One of the first puzzling things that first hits beginners at Online Marketing is the vexed issue of Keyword research.
Suppose you are mad keen on training Boxer dogs. After thinking about all you know about Boxers – there’s basic facts to cover, Boxers as puppies, their food, illnesses, obedience training …well it comes to a 20 page site.
Each page has to have a clear focus and theme and this is expressed as a keyword phrase – each page must have a unique phrase which tells the search engines what the page (or blog post) is about.
Simple and scary!
Simple because really all you need to do is to choose a phrase like “boxer dogs for sale” used by people surfing and browsing the web.
And scary?
Scary because getting this wrong – using the wrong keywords – and your site will fail. This is why there is so much attention paid to keyword research and this is why there is so much anxiety about keyword research.
How do I get this right?
So the first question you set out to answer is “How do I do keyword research correctly -how do I find the right keywords?”
And that shows you are suffering from the first of the delusions of keyword research!
Delusion 1: there is a set of perfect keywords for your website and if you use that set of words a flood of people – aka traffic from the search engines will find your blog or website.
The facts here are complex but search engines are refining and tuning their operation every day and so a keyword that may do the job on Monday may not be the best keyword on Tuesday. And you cannot repeat your keyword research every day…and then rewrite your articles afterwards to fit the new keywords.
Also when you look at the phrases that people who have found your website or blog have used to find it – you will be shocked.
Here is one keyword phrase used to find our blog here at http://expertlistbuilding.com/listbuilding
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Google in it’s “wisdom” reckons that we are the 4th best site on the World Wide Web for info to answer that search keyword!
This is an 11 word keyword phrase and if a 3 or 4 word keyword phrase is called a long tailed keyword – then this is very far into the Long Tail!
Fact is that your pages will pick up all kinds of search phrases they were not designed for.
This is not to suggest that you should be sloppy with your research but that there are big unknowns here!
There is no perfect set of keywords so quit worrying!
Delusion 2: is that you have to use WordTracker or Google Adwords or whatever to do your research because all those in the know say so.
Fact is that once you are free of Delusion 1 this puppy is no problem! Expert affiliates – Super Affiliate do their research with whatever tool they like and the sites work like gangbusters whatever keyword tool they use.
Super Affiliate and Pro Blogger Lynn Terry uses and teaches the use of Wordtracker.
Search engine and Social Media expert Howie Schwartz uses and teaches the use of Google’s Keyword Tool
~And you will find others to sing the praises of Keyword Elite or Market Samurai or Keyword country or Keyword discovery…
There is no perfect or best Keyword tool so stop obsessing about the best one. Find one you like and get on well with and use it!
“Action” is best and too much keyword research is an excuse for inaction.
Delusion 3: that just because you’ve optimised your pages and posts for a particular keyword phrase – it will make you money.
Sometimes people use Google to look up meanings of words and not for buying and sometimes they just want to learn something and want a free read so that only a small portion of a keyword count is people shopping.
One of the most important ways that a website put together by a super affiliate will differ from that of a beginner is the type of keyword phrases chosen.
Experts will choose keywords used by people with their credit cards out on the table – these are called “Commercial Intent” aka money words.
The phrase “boxer dogs” is used by someone browsing – maybe for a picture of a dog, who knows?
… but “boxer dogs for sale” is a money word and although far fewer people are typing this word into the search engine if you were selling boxer dogs this would be a phrase worth using.
Apart from your intuition a way of trying to asess commercial intent is to use the msn tool http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/
It is only a guide – it is very far from being perfect.
But let’s just see what it tells us for the phrases we’ve been looking at. If we visit the link above and put the phrase “boxer dogs” (without quotes) in the search box we get the chance of this being a non commercial phrase is 0.66 – so that the tool is saying that this is very likely not a money phrase and if we try it on “boxer dogs for sale” we get 0.99 and that is a very high chance of being a money phrase.
Remember this tool like all others can only assist your market research.
Delusions conclusions: the result in your online life of being under any of these delusions is catastrophic. Procrastination and confusion are disabling and being busy all too easily replaces being productive.
Being free of these Keyword Research delusions is liberating. You just choose a keyword tool, take action with it and monitor your results. Action provides intelligence, feedback and information that no keyword tool can.
Your brain and those of your website visitors too is stuffed with unique keywords and the best way to serve more customers is to provide unique articles and information which will naturally contain many such phrases.
In a world of uniformity your extra effort in creating original and fresh content stands out and your website increasingly acquires authority.
This leads Google and other search engines to spend ever more time on your site indexing the new content and scooping up more new fresh long tail keywords…which they serve up to more shoppers.
You have made the transition from being a beginner or newbie doing keyword research to a participant in the conversations taking place in your niche.
As the authority of your site increases your understanding and domination of the market increases.
With your ‘increased income you might even buy some new keyword tool – the way you will use it will be very different from the Newbie you were at the beginning when you were under Keyword Delusion.
Internet Marketing Email » Blog Archive » Keyword Research Delusions and Disappointments… // Apr 6, 2009 at 8:55 pm
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A good way to get keyword suggestions is to use Google Adwords keyword tool. First, you need an Adwords account. Then start a new PPC campaign for your site and use the keyword tool to find not only keywords that people have searched on but also their monthly relative search volumes.
Information on keyword generation is overwhelming, and I agree find one you like and stick with. Of course Google is the a good way to start and get a feel for the subject