If there’s one thing that many people disagree on, it’s Keyword Research.
A lot of niche marketers will tell you that KW research is everything, and that is only partially true.
Some SEO experts say that keyword research is kind of a waste of time, and here’s why:
Keyword research tools like Google’s External Keyword Tool, Marketing Samurai, SEOBook, Niche Inspector/Detective, Overture, Wordtracker, etc… all mislead you when they provide you with the number of competing sites as a relevant indicator of the SEO competition for a keyword or niche, or keyphrases.
The number of competing sites simply doesn’t matter because all that means is the search engine found XX number of sites that have that word on their site somewhere.
Not many of those sites are actually dedicated to the exact keyword or term you’re going after here, therefore there really isn’t a lot of competition for the keywords you’re targeting.
Theoretically, there could be ZERO competition for the term you’re going after because not a lot of sites actually dedicated themselves to ranking well for the keywords they’re showing up in the SERPs for… they’re just there.
When keyword research tools show you a really high number of competing sites for a keyword or phrase this will make you think that a certain niche isn’t worth targeting, and this is my main point here on why this statistic (# of competing sites) means very little to you when deciding on what keywords and niches to target.
Here’s an example of how my site ranks #2 or 3 amongst 24 MILLION other sites by making a few simple changes to my blog
The search query:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS277US278&q=marketing+business+product+reviews
My blog ranks #2 or 3 for this without a sweat, but a keyword research tool would show you that based on # of competing sites, this term isn’t worth going after.
I do agree that the term in that search isn’t worth going after, but only because they’re aren’t a lot of people searching for that exact phrase, so it’s not worth my time to target those keywords.
How did I outrank 24 million other sites so quickly?
By making the site properly optimized for those terms. I have ZERO backlinks to this site with those words in the anchor text of the links.
But who the heck is searching for that exact term?
Not many people search for that term… so the # of competing sites is not indicative of a search term’s popularity, only how many sites Google decided to include in the index for those terms.
What does matter?
Search volume matters, really….who cares if you outrank 24 million other sites if there’s no traffic for that term?
The keyword research tools mentioned above show you the search volume in addition to # of competing sites. However, these tools also show wide ranges of numbers of searches for the same terms entered into each tool…
This means that not one of these tools can be regarded as “Gospel” so you need to take everything you’re being handed with a grain of salt.
Why do Keyword Research Tools show such varying numbers?
Because they’re pulling from different databases, or have outdated information or just revealing what they want to reveal (kind of like how Google doesn’t really show an accurate number for how many backlinks your site has pointing to it, but Yahoo Search Marketing does…)
Also, Google’s tool shows the $$ being spent on PPC as an indicator of $$$ being spent in a niche, but that’s only telling you what’s being spent on pay per click advertising… Some niches many not do well with pay-per-click marketing…
I know for a fact that this is misleading because I have a client who is getting a lot of traffic easily to her site, and there’s a ton of money in this niche.
The SEO competition was allegedly fierce, but it wasn’t so performing basic SEO works wonders for her site.
Since we believed what these tools were telling us, we shot too low and went after less competive terms and got high rankings easily,even with her PageRank dropping, too.
Since the SEO competition wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, we revised the site to go after the KWs we thought were previously unreachable, SERPS-wise…
A GOOD Keyword Research tool will tell you the in-depth SEO analysis of those “competing sites in the top ten for that term.
Micro Niche Finder does that, by the way…
- I highly recommend you don’t aim low with your SEO and just exercise basic SEO to rank well for your terms.
- Get a KW rich domain name…
- Have it SEO-ed for 2 or 3 main terms…
- Then analyze your tracking statistics to see what you’re actually being found for, and you’ll see terms there NO KW tool uncovered for you.
- Then write about those “weird” terms you see your site getting found for. This is sort of a backwards way of doing LSI for your site, but it works.
Kurt Melvin (SEO guy with 12 years of SEO experience) once said that KW research is an “iffy” thing at best because the way people search is ever-changing.
In the 70s, people said G’s to mean thousands, now in the computer age with K meaning kilobytes, or thousand bytes, we now say K instead of G to mean “thousand”.
Not many people say I want to make 10 Gs a month, and now more people say I want to make 10k a month.
People’s search, language and behavior patterns change over time, so being “married” to a keyword or keyphrase or keyword research tool leaves you trying to get traffic for a limited # of search terms…
How insulting is it to pay a monthly fee for a keyword research tool that is leading you astray?
- The SAFE way to do keyword research is to use a variety of tools and find the common ground.
- The SECRET to getting traffic and high SERPs isn’t always vast numbers of links, but highly targetted links.
What do the search engines have to do to stay in business?
They have to provide the most relevant search results to their searchers or they’ll go out of business, right?
So how do you make your site seem more relevant to the search engines eyes?
- Link yourself to other sites that rank well for the terms you’re going after.
- Find the top 10 sites in your niche and comment on the EZA articles, Squidoo lenses, hub pages and blog posts…
- You can even trackback to other blog posts if you want. As a blog owner myself I delete all trackbacks that are not from good sites, but I DO leave the trackbacks that are from related sites. This bolsters me in the SERPs, and them, too.
- It ties us both together in a WEB of sorts. Yes, a WEB…You know….the WEB…the Internet (interlinked sites sending traffic and relevancy to each other) ?
If your SEO competition is doing their job well, then you’ll still need to get some backlinks.
Get backlinks with ANCHOR text in them linking to your sites.
Anchor text describes the site it’s linking to, lending relevancy to the site the anchor text is linking to for the clickable words that construe the text.
I have yet to meet the person who told me they’re getting the exact amount of traffic a keyword tool told them to expect to get for a certain term they’re ranking well for.
You need to get found for ALL the terms that are related to your site, not just one.
As mentioned above, you can install a tracking script on your site to see exactly who, what, why, where, when your sites’ visitors are coming to your site.
WHY they’re coming to your site is important because it lets you know what you should be writing about more often.
This is a tip you don’t see spoken about too often, but it’s a great way to make your site seem like it has an overall tighter theme, content-wise.
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Daniel McGonagle
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
A valuable post if ever there was one.
Part of my strategy is using keyword research for EZA article submission (there’s a good overview here), so this helps a lot.
Hey Gary,
you can use EZA articles published by others for research as well. If any EZA article in your niche was viewed a lot of times, you can View the Source code to see exactly what KWs they target in that article. It also helps to copy the title of the article and paste it into a Google search to see if it’s ranking well.
There are more effective ways of distributing articles that using the isnares of the world and articledashboard. You can submit your articles to blog networks like Unique Article Wizardto have your article posted on sites that want your content, and aren’t splog-type sites.
KW research is dependent on a lot of variables and online tools, and the reality of it all is what actually happens when you rank well for certain terms. Are those terms profitable, capable of good ROI, not converting etc…?
Thanks for the feedback and welcome to the blog
Dan