I am sure you have heard of keyword research.  If you plan to start an online business, you must learn how to conduct keyword research.

Why?

Simply because keywords determine your success online.  Choosing wrong keywords means failure online.

Here is why:

Choosing the right keywords will help you drive targeted web traffic to your blog or website. Targeted traffic refers to the exact type of visitors you want.  Visitors who are interested in what you are offering are exactly what you need to succeed online and make money.

Now, if you choose the wrong keywords, you’ll either drive visitors who are not interested in what you offer or not drive traffic at all.  This is called “failure!”.

To avoid all this, I am going to show you how to conduct good keyword research and come up with effective keywords that will help you achieve the success you want.

1 # Find your Niche:

This is the first thing you need to do.  You must find you niche.  If you don’t know what a niche is, just ask yourself this question:

What is the topic of my blog, website or product?

The answer is your niche.  If you the answer is “my blog, website, product is about “how to drive web traffic”, then your niche is “web traffic” or “web traffic generation”.

Why do you need to find your niche first?

To do keywords research, you must know your main keywords.  And to know your keywords, you need to know your niche.

Clear enough?

Your main keywords in the above example are “web traffic” or “web traffic generation”.  If your niche is “make money online”, then “make money online” are your main keywords.  If you don’t know what your main keywords are, you won’t be able to move to the next phase of keyword research.

2# Related Keywords:

Now you need to find keywords that are related to your main ones. Related keywords, as the name suggests, are keywords that are relevant to your niche.

Why do you need to find them?

Think about it…

We said before that the main reason we are doing keyword research is that we want to drive targeted visitors to the blog or website.  Visitors who are interested in your topic.

Visitors who want information on how to make money online go to Google and type those keywords there.  Now, not all of the people type these specific keywords (how to make money online) to get information.  Some use that but others use things like “money generating techniques”, “how to generate profit online”, etc.  So to drive the maximum number of interested visitors you need to know all of the keywords they use.

To find related keywords, you can use different methods.

The first method is using some tools like Google Keyword Tool and Market Samurai. Google Keywords Tool is the best free tool as far as keyword research is concerned.  Even paid software like Market Samurai get their data from this tool. Using it is fairly simple.   You just type your main keywords and it gives you all of the related keywords and the number of times they were used for conducting searches by Internet users.

The second method is finding related keywords through your competitors’ websites. To do that, you need to copy the website address of one of your competitors and paste it on website like spyfu.com. The tool then gives you all of the keywords your competitor is using. You need to choose as many related keywords as possible because you’ll need them in the third stage.

3# Elimination Tournament

All of your related keywords must go through what I call the Elimination Tournament. Before you decide to use certain keywords, they must go through 4 tests:

• Relevancy Test
• Competition Test
• Traffic Test
• Commerciality Test

Relevancy

All of your related keywords must be relevant.  Apparent?

You need to be careful.  People sometimes use unrelated searches without releasing it. Let me give you an example.  If your niche is “baby toys”, choosing keywords like “toys” is a big mistake.  Why?  It is unrelated because it is not specific.  There are educational toys, sex toys, toddler toys, etc.  Choosing “toys” as one of your keywords will not help you at all. You must choose specific keywords.  Someone typing “toys” on search engines doesn’t know what s/he wants exactly.  For me, it sounds like someone trying to idle hours away. But someone typing “educational toys for 6 year children” knows what s/he wants exactly. This is the type of keywords you need to use.

Competition

The keyword research tools I mentioned above will all tell you how competitive your keywords are. You can also check the competition by Googling certain keywords on Google.  You’ll find the number competition under the search box.

Choosing competitive keywords is lethal. You’ll be competition against tough websites that use cutting-edge SEO tactics that people usually can’t afford.

I like to use Google Keywords Tool for assessing competition.  It doesn’t give you the number of competitors exactly.  It just shows some rectangular forms under “competition”.  If you hover your mouse over it, a pop up with tell you the competition is low, medium, or high.

Traffic

Our sole purpose of doing this keyword research is to find keywords that drive targeted traffic.

Needless to say, your related keywords must drive an acceptable amount of web traffic. Traffic is everything. A website without traffic is worthless. You need to make sure that your keywords drive good amounts of it.

How do you do that?

On Google keyword Tool, you’ll see “Global Monthly Searches” and “Local Monthly Searches”.  If one of your keywords is driving something like 60,500 or 10,000 then it is good.  If it is driving something like 10 or 60, it is not good.  Don’t use it.

Commerciality

To the best of my belief, many novices skip this important step and they make the mistake of choosing non-commercial keywords when they are doing business online.  This is a fatal mistake.

Commercial keywords are the ones that drive buyers to your website. Non-commercial keywords, on the other hand, are keywords that drive window-shoppers to your website.  Window-shoppers are people who want free information.

If you are selling a product, choosing non-commercial keywords simply means you won’t generate any sales.

To assess the commerciality of your keywords, you can use Market Samurai or use a free tool called Microsoft Commercial Intention Tool.  All you have to do is choose “Query” and then write the keywords in the search box. Then the tool tells you whether or not your keywords are commercial.

Again, if you are selling something online, you must check keywords commerciality to make sure you drive buyers, not just window-shoppers.  It is advisable to choose and use some non-commercial keywords as well.  Just make sure you use commercial keywords more than non-commercial ones.

I hope you like this post.  If you need anything don’t hesitate to add a comment or contact me.  I’ll try to help.

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