Keyword Research – 6 Sure Ways To Do it Effectively

Many aspects of internet marketing will have a knock on effect, choose the right keyword, use them in the right content and point the right links at that content, these elements will all add to a site that ranks well in its niche.

Choosing the right keyword

So let’s start at the beginning with choosing the right keywords, this is the first building block of a successful site. Let’s assume that you have decided on the niche, if it’s a small tight niche that’s targeted at a small audience then you will probably want to try and dominate that niche the other option will be to try and carve out a small piece of a bigger niche. Whichever option you choose will be reflected in your keyword strategy, if you target a tiny niche and want to dominate it, you will need to rank for as many related keywords as possible, if you’re going after a section of a bigger niche you will probably be looking at a much smaller keyword set along with the different variants and long tails.

How to discover new keyword

Every SEO blog you read will have a section about keyword research so I don’t really want to over it again, so here is a really short list of how I discover new keywords.

• Adwords keyword tool.
• Wordtracker.
• Meta tags and descriptions from my competitors.
• Finding what questions people are asking in that niche.

The other option I favor is to let webmaster tools do the research for you. If you know there is traffic in a niche, put the site up add your content and after month or 2 then look at webmaster tools and see what you are ranking for, if any of the keywords have got decent traffic behind them start pushing that keyword. You can also be pleasantly surprised at what keywords can show up in webmaster tools.

Target your keyword

The next important part of your keyword research is to look at the sites that are already ranking for the keywords you want to target.  If you want to see examples of people getting their keyword research wrong just look at ezinearticles, you will see countless articles all using super tough keywords in their anchor text. People are choosing keywords and niches based on the search volume, most of these people will never get anywhere in these niches so for them it is just wasted time and effort.

Fortify your keyword

When you look at your competitors you’re looking at how they can be beaten, you’re looking at how many links it will take, how good the content needs to be and are they missing an angle that you can fill. How old their domain is, do you need to go and buy an aged domain to compete and probably the most important of all these, are you good enough to get the results you need?

Group your keyword

Lastly you need to look at what type of keywords are driving this niche, I break these down into 2 basic groups, info based and buying based, I think they are pretty self-explanatory, info based keywords means they are still researching. This is typified by many question based search terms, how to, what is. These types of terms can still be valuable but it depends on how you want to monetize, if you just want to use adsense then these are good terms to target, if you want to use an affiliate offer with these terms you will have a little more work to-do, you need to give them the answer they are looking for. Then you need to convince them that they need this product you are selling.

Commercial keywords

The other terms are buying terms, again pretty straight forward, price, buy etc, and as you guessed these convert pretty well. I will also include terms like review in this section as in most cases they are pretty close to buying, you just need to convince then they are making the right decision when they buy this product.

Well hopefully this post has helped in some small way with your keyword research but there is one last thing to remember no niche or competitor is unbeatable, you just need to be better than them.