Everyone has their own way of doing keyword research and we all know how much keyword research can make a difference with our SEO, so I figured I’d show you a little bit on how I do my own keyword research.
As a lot of you guys already know, I own quite a few sites and for some reason that list keeps getting longer and longer each week. I swear I’m buying a domain name every week but that’s mainly because if I get an idea or a great opportunity that I think will help me in the near future I’m going to run with it.
For instance, I would hate to second guess myself on something and beat myself up a short time later when someone else swoops in to steal my domain name and idea and make thousands off of it. I mean .COM domains only cost around $6.00 USD so you’re not wasting much.
Now this is kind of how I do my keyword research but it all depends on which site I’m trying to do it for. I’m just going to go over the basics so I can generalize it so any niche can do this.
Finding the trends:
Finding the most popular trends that’s going on now can drastically improve your traffic, for the short term as well as the long.
For example, when Iron Man the movie came out, everyone was interested in the Iron Man Spoiler especially because there was a scene at the very end of the credits. Personally, I’ve gotten thousands of search engine visitors from that keyword alone. Though, that was only temporary because everyone eventually found out what happened (the movie was extremely popular).
A few things you can use to look up are popular trends are Google Trends and Yahoo Buzz which one shows popular search terms per day and the other shows the top 10 searches by hour.
Finding the Keywords:
Once you find the hot trends that you would like to write and optimize with, you want to check the various keywords to work with. What I like to use is the SEObook Keyword Tools which is extremely helpful. Let’s stay with the Iron Man example for this one. If you type in “Iron Man” you’ll see an entire list of different variations of Iron Man keywords that are highly searched for (see screenshot below – you can click on it to make it bigger).
Once you find out the keyword that suits your needs, click on the Google Trends button to see if there’s a graph. If there is, you can if it’s still being searched for and at what point in time it was the most popular. (See screenshot below)
Finding out how much competition and if you should bother with the keyword:
Once you find out the new trends and the keyword(s) you’re going to use, now you want to check whether or not it’s really worth it. We all know getting on the first page of a highly searched keyword is our main goal, but the ultimate goal is to try and get that first spot.
This is how I look at it, if there is too much competition for a keyword then that requires you to do a lot more work to get ranked on the first page so unless you’re an SEO expert, it’s almost not worth it.
What I do is simply Google the search term “Iron Man” and see how many results show up. If there is anything over one million, then it would be pretty hard to get the top spot. Anything less than that, you have a pretty good chance on getting on the frontpage (or even the top spot).
Though, based on “Iron Man”, there are about 73 million results for that (see screenshot below) so unless you are an SEO expert it’s not worth it. And if you are an SEO expert, you wouldn’t be reading this post to begin with!
But this is a generic way of doing some keyword research. Let me know if you have questions.
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Wow.. I never know about this. I really appreciate it that you shared it with us. I am still learning with traffic and SEo so your help is really appreciated. Hopefully I will learn more from you as I visit your blog.
Just one question, how can you be on the fist spot for a single keyword even though you got a lot of competition, just wondering.
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Great post. I think I am going to utilize this strategy with some domain/website flips.
For your SEO keyword research, you should consider KeywordSpy
I will try out google trends but it still require us to second guess the popular keywords.
You mentioned Iron Man, did you get visitors from long tail keywords or just the generic term?
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Hye – You need lots and lots of backlinks to your site with that keyword as your anchor text.
Jeflin – Try the SEOtools keyword tool, it works a lot better to find actual keywords to use.
Also, I had a long tail keyword, I think it was “IronMan Spoiler” or something on those lines. I got a lot when the movie was still in theaters but it basically died off.
Jay
Thanks for the update. I really appreciate it. I am so glad I visited you here and I learned a lesson from you. I have bookmarked your page and expect me to visit you often. See you and nice meeting you Jay ;0
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actually, i am using wordtracker right now. and thanks, i will using seobook seo keyword too. i will add your keyword research tactics to mine.
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This is great information that everyone who may be doing it wrong can learn a thing or two from this post. Glad I found it.
Peter Lee
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Hi
Great info, I started to use wordtracker to get some ideas for keywords, but you have so much more here.
Alan
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Thanks, Jay for the walk through. I’m going to explore the tool from SEO book. Keyword research is one area I’m yet to perfect.
Yan
Is SEO book a free application? I’ve heard on forums that people prefer using this over the google keyword tool. But does SEO book get google data too?
I will try out google trends but it still require us to second guess the popular keywords.
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@L Weng…..SEO Book is free, its a great tool and shows you searches for Google, Yahoo and MSN. I use it in conjuction with the Google estimator tool.
I wish i had read this post before building my small website. It would have been much easier but it’s never too late so i’m starting to implement your tips right now.
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I am running my own software house and me going to do this implementation in my websites and first I want to see results if that will be useful for me then ill do this with my all sites.
SEObook is a great tool to use. Google trends isn’t bad neither. Using firefox seo you can find definite statistics.
From my experience I know the results I get from SEOBook are a bit behind in the times although it’s still a very useful tool. I prefer to use more than one tool like the Google keyword too as no one tool gives the most accurate numbers.
I just use WordTracker, Google Adwords (external keyword tool) and Google Hot Trends.
Still trying to process the information but I think I’m getting there. Thanks for your keyword tips.
Michael
Hi Jay
Just reading your older post on keyword research,Very interesting. I have to admit I never thought of doing this kind of keyword research, but it seems like it would definatly be helpful in generating traffic especially if you can get to the number 1 spot in google.
Thanks for the tip!
jim
Same to me I also using SEO keyword suggestion tool for selecting my keyword. This tool is really helpful and show daily search volume of that keyword on different search engine like google, yahoo, MSN.
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keyword country is a great keyword research tool also. i am using paid version and i have very nice results.
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