Keywords are phrases for which you would want your blog to be found in search engine results. Keywords help your blog get recognized by search engines, and as a result, help your potential customers find your blog. Your keywords are what you would expect your target audience to search for to find your blog content.
Keyword research means researching the phrases that are going to be used by your potential customer to find your blog in a search engine. Keyword research should result in a set of keyword phrases that you should target in your blog content.
These are 7 simple steps of keyword research that you can take today towardsincreasing blog traffic and increasing your revenue by analyzing the search volume of the keyword, analyzing the competition level, and the profitability potential.
1. Put yourself in the shoes of your blog reader
Put yourself in the shoes of your blog target audience and think about what type of search engine queries they may use to search for content related to your blog. Write down the keywords and phrases you can think of.
What would your target audience type in the search engine to find content related to your blog? What problems would they be looking to solve and what questions would they be looking to get answered? If you were searching yourself, which phrases would you search for?
2. Watch out the latest trends and events
Beware of the latest happenings within your field. Has there been any recent developments that may affect the number of searches in the future? Can the recent developments affect the keyword phrases people chose to search for to find your content?
Follow the recent events and trends and try to incorporate the latest buzz words relevant to your field into your content. Be alert to the industry shifts, to what your target audience is talking about, and to the new keywords that these trends create.
Reading relevant blogs, subscribing to relevant keywords via Google Alerts, following search trends via Google Hot Trends and following the hot topics in the social media via TwitScoop, can keep you up to date on the latest trends and events in your field.
3. Analyze your competitors
Research the blogs that are popular in your field. Which keywords do they use in page titles? How do they feature these keywords when writing content? Which topics do they write about? What anchor text and keywords do they use when internal linking?
Analyzing your competitors can help you discover some valuable keywords and phrases that you did not think of.
4. Use your current visitor data
Search Meter plugin for WordPress blogs can help you keep track of what your blog visitors are searching for in your search box. Search Meter will automatically record what your blog visitors are searching for and whether they are finding what they are looking for. Use this data to discover more relevant keywords.
5. How large is the search volume of my keywords?
Now you have collected all the different keyword phrases from your competitors, from your target audience, from your existing blog visitors. The next step is to use a keyword tool.
SEO Book Keyword Tool cross-references several useful keyword research tools. For Google searches alone, use Google KeywordTool.
In your keyword tool, the primary thing to look at is the search volume in the “overall daily estimate” and in case of Google the “approximate average search volume” column. The higher the search volume is, more searches there are for the particular keyword.
Important thing to note is that no keyword tool is 100% accurate. Keyword tools use the data of previous searches and what was searched for last week, may not be searched for next week. That is why the step 2 of following latest trends is very valuable.
If your blog is new or small, it is very important not to focus on volume of keyword searches alone, but also to research the strength of the competition of the different keywords.
The general rule is that if a keyword is very competitive, it would not be worth it to try to optimize your new blog for that phrase as it is likely to be very hard to rank well for it.
6. How to check the competition for a certain keyword?
Targeting keyword phrases is a much better option than trying to target individual words. In general, longer search terms have less competition and are easier to rank well for. Individual words are too general and have too much competition.
So if there is a high volume of searches, but the keyword phrase is very competitive, it is better to go for a less popular keyword, but also a less competitive one. This is called the long tail.
• Go to Google and type your keyword phrase in “quotes”. Look at the number of results it returns. The less results, the easier it will be for you to target the keyword.
• Look at the authority of the top 10 listed sites for the keyword. What is the Google PageRank of each of the top 10 listings in the search results? The lower the PageRank authority of the top 10 search results, the less competitive these sites are, and the bigger chance is that your blog would be able to rank higher. Use Google Toolbar for PageRank.
• Other factors to look at in the top 10 results are the age of the domain name, the number of inbound links, is the site listed in major directories like Yahoo andDmoz, and how popular is the site in social media sites like Digg, Delicious andStumbleUpon. Use Website Grader or Rank Checker browser plugin for these stats.
• Take a look at the page titles of the top 10 listings. Do they use the exact keyword phrase in their page title? If many of the top 10 listings do not use the keyword phrase in the title you might have a good chance to get into the top 10.
• Research how many sites have your keyword phrase in their page title in total. Search Google for “allintitle: keyword phrase” to find that. Again, the lower the amount of results, higher the chance is that you will be able to break into the top 10.
So now you have a list of very targeted keyword phrases relevant to your blog. These keywords are used by your target audience when they search for your content and you have selected the best keywords for your blog competitiveness level. You are ready to create new blog articles to target these keyword phrases and drive traffic to your blog.
An optional step is to check how profitable these keywords are. If you want to monetize this new traffic you should know if advertisers are interested in this keyword phrase.
7. How do I determine whether it is a profitable keyword?
If your blog monetization is by contextual ads like Google Adsense it will be hard to get revenue if there are no advertisers interested in these keywords or if there is so little competition that the cost per click is very low.
The following steps should help you determine if there is profitability for the specific keyword phrases:
• Use the Google Adwords traffic estimator to show the estimated average per click for the top position ads and an estimated number of clicks per day for your chosen keyword phrase.
• Spyfu.com can show you the number of advertisers and the cost per click for the different keywords phrases.
• Use the Google Keyword Tool to get the estimated average cost per click and the competition level between the advertisers for the specific keyword.
In case of profitability, the higher the cost per click is, more companies are paying per click, and higher earnings you get when your visitors click on the ads.
These 7 steps should set you on the right path. Make sure to subscribe to How To Make My Blog RSS feed as this is the first article in this series. Next up will be an article focusing on how to search engine optimize your blog for these new keyword phrases.
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