?
Don’t expect the first domain to rank if it’s only redirecting.
thanks to this post, i think i know the niche for my affiliate site. the question is: should i built a fully static affiliate site using, for example AOM, or should i build a blog on my niche (writing articles, etc) and include my affiliate links on the articles?
expecting your response for this, glen!
thanks!!
Great post. This is one of the best blogs to come to for information that is in depth and free. I am going to bookmark this. Thanks.
Great post. I loved the “visitors found this page by searching for” tip. I think KW research is still difficult when trying to mine the long tail – no really awesome tools, imho. So I love the queries that imply hustle on the part of the researcher.
Woah!! Another Great post Glen!!! I’ll bookmarked this post. Every time I want to do a keywords research I’ll read your post!! thanks again!
I never realized that finding the right keywords can be approached in such a scientific way. My keyword research has always been limited to typing the keyword to Google search box and see how many adds come up. I should really try to use these methods do see how much difference that would make so thanks for the nice, detailed guide.
I wonder which time was easier to build and promote a site.
Whether the 90s where there were like 1000 websites and pretty much the only thing you needed was to have powerful description tag, keywords tag and title tag but very few potential visitors since no one had internet figuratively speaking.
Or today when you have billion people connected online but you have as well millions of competitors to your niche.
awesome post….
Just too detailed enough to make someone start seeing results only after applying the tips explained. i will appreciate to have this in eBook format.
Glen,
I have no words to describe this post. It is truly the ultimate guide for keyword research. It is insanely packed with information and insanely long to read but it really is an insanely fantastic article, hands down. I know I used a lot of “insane” in my sentence there but this is by far the best article on keyword research I’ve read out there. Many people will just package a little bit of what you wrote here and sell it BUT you provide it here FOR FREE!
I’ve got a question. Is keyword research enough a successful website these days? I feel like it is getting harder and harder.
Thanks Angelica!
Sorry, but could you rephrase the question?
Hey Glen!
Sorry about the grammar error. Yeah what I was trying to ask is if keyword research alone is enough to have a successful website. Hope you get it this time
If that keyword research results in search traffic, then definitely. I have a few sites that rely on nothing but that
Thanks for the Great Tips, Glen
This blog post is awesome. Amazing resource, motivational and inspirational. Heck yes!
Thanks Scott!
Hi Glen–
Great guidance!
I’m a newbie and I’m working on this idea but I don’t know if I’m out in left field with it. I’ve done a keyword search and found a tail that has high interest and low competition. The first 3 Google sites that come up with this keyword tail search are high-ranking sites with thousands of back-links, however, the tail that I’m interested in within these sites have very few back-links, i.e. less than 100. In other words, I found a head and body without this particular tail.
I understand that we should be looking for tails without much competition, but would that also include minimal competition from specific pages within a large, relevant site?
Gratzi!
That could have been an ebook. That was some classic info. It took me 2 hours to get through this post because I stopped several times to bookmark the websites you mentioned and made some keyword changes along the way. Bravo.
The number of keyword searches basically give us an idea of the keywords’ level of interest, and using our common sense when choosing the right words we can reap the benefits.
OK … hehe … first of all, I needed half an hour to read this … and it was worth every second of it .. you’re crazy … but I like it … these are great pointers for everyone … for those who don’t have a clue about seo and for those who know what they are doing … keep up the fantastic work
Solid post, Glen. It only took me half a day to get through everything, but it was worth it!
One of my favorite suggestions was taking a look at your Google Webmasters tools to identify pages that are already ranking well, but could be killing it with just a little extra boost!
its a keyword research post for dummies. really enjoyed reading it
Great lesson Glen, you are a really great teacher, Thank You…
Now I have to go and get to work utilizing the information from this class.
In lots of ways this is fantastic advice, but it is especially good if you are looking for a bandwagon that hasn’t been jumped on yet.
If you are already on a wagon that is packed and you are squashed up at the back and can’t get off, the process is ever so slightly different.
Hi Glenn,
Wooow… I read it all
this is just awesome.. I really love to follow your blog and read it all..
Take care
speechless
really wow, thank you a million times
Glen, this is PRICELESS article, some things just jumped into the right places in my head while reading it, thank you SO MUCH !!!
regards!
good keyword for seo success. thanks for share
Hey Glen,
Thanks for the longest post – i also took longest time 3 days (with long breaks) to read this post on a weekend which I have never done.
Will apply learning from here on my site and couple of my Clients WordPress websites. Will see how much traffic it can add on.
One thing I have noticed that Title tags does the max. for me till now – they have the power to bring you up on 1st page combine it with wordpress and you are on top.
Thanks,
Vinit
Fantastic read for semi-newbies like myself. It’s like a refresher course with lots and lots of new information and such a delicious read full of titbits. I realise from reading this article that I really haven’t done much in trying to draw traffic to my site and there are so many resources out there to use; it all just depends on you. Thanks for sharing.
realy great article, I always had trouble finding the right keywords for my new website, I found the solution with your great article…thank you
Hey Glen,
Excellent and informational post for beginner and professional marketers out there.. Keep up the good job.
Cheers
Excellent post! The most thorough post I have seen about keyword research.
Wow, this site never stops impressing me with the quality of information you give away for free. I have personally purchased guides for keyword research that didn’t have this much insight, detail, and unique tips/tricks. Thanks for such a wonderful resource, I will definitely share this with friends and business associated.
Jeff
Hi Glen,
This is an awesome article! Learned so much from it! Thanks so much for doing this and congrats about your new record btw!
I was testing out the methods you showed and ran into a bit of a problem with the yahoo search results. I noticed that whenever I refreshed my browser, the number of results yahoo showed changed dramatically. Like from a couple hundreds to a couple of thousands. Depending on when I refresh it, it shows me very different total search results. Do you happen to know why that is?
Thanks in advance!
Only new to all of this, this post has helped greatly. I have actually printed it off so I can refer back to it when working. Thanks.
Enormously informative many thanks, I think your current audience could perhaps want more well written articles similar to this carry on the excellent content.
Wow..I’m glad i signed up for your mailing list. This is one of the most informative, valuble post i have found online. I sat and read the whole thing. I did gain a lot from this Glen. Thank you! Im going to start using all of these resources for my keyword research. I have only been doing internet marketing, seo (well learning) for two months and i can analyze and choose some good keywords pretty fast now but this article is so much more ans beyond typical kwr. This can be used for any business on or offline. Thanks again man! I look forward to learning all that you have to offer. That is my passion!
Very helpful post with excellent content. I really appreciate the time an effort you put into this. Now get going and chill for a while.
I cant decide where to focus on my site, because head keywords are very attractive and I am not ranking so far, but tail keywords are much easier and can bring as much traffic…
Glen you are my hero. You deserve to make a ton of money online because you write some really great articles. Your passion shows in your writing.
Hah, thank you Stephen!
Appreciated
Do you also take in consideration the adwords competition?
Not really
Great post, one that I will no doubt re-read many times over, great advice on the tools to use, though I can’t seem to get what I wanted from the “visitors found this page by searching for” tip. I will keep trying and digging deeper.
On a side note, 36 nights out in a row – not a bad effort that lad
I was doing some keyword research regarding your idea on Cloud Niche to start review sites for things like household appliances. I noticed that around February 2011, tons of these review sites had suddenly popped up and are now ranking on top of Google SERPs.
Now the niche market for these types of review sites is totally saturated for almost EVERY household appliance or tool out there, you name it. There are even review sites for waffle irons. Too bad many of the Cloud Niche email updates contain outdated ideas, it’s a bit like getting last years news today. But it’s good proof of your intuition, skill and creativity regarding internet marketing.
So basically, it sucks that I didn’t subscribe to Cloud Niche earlier, this could’ve been a frickin gold mine! Thanks for all the updates, though. Interesting research at least.
Most informative one-stop-shop for all things related to Keyword Research! Thanks for this excellent post!
Very good keyword research post. This is an area many struggle with, but they do not need to as there are tools available to assist.
I finally got around to reading this MASSIVE post and wanted to say thanks for writing it as I’m using it to help me with the SEO for my pages. Hopefully It will help and I’ll start getting some visitors.
This is incredibly a huge post. i spent around 20 minutes to just read the entire post and understand. Amazingly written. Thanks, Good work, will be useful for my website optimization.
This may be a silly question, but I am working on my first website and trying to figure out how to best input keywords. My question is this…If I have a service that is available in several locations and i want to highlight that service as a keyword as well as those locations, how do I input that?
service_location1
service_location2
service_location3…
-OR-
service, location1, location2, location3
I hope that makes sense. Thank you for your help!
Glen,
This just got me excited about keyword research and the new site I’ve been planning, thank you! I love the terminology and approach in this post.
Another small but useful place to find a few more relevant terms I use is in Google itself. For many queries, there will be 8 “related searches” after the 10th result. It’s not a lot, but I like these terms because they’re kind of “straight from the horses mouth”, you know?
Wow!
I’ve bought multiple different products related to keyword research and I didn’t even realize that the best guide possible had already been written! This is simply awesome stuff. Ive learned not to expect anything less from you glen!
Great post. I need to learn all I can.
Hi first of all wow!
i have tried different things in the past online but am looking at things with more detail now 
you have gone into a lot of detail i wish i could write so many words filled with pure gold!
I have been trying to find the best way to do keyword research and reading your blog i will be trying to focus on finding long tail keywords. Also loving the what people searched for to find the page thing in the forums
thanks very much,jeremy
Your article is very impress. Tons of information, really i think it’s one of the most complete articles than ever read until today, at least in the keyword research.
Excellent, congratulations.
Glen,
I speak for all of us by saying THANK YOU. Everybody is writing about keyword research online (and other online topics), but none of them compare to your content. Your attention to detail is amazing.
Thank you!
Kevin
This is a massively impressive article! Thank you so much for sharing all of this info.
I knew a lot of the concepts behind the research but some of these tools have been off my radar! Thanks for listing all of these!
Glen this epic blog post is just a couple of months away from it’s 2nd anniversary and even though a lot of changes has taken place since this post was published, the basic keyword research concept hasn’t changed a lot. And this post is pretty much relevant even today. But I would love to hear from the author what he thinks. Is there any update required to this post to make it more compatible to the new age concepts? For example, Would you still suggest the free Wordtracker as one of the better keyword research tool or is there any better alternative (the likes Magestic SEO, Ahref etc.)?
Thanks Glen, Epic post as usual.
I figure out this will serve better for writing blog posts than keyword research for me; especially Yahoo! Answers.
One question. Do you think it is viable to write this long posts in every niche? especially when there is not much to write about.
Thanks again for reading my comment. Waiting on you for my answer!
Hi Glen. I must say that this is about the best blog post I’ve ever read from viperChill. What’s more is that I keep returning to this post every now and then to read and re-read. It’s content is simply priceless!!
If there’s one awesome tip I’ve taken away from this post, it’s definitely the idea of getting keywords via that forum plugin. That’s a clean one.
Thanks for putting this up. Looking forward to more like this to come.
Cheers!!
Do you also take in consideration the adwords competition?
Nope
Overwhelmed with the depth of this post. I have BMed it for future reading.
By the way, is Head-Body-Tail your categorization? So far, I had heard only about the long tail. Impressive
Hey Glen,
This is great content. Whenever i get un-motivated i always come back to this Article and re-read it again. It really does motivate me to get back into marketing and try to help others online and in person. I really appreciate all your time and hard work. Thanks again
Probably the biggest mistake people make when doing their own PPC advertising is choosing the wrong keywords just because they want to get traffic. A couple of things to know are 1) General keywords get lots of searches and traffic but are less qualified and less likely to buy. When you’re paying for visitors, you want results, not just traffic. 2) The keywords that are being bid on must be extremely relevant to the product/services you are offering. If it was a retail store, would you want to pay for male motor bikers to walk into Victoria’s secret? Nothing against bikers, it’s just not the target market – and that’s what happens when you bid on general, broad keywords. You get lots of untargeted visitors so your ROI doesn’t work. If anybody wants help with this, call my buddy Simon here: 256-398-3835.
It’s one of your best posts, Glen.
I have gained a lot more insight into Keywords than I had before. Thanks for the effort that you have put into this post.
Thank you Glen,
have been searching everywhere for a thorough post like this on Keywords and yours is fantastic! Thanks!