Some SEO Basic Tips
- Keyword Research
This article may be the most important one
that you ever read when it comes to SEO, or search engine optimization. Getting
the right keywords for your target market, or for that matter just researching
keywords in order to find a target market is literally the make or break of
every business. I don't care if you have the greatest idea in the world. If
you're not targeting the right keywords, you're not going to have the success
that you want. In this article, we're going to take a look at keyword research
and hopefully give you some basic tips on how to get the most out of it.
Unfortunately, SEO keyword research is not a plug and play operation. You do
need a little brain power to do it successfully, especially if you're looking
for a niche to get into. A niche is an area of the marketplace that you are
intending to monetize. The absolute worst
place to start is from scratch. This is where
I recommend to simply writing down your interests and skills. Certainly you are
interested in something other than just making money. Okay, if that's your only
interest, fine. Then start with "making
money" as your keyword starting spot. If, however, you do have other
interests, like music, sports, art, welding, or even underwater volleyball,
then I suggest starting with those first. Making money is a tough niche to
crack.
Okay, the next step is to go to your keyword research tool of choice. There
are plenty of free ones out there and most are the same, getting their results
from Overture. Once you've found a tool you're happy with, plug in your initial
keyword and see how many monthly searches there are. Got 'em? Great! Now we're
going to go to Google and see how many web sites have that keyword. Type
the same keyword into the Google search engine, with quotes, and see how many
competing sites. This will give you an idea of
what your competition is.
Ultimately, what we want to do is find a keyword where we have a decent
number of monthly searches but not too many competing sites. The
reason for this is because we want to be able to break into the niche we are
targeting as easily as possible. This is where
we have to really dig into our keyword research. See, the first keyword we pick
will probably be very general and thus give
many searches but also many competing sites. So, what we have to do is narrow
things down. So let's say we started with "making money" and found
that there were too many competing sites. What we may have to do is expand that
phrase. Maybe try something like "make money online" next. That
should bring us fewer searches but also fewer competing sites. We may still
have to narrow it down even more. So maybe we'll try "make money online
with membership sites" and see how many searches and sites we get.
Eventually, we will find a combination of searches and sites that is good
enough to go after. Or maybe not. Maybe there are no sub niches in that main
niche worth going after. Maybe we may have to move onto another niche
altogether. Point is, that is the basic procedure. Find a starting point and
then narrow it down.
Now, there are some tools that will make this job easier, such as Keyword
Elite, but the procedure is still the same. Find a keyword phrase, or hopefully
several phrases, where you can monetize that phrase easily.
Keyword research, as I said, is not an easy chore, but it is one that has to
be tackled in order to know where you are
going with the business that you choose to pursue.
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