Beginner’s Guide to Keyword

Research

By Moe Muise
www.KeywordsBlogger.com
www.NicheSherpa.com
 Table of Contents

The Keyword Search Cycle: How to Understand the Intent Behind Keywords....4
First Step in Keyword Research: Understand the Keyword Search Cycle ................!"
An Example of the Keyword Search Cycle ...........................................................!..#
5 Techniques to Discover the Intent Behind Keywords ...........................................8
Summing Up.........................................................................................................11

Effective Keyword Research: How to Brainstorm a “Seed” List of Keywords ...12

Developing a Seed Keyword List: The Difference Between “Head” and “Tail”
Keywords .............................................................................................................12
Why You Should Have a Broad List of Seed Keywords ........................................13
8 Steps to Building a Broad List of Seed Keywords ..............................................14
Summing Up.........................................................................................................24

Google Keyword Tool: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to the New Tool.........25
How to Use the New Google Keyword Tool .........................................................26
Advanced Features of the New Google Keyword Tool ..........................................29
Summing Up.........................................................................................................40

How to Find Keywords with Low Competition and High Search Volume: The
Ultimate Guide .......................................................................................................41
What is a Low-Competition Keyword? .................................................................41
Three Steps to Find Low-Competition, High-Volume Keywords ..........................43
Two Best Keyword Tools for Keyword Research..................................................44
How to Research Keyword Competition for Free ..................................................49
Using Long Tail Pro for Keyword Competition Research......................................53
Wrapping Up ........................................................................................................54
 A Few Opening Thoughts…
Before we jump into keyword research, let me start by saying that
I hope you enjoy this free report!

Keyword research (and market research more generally) is my

passion, and I’m extremely happy to share what I’ve learned over
years of reading and trial-and-error.

A few things to note before we get started:

1. You’ve probably noticed the little mountain fellow at the top of this
page. That’s the mascot for my niche marketing course, the Niche
Sherpa Video Coaching Course.

If you’ve been stuck trying to find a profitable niche, I highly

recommend you check out the course. In my (massively biased) opinion
Niche Sherpa is the most comprehensive niche discovery system on the
planet. And I’m regularly adding new modules to it, on every aspect of
making money online. Check out Niche Sherpa by clicking here.

2. Legal disclaimer: needless to say, by reading this report you won’t wake
up tomorrow laying on a bed of $100 bills. As I say throughout my blog,
making money online takes patience and the willingness to learn from
one’s mistakes.

3. If you’d like to share this report with friends, family, subscribers,

random strangers, please feel free to do so – but please keep the report
as it is (no copying and pasting!)

4. If you have a question or comment about this report, don’t hesitate to

leave it on my blog at www.KeywordsBlogger.com. Or you can send me
an email at moe@keywordsblogger.com - I respond to every email sent
to me (except the ones advertising Viagra. I don’t need that kind of
help…yet).

To your niche profits,

Moe
The Keyword Search Cycle: How
to Understand the Intent Behind
Keywords
If you’ve read any of my blog posts, you know that I place a lot of emphasis
on understanding the needs of your target audience. If you have that crucial piece
of information, everything else – from finding products to promote, to knowing what type
of website to set up – becomes so much easier.

So the obvious question is this: what is the easiest and most effective way to understand
the needs of your target audience?

In this post I’m going to describe how you can use keyword research to gain insight into
people’s needs (notice I said “gain insight” – keyword research alone will not tell you with
certainty what your audience is looking for. You need to do proper niche research to
figure that out).

First Step in Keyword Research: Understand the Keyword Search Cycle

If you’ve been in internet marketing (IM) for any amount of time you’ve probably heard
the term “buyer keyword”. In a nutshell, a “buyer” keyword is exactly what it sounds like
– the keyword that a person types into a search engine when they’re ready to buy a
product or service.
But what many internet marketers don’t know is that buyer keywords are part of the
“keyword search cycle”.

What is the “keyword search cycle”?

When people do searches on Google and other search engines they’re at one of three
stages. These stages have been expressed as the “Visitor Intention Model” by Richard
Stokes. Below is my VERY sophisticated rendering of Richard’s model:
Let me explain what each stage means:

Browse and Informational searches are similar in nature, in that searchers are
gathering information at this stage, and are generally not ready to make a purchase.
Browsers are people who will probably buy a product or service eventually, and their
search terms tend to be very short (i.e. one or two generic words). At this stage they might
not know anything at all about the product or service that they’re thinking of buying,
which is why they type in general keywords such as “iPad” or “Las Vegas” or “yoga”. In
essence, they’re in research mode.

People doing informational searches aren’t planning to buy anything at all – they’re
looking strictly for information. Kids doing research for their homework, and people
looking for celebrity gossip, are both examples of informational searches.

With “shop” keywords, searchers have made the decision to buy (maybe later, but
probably soon), already have basic information on solutions, and are now gathering
information that allow them to compare their options.

If you’ve done any keyword research, you’ve probably seen shop searches that use the
word “review” (such as “web hosting review”) and the word “versus” (such as “Canon
versus Nikon”).

Finally, “buy” keywords are just what their name implies. Searchers typing in these
keywords have usually weighed their options, and are sitting at the computer with credit
card in hand.

People who are ready to buy now often use keyword qualifiers in their searches. Simply
put, keyword qualifiers are short words before and after a root keyword that signal the
intent of the searcher. These can be one of the most powerful clues to the solution that the
searcher is looking for. Here are a few examples of keyword qualifiers that can imply
intent to purchase:
 Cheap
 Best price
 Deal
 Treatment
 Cure
 Remedy

I know from personal experience that searches containing those last two keyword
qualifiers can lead to sales of health products.

A subset of “buy” keywords is navigational searches. In these cases, the searcher is

looking for a specific brand of product or service (often a specific model), and will type
that brand name and/or model name into a search engine.
“Buy” keywords are obviously the holy grail of keywords, as they’re the easiest to convert
into sales. But if you’ve ever done one of these searches yourself, you can see how
competitive they are, with tons of advertisers vying for placement in Google, and a lot of
search engine optimized sites showing up in the organic results.

An Example of the Keyword Search Cycle

Let’s bring all of this information together with a practical example. I’ve recently been
looking for a Flip camera to take on a trip my family is planning to Dubai and Bangalore,
India.

As it turns out, “Flip camera” is a great keyword to demonstrate the keyword search cycle,
because it contains pretty much every stage of the cycle. Check out the keywords from the
Google Keywords Tool that I’ve highlighted below:
I’ve highlighted the keywords as follows:

 The keywords highlighted in red are “browse” keywords: flip camera, video flip
camera, and flip camera video.

As far as I know, the Flip camera only takes video – not photographs – so the people
typing in “flip camera video” and “video flip camera” don’t even know that video is the
only thing that the Flip camera does. That’s proof, I think, that these are true “browse”
keywords.

 The keywords highlighted in yellow are “shop” keywords: flip camera reviews,
best flip camera, flip camera review, review flip camera, best flip camera to buy, and
flip camera prices. People typing in these keywords seem to have made the decision
to buy a portable video recorder, and are now looking for third-party advice on
whether or not to choose the Flip brand.

 The keywords highlighted in green are obviously “buy” keywords: buy flip camera,
buy a flip camera, flip camera buy.

What about the remaining keywords that I haven’t highlighted?

It’s hard to tell just buy looking at them. The keyword “flip camera hd” could be a “buy”
keyword, because the person is looking for a particular model of the Flip camera. But it
could also be a “shop” keyword, because they’re looking for price comparisons of that
particular model (but neglected to include the word “price” in their search).
With keywords that have uncertain intent, we need to go a little deeper, and use
some ninja tactics to uncover their meaning.

(Okay, sorry for the “ninja tactics” reference – but it seems that every IM blogger is
supposed to refer to ninjas or “cash flying into your pockets” at least once in a post. :)

5 Techniques to Discover the Intent Behind Keywords

Your objective in doing keyword research might not be to find “buy” keywords at all.
Maybe you’re looking for some high volume, low competition keywords that are easy to
rank for, so you can get lots of traffic to your sites and generate Adsense revenue.

It’s important to note that a very subtle change in keywords can mean big differences in a
searcher’s intent. One example often given by a mentor of mine (Glenn Livingston) is the
difference in the term “guinea pig” versus “guinea pigs”.

So besides guessing, how can you tell what the intent is behind a keyword? Try one of
these five techniques:

1. Use a “commercial intent” tool, like MSN adlabs commercial intent tool. This
tool is easy to use (just type in a keyword) and it provides a number that indicates how
much “commercial intent” there is behind a particular keyword (in other words, are most
people who type that keyword looking to buy?).

Adlabs’ tools have some obvious drawbacks, including a lack of information on how they
do their calculations, and the fact that the tools are sometimes unavailable (like when I
was writing this post! Otherwise I’d have some screenshots for you

2. Let Google tell you. You might have heard: Google has some pretty smart people
working for it. And they’re continuously refining their algorithms to ensure that the most
relevant results show up at the top of the results page. So a great way to use Google to
figure out what the intent is behind a keyword is to do a search on that keyword, and see
what kind of sites come up.

Let’s test that theory by seeing what websites Google shows on its first page for a keyword
whose intent is not clear: “flip camera hd”:
Judging by the results on this page, Google appears to think that searchers want basic
information on the Flip camera (notice where I’ve placed red arrows. The first three
listings are for pages with general information on the Flip; only the fourth links to a
shopping page).

However, Google has also thrown in some shopping results (which I’ve highlighted with a
yellow border). Google seems to be hedging its bets here by mixing informational and
shopping results.

I’ve read recently that Google is placing greater emphasis on clickthrough rate (CTR) in
organic rankings (but this respected source says that CTR doesn’t matter). In the case of
this page Google might monitor CTR and bump the shopping results higher if they see
those results are getting a higher CTR than the informational results.

3. Look at the keywords that are leading to “goals” in Google Analytics. If

you have a Google Analytics account (if you don’t, shame on you!), you can set up “goals”
for your site. Basically, a “goal” is any action you specify: an email opt-in, an e-book sale,
etc.

One of the goals I’ve set up for my sites is “E-book Sale”. Whenever someone makes it to
my “thank you” page (after paying for an e-book), Google Analytics (GA) registers that as
a completed goal. In GA you can see which keywords led to a goal. Here’s a screenshot
that shows keywords mapped to my E-book Sale goal:
Pretty cool, eh? Over time, you’ll see that certain keywords are more likely to lead to sales.
The conclusion: those are buyer keywords!

4. Run a pay-per-click campaign. This one is pretty obvious, but it’s still worth
mentioning. If you have a Flip camera affiliate site, the quickest way to identify buyer
keywords is to run a pay-per-click campaign. Load up your Adwords account with a
bunch of “flip camera” keywords and send that traffic to a page that reviews the Flip
(making sure to abide by Google’s guidelines for site content, of course). By correlating
keywords with sales, you’ll know which ones were typed in by people intent on buying.

5. Run a survey. If you want to know exactly what is on people’s minds when they
type in a keyword, the best method is…to ask them!

What’s more, when you run pay-per-click surveys, you not only learn the intent behind a
keyword, you can also learn if there are needs in a market that are not being met.

I have run surveys in many niches, and it’s the only method I use to develop information
products (because the knowledge you gain from surveys dramatically reduces the risk of a
product failing).

Note: this technique probably doesn’t work well with “navigational” searches (i.e. when a
person types in a specific brand name and/or model number). I can’t see many people
wanting to complete a survey, when what they’re really looking for is to buy a particular
product. Where surveys do work is in areas such as health, hobbies, etc. – niches in which
the product people are looking for is information, not a physical product.

Summing Up

Keyword research is both art and science – but it’s mostly science (in my opinion). By
treating it as such, you’ll gain a competitive advantage over your competitors, who see
keywords as just an indistinguishable mass of words.

When doing your keyword research, also keep in mind that behind each search is a
human being who wants to accomplish a goal (whether that goal is to obtain information,
make a purchase, or be entertained). Help them to accomplish that goal, and you’ll go a
long way to building an online business.

P.S. If you’re serious about doing pay-per-click advertising, Richard Stokes’ latest book is
an essential addition to your library. Richard is a no-nonsense PPC guy, and he gets
straight to the point in his writing. The book is called the Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click
Advertising, and you can get it here.
Effective Keyword Research: How
to Brainstorm a “Seed” List of
Keywords
Developing a Seed Keyword List: The Difference Between “Head” and
“Tail” Keywords
A seed list is simply a list of short, generic keywords that get a lot of searches. These can
also be thought of as “head” keywords, as demonstrated in the graph below:

Source: KeyWebMetrics

As you can see in the graph, there are relatively few head keywords, but each head
keyword gets lots of searches. Here’s an example of a head keyword: “yoga”. This keyword
gets 301,000 “exact match” searches on Google globally each month. In other words,
every month people type just the word “yoga” into the Google search engine.

In contrast, “tail” keywords get few searches each, but there are LOTS of tail keywords.
Here’s an example of a tail keyword: “yoga teacher training New York”. This keyword gets
210 exact match searches on Google each month. But you can imagine that there are
hundreds of variations of this keyword searched every month on Google (e.g. yoga teacher
training Los Angeles; yoga teacher training Toronto; etc.)
Why You Should Have a Broad List of Seed Keywords

Having a broad a list of seed keywords is extremely important, because if you don’t start
your keyword brainstorming off broadly, you might miss some great keywords that are
easy to rank for, or that turn out to be a great source of sales through pay-per-click
advertising.

Here’s an example: say you have a website that is dedicated to teaching people how to
become a yoga instructor. If you live in New York, you could just advertise on the
keyword I mentioned above (“yoga teacher training New York”). But that would be a
mistake, for two reasons:

Low volume. The keyword “yoga teacher training New York” only gets 210 searches on
Google per month. If you only advertise on that keyword, you’re not exactly going to make
enough money to put Kraft Dinner on the table, are you? (Okay, I know yoga instructors
don’t eat Kraft Dinner! )

The point is, you want as many opportunities to get a customer as possible. That means
advertising on (or optimizing your site for) as many keywords as possible.

That leads to the next point:

Putting all your eggs in one (keyword) basket. Simply put, you probably won’t be
able to tell ahead of time which keywords will be a “winner” for you. In other words, you
might think that the keyword “yoga teacher training New York” will make lots of sales
through pay-per-click advertising, or will be easy to rank for, but you might be proven
wrong.

If you target 100 (or 1,000) keywords, however, you increase your chances of hitting on a
handful of profitable keywords.

(A related side note: in my experience, the “80/20” rule applies to keywords. Twenty
percent of your keywords – far fewer than 20%, actually – will result in the vast majority
of your sales. I’ve heard many other internet marketers say the same thing.)
8 Steps to Building a Broad List of Seed Keywords

To demonstrate my point that you should build a broad list of seed keywords, let’s go
through the steps I follow to brainstorm a list. Here are the main steps, in order:

1. Start by writing down some keywords related to your audience’s

problems.Before starting your keyword research, you should have done some niche
research to determine the main problems/challenges/pain points facing your target
audience, or the desires they have.
If we follow the yoga example I started earlier in this post, one of the desires you might
have come across in your audience research is the desire to become a yoga instructor.
Here are some related keywords that come to mind:

 Yoga instructor
 Yoga teacher
 Yoga teacher training
 Become a yoga instructor

Try to write down 10-20 keywords like this for each of the problems or desires that your
audience has.

2. Use a “semantic” tool to get related keywords. Semantic tools show you
synonyms of your root keyword, or words that are related to your keyword in meaning
(but not exactly synonyms).

Here are some good semantic tools that you can use to research related keywords:

 Google Sets is a Google Labs tool that “creates sets of items from a few examples”.
(In plain English: when you enter a keyword it shows you related terms.)
Continuing our example, here is the result I get when I type “yoga instructor” into Google
Sets:
Notice that I picked up on a couple of keywords that are potentially useful: “pilates
instructor” and “personal” trainer”.

How are these keywords potentially useful? I could include them in articles in my site (for
example, “Yoga Instructor or Pilates Instructor: Which Should You Become?”), to expand
the breadth of keywords that are bringing traffic to my site. Or, I could advertise on the
keyword “personal trainer” on the Google content network with an “interruptive” ad like
this:

Become a Personal Trainer?

Yoga Instructors Get Paid More!
Learn How in My Free Guide.
www.YogaTeacherTraining.org

 Deeper Web is a cool search engine (powered by Google) that shows a “tag cloud”
when you do a search. It’s easiest to describe what a “tag cloud” is by showing an
example.

I typed the keyword “yoga instructor” into Deeper Web. Note the “Deeper Cloud” box on
the right side of the screenshot:
I picked out a couple more potentially useful keywords from this cloud: “iyengar” and
“kripalu”, which are both types of yoga.

 Quintura is a “visual search engine”, and is similar to Deeper Web in that it shows
you a cloud of related terms.

Here’s what came up when I typed “yoga instructor” into Quintura:

Note the keywords “holy yoga”, “zen yoga”, and “certified yoga”.

 Yippy is another “cloud”-type search engine, but it presents its clouds in a slightly
different way (in the form of drop-down lists).
I typed in the term “yoga teacher training”, and came up with a couple of interesting
results:

There’s that word “certification” again. And I also find the reference to “Thailand”
interesting. I know from experience (my wife is big into yoga) that a lot of the yoga gurus
hold teacher-training courses in exotic locations, and one of the more popular places is
Thailand.

 Google Insights for Search allows you to type in a keyword and see the volume
trend and related news stories:
Google Insights also lets you see the top related keywords – and a feature that’s
particularly interesting is “Rising searches”, which allows you to see related keywords
that are rapidly increasing in popularity:

3. Use thesaurus tools to get synonyms.

Some of the most popular thesaurus sites are Thesaurus.com and Merriam-Webster.
When using thesaurus sites, you have to be a little creative, because sometimes the site
won’t give you the result you’re looking for right away.

For example, I typed the keyword “yoga instructor” into Thesaurus.com and got nothing
back. But when I typed in the word “instructor”, these synonyms came up:

 Adviser
 Coach
 Guide
 Mentor
 Trainer
 Tutor

These words would be great to combine with “yoga”. So instead of building pages on your
site that just include the main keyword “yoga instructor”, you could also mix in “yoga
adviser”, “yoga coach”, “yoga guide”, etc.
4. Research broad keywords on Wikipedia. This is a bit labor-intensive, but by
using this technique can you can find some really obscure keywords that your competitors
would never have thought of.

Researching keywords on Wikipedia is as simple as typing in your keyword

at Wikipedia.org and scanning the page that comes up.

When I typed the term “yoga instructor” into Wikipedia, there was no directly-related
entry, but an entry for both “Yoga” and “Yoga as exercise or alternative medicine” came
up. I clicked on the latter link, and found some interesting keywords that could be used in
SEO or PPC:

5. Use Wordtracker’s “lateral” search. Wordtracker is one of the original

keyword research tools, and they offer a range of tools that you can use to grow your seed
keyword list.

The best thing about Wordtracker is their “lateral” search function. This tool allows you
to enter a single keyword and search for hundreds of related keywords.

The thing that separates Wordtracker’s lateral tool from others on the market is the way
they gather related keywords. When you type in your seed keyword, Wordtracker goes out
and scrapes keywords from the top websites that rank for your seed word.
In other words, when I type the keyword “yoga instructor” into Wordtracker’s lateral tool,
the tool searches for that keyword on Google, then scrapes the keywords from the top-
ranked sites, and brings them back to me. Pretty cool!

Here are some of the results I received for “yoga instructor”:

Unfortunately, the lateral tool is only available in the paid version of Wordtracker. While
I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to have a paid subscription to Wordtracker, if you’re
serious about keyword research, and will be doing a lot of it for your sites, I think it’s
worth subscribing.

There have been many times that I’ve come across valuable related keywords that I
wouldn’t have discovered without using this service. (Having said this, I think the lateral
search function is the ONLY thing that sets Wordtracker apart from its competitors.)

If you’d like to get a feel for Wordtracker, you can use the Wordtracker Free Keywords
Tool.

6. Google’s Keyword Tool. This is the most commonly used keyword tool out there.
I’ll be coming out with a complete tutorial on how to use Google’s keyword tool soon, but
in the meantime here’s how you can use it.
There are two ways you can search for keywords using Google’s tool: (1) by entering a root
keyword, or (2) by entering the URL of a web page.
Here are the steps for searching by root keyword:

 Log on to the external Google Keyword Tool

 Type in your seed keyword (in this case, I’m going to use “yoga teacher training”)
 Check the box next to “Only show ideas containing my search terms”
 Enter the “captcha” (the mishmash of letters that lets Google know you’re human,
and not a “bot” spamming their system)
 Click “Search”

Here are some of the results I got for “yoga teacher training”:

The results from this search show a couple of things:

o A lot of people search for yoga teacher training by city (see the keywords with a red
box around them)

o A lot of people search for yoga teacher training by type of yoga (see the keywords
with a yellow box around them)

Google also lets you do keyword research using the URLs of websites. When you enter the
URL of a site into the Keyword Tool, Google tells you what keywords it associates with
that site. (This can be an interesting exercise to conduct on your own site(s), as it will let
you see your site through Google’s eyes.)

Here are the steps for searching the Google Keyword Tool by URL:
 Go to Google.com
 Type in your seed keyword
 Copy the URL of the first site on the results page (the organic results, not the paid
results)
 Log on to the external Google Keyword Tool
 In the box that says “Website, paste the URL of the first site that came up on
Google.com
 Enter the “captcha”
 Click “Search”

* Note: if you know that the niche you’re researching has products on Clickbank, that can
be a GREAT source of URLs for this step.

I typed the term “yoga teacher training” into Google.com, and the first site that came up
waswww.yoga-teacher-training.org. So I pasted that URL into the Keyword Tool. Here’s
what came back:

In addition to the keywords that I expected to come up, these interesting terms also
appeared:

- online teacher certification programs

- online yoga

Now, the first phrase probably isn’t related specifically to yoga teacher training. But it’s
an intriguing idea – I wonder if there are some people who would like to become yoga
teachers by studying online? Worth exploring.

The second phrase shows how much interest there is in doing yoga by watching online
videos (I assume). Also an interesting avenue to explore.

7. Browse the index of books related to your niche. This is one of the least-
known keyword research techniques, but can yield HUGE results. Again, it takes a bit of
work, but you can dig up some real nuggets using this technique.
This technique involves using the “Look Inside” feature of Amazon.com. Follow these
steps to find keywords by browsing the indexes of Amazon books:

o Go to Amazon.com

o From the “Search” drop-down box, choose “Books”

o Type in your keyword

o On the results page, look for a book that has a decent amount of reviews (i.e. more
than 10, ideally more than 30). More reviews usually means that a book is more popular

o Click on the “Look Inside” link near the top of the book

o On the next page, mouse over the “Look Inside” link, and choose “Index”

o Scan through the index and pick out relevant keywords

Again, this isn’t an effortless process. But if you’ve taken the time to find a niche, and
identify the problems of your niche audience, you want to go broad to find as many
keywords as possible.

8. Harvest your site’s web logs. If you already have a site that’s getting traffic, this
is another overlooked technique that can yield great results. To continue the “yoga
teacher training” example I’ve used in this post, let’s assume that you’re planning to
launch a paid program that teaches people how to be a yoga instructor. If you already
have a website, and it’s been up for longer than a few months, you’re probably already
getting traffic.
By looking in your Google Analytics account under Traffic Sources > Keywords, you can
see all of the keywords that people typed into the search engines that led them to your
site. Below is a screenshot showing this for one of my sites:

There’s one particular reason why this is a powerful technique: because just like using the
“URL search” feature in Google’s Keyword Tool, looking at your site logs tells you what
Google thinks your site is about.

This can help you in planning paid search campaigns and search engine optimization –
because in both PPC and SEO, you want to build on your strengths (which in this case
could mean aligning your PPC campaigns and SEO efforts with keywords and themes that
Google already associates with your site).

It can also serve as a wakeup call, if you find out that Google doesn’t think your site is
about yoga teacher training (for example). In that case, you need to get to work in
revising your site’s text, meta tags, etc. so Google starts associating your site with the
keywords you’re targeting.

Summing Up
Keyword research is a crucial component of building an online business, whether you’re
doing the research to gain more traffic (through pay-per-click advertising or search
engine optimization), or to get insight into the needs of your niche audience.

The trick to doing keyword research right, however, is to start with a broad group of
“seed” terms that cover the full spectrum of keywords related to your site.
Google Keyword Tool: The
Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide to the
New Tool
Unless you’re completely new to internet marketing, you’ve probably noticed that
Google came out with a new version of its hugely popular free keyword tool a few months
ago.

There’s been quite a bit of complaining around the blogosphere about the new tool, and
I’m one of the many people who wish they’d bring the old one back! (But maybe that’s
because I’m in an adjustment period, and just need to change with the times…)

Here’s what’s new about the keyword tool, straight from the Inside Adwords blog:

 Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL,

and category (where available) and receive a single set of results.

 Easy keyword refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type.

 Negative keywords: Easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your
keyword list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop-down menu to select and save
your negative keyword.

 Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on
local searches, search and ad share, and more.

Most importantly for internet marketers, Google also changed how they calculate Global
Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based
on Google.com search traffic only, whereas in the old keyword tool, they also included
traffic from what Google calls “search partners” (e.g. AOL.com).

There are a couple of changes in the new tool that I’ve noticed that aren’t mentioned
by Google: the new tool returns far fewer keywords that include the search term that the
user entered; and the default setting of the new tool is to return a list of “related terms”,
many of which aren’t related to the keyword you type in.
Despite the changes, however, I still believe Google’s tool is an essential weapon in every
internet marketer’s arsenal, because it provides keyword data straight from the largest
search engine on the web.

So let’s jump right into the tool.

How to Use the New Google Keyword Tool

In this section, I’m going to take you step-by-step through the new keyword tool. I’ll show
you the standard features, then I’ll point out some little-known features of the tool that
even some seasoned IMers don’t know about.
The first thing you’ll notice about the new keyword tool is that it offers the same two
options to search for keywords: either by “Word or phrase”, or by “Website”.
In the first option, you simply enter a keyword of your own, and Google will return a list
of keywords. I’ll continue the example I used in the previous Keyword Research 101
article (“yoga teacher training”):

Here are the steps to follow to do a search based on “Word or phrase”:

1. Go to the (new and improved!) Google Keyword Tool.Enter a keyword in the box
that is right beneath the words “Word or phrase”. (For this example, I’ve entered the
key phrase “yoga teacher training”.)

2. To find keywords that only contain the same keyword you entered, check the box
next to “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms”. (Despite what that says,
 the tool doesn’t return “closely related” terms – it returns terms that only contain
the exact keyword you typed in.)

3. Make sure the “Locations” and “Languages” settings match your target geography
and language.

4. Enter the “captcha” letters (i.e. the letters “bast” in the screenshot above.
“Captchas” are used on websites to make sure that a human is performing the search,
not a spam bot).

By doing that basic search, here are some of the results I received:

As you can see by looking at the “Keyword” column, all of the keyword results contain the
term I typed into the “Word or phrase” box: yoga teaching training.

Allow me to explain the remaining columns in that screenshot:

 The column with the little magnifying glass allows you to see the results
of Google Insights for Search. When you click on the magnifying glass, another
browser window opens up, and the Insights for Search result for that specific
keyword is displayed.

Here’s what I saw when I clicked the magnifying glass next to the keyword “yoga teacher
training”:
I’ve covered Google Insights for Search in my post on brainstorming a “seed” list of
keywords, so I won’t describe it further here.

 The Competition column shows a little bar that looks like a barometer. That bar
represents the number of advertisers bidding in Adwords on that particular keyword
relative to ALL keywords on Google. So, if the bar is full, the competition for that
particular keyword is probably pretty stiff (and the cost-per-click would be high).

You can see from my keyword tool screenshot that competition levels vary significantly
for variations of the “yoga teacher training” keyword: there seems to be a lot of
advertisers bidding on “hatha yoga teacher training” and “yoga teacher training los
angeles”, but there’s not nearly as much competition for “kripalu yoga teacher training”
and “bikram yoga teacher training”.

The Competition column is closely related to the average cost-per-click, which we’ll take a
close look at in a minute.

 Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches are pretty self-
explanatory, but I want to point out a couple of important things:
First, both the Global and Local searches are the 12-month average number of searches.
So what? Well, averages sometimes mask large monthly fluctuations. For example, we all
know that November/December are huge months for online shopping. These two months
can skew the averages upward significantly. So if you’re planning to launch a new product
in June, don’t expect the Global Monthly volume to accurately predict search volume in
that month.

Second, Google says that Global monthly searches contain numbers for Google.com alone
(I assume this means that searches on domains like Google.co.uk are not included).

 Local Search Trends shows 12 green bars, representing the fluctuation in

traffic for a particular keyword over the past 12 months. The bars are organized
chronologically, so the bar to the far right is the most recent month for which data are
available. (For example: I’m writing this post in November 2010, and in the keyword
tool screenshot above the bar to the far right is for October 2010).

The Local Search Trends feature is a great complement to Local Monthly Searches,
because it lets you see the changes in search volume over the past twelve months. If
you’re running (or planning to run) a pay-per-click advertising campaign, this can help
you predict which months you’ll be spending more on your advertising.

So that’s the “quick-and-dirty” way of using the new Google keyword tool. Let’s dive in to
see how we can use more advanced features of the tool to gain more insight into our
market.

Advanced Features of the New Google Keyword Tool

There are quite a few “advanced” features of the Google Keyword Tool that marketers
don’t use. In this section I’m going to show you all of the ones I use.
One feature I skipped over when doing my basic search for “yoga teacher training” is the
“Advanced Options” features. Here’s what it looks like:

The “Advanced Options” feature of the Google keyword tool allows you to:

 Specify the locations that you would like to search for keywords. What
this means is this: if you choose “Canada”, the keyword tool will return keywords that
have been searched on Google.ca over the past month. And it will only show you
search volume for keywords that were searched on Google.ca.

(Note: in my experience, if you select a country with a small population – like Canada –
the tool will return far fewer keywords than if you keep the default “United States” on. If
your website doesn’t focus on a local product or service, I recommend you stick with the
default.)

 Specify the languages that you would like to search for keywords in. I
haven’t used this feature much, but I’m sure non-English keywords are a massively
under-used component of the keyword tool (just like the non English-speaking world
has been massively ignored by many IMers. Watch for huge growth in information
product sales in international markets in the next few years).

 Include “adult ideas” in the results. Personally, I think this is hilarious

terminology (if I was Google, I would have gone with “Grown-up concepts”, instead of
“Adult ideas”

Thankfully, when I checked this option for “yoga teacher training”, it didn’t change the
results. This is a G-rated blog
 Show results that are specific to mobile. I think mobile is another major
area of growth to look out for in the next couple of years – so it’s no surprise that
Google has integrated this into its keyword tool.

 Filter keywords. This feature of Advanced Options allows you to filter the
keywords that you see from your search. It includes some of the options we’ve already
covered (Local and Global Monthly Searches, and Competition), as well as these new
ones:

- Ad share is a tool that came out of Google’s now-defunct search-based keyword

tool. In Google’s words it “describes the percentage of time that your ad is triggered for
the exact match query. This statistic is specific to Google.com performance only for your
targeted country or territory”.
In plain English: let’s say you’re advertising on Adwords, and one of the keywords you’re
advertising on is “yoga teacher training”. The Ad share tool will show you how many
times your ad was shown out of the total number of times people searched the term “yoga
teacher training”.

So how can Google show you this information without you signing into Adwords first?
They can’t! Which is why the Ad share feature is so confusing (and useless for most
people). And to top it off, this feature rarely works! If anyone can explain this, please let
me know.

- Estimated Avg. CPC is pretty straightforward: it’s Google’s estimate for how
much you would have to pay to advertise on a particular keyword.
When looking at average cost-per-click (CPC) numbers, there are a couple of important
things that you should keep in mind:

First, Google is assuming that you’ll want your advertisement to show up in positions 1-3
in the paid search results. And, of course, they’re HOPING that you’ll bid to get in the top
positions – because you’ll pay them a higher CPC! But in many cases, you won’t want
your ad to show up in top positions – because when you’re in top positions, you tend to
get a lot of “curiosity clicks”, i.e. people who aren’t serious about your offer, but just click
your ad out of curiosity.

Second, Google’s average CPC numbers are notoriously WRONG. And by “wrong”, I mean
much higher than what you will actually pay. In the health niche I work in, Google
estimates that the average cost-per-click will be $2.74. In reality, I have never paid more
than $0.35 per click.
- Search share is another feature of the Keyword Tool’s “Advanced Options” that
sounds great in theory: it’s supposed to let you see the percentage of time that your
website appeared on the first page of organic results for a particular keyword. But, as with
the Ad share function, it appears that you have to sign into your Adwords account to get
those stats, and even then I haven’t found anyone able to get it to work.

The new Google Keyword Tool also has some cool features that you can see along the left-
side of the screen:

Let’s take a look at each of those:

 The Traffic Estimator is a cool tool that lets you see how much traffic you could
get from Adwords for a certain keyword. It also allows you to play around with cost-
per-click and budget numbers to see how changing those numbers affects the amount
of traffic you could get.
Here’s a screenshot for the keyword “yoga teacher training”:

Notice the information that Google brings up:

Estimated Avg. CPC: As I’ve already mentioned, this is Google’s estimate for how much
it would cost you to advertise in positions 1-3. In the case of “yoga teacher training”
Google is saying that it would cost $2.13 per click to advertise on Google.com.

But you might not necessarily want your ad to be as high as positions 1-3, and you can
play with the tool to get see what your CPC (and traffic) would be at a lower position
(more on that in a second)

Estimated Ad Position: this is pretty straightforward. Google estimates that with a bid
of $2.13 per click, your ad will be displayed either in positions 1 or 2 (but will probably be
displayed more in position 1, for an average position of “1.3”).

Estimated Daily Clicks shows the average number of clicks you’ll get at $2.13 per click.

Summary box: on the left side of the screen, Google provides a nice summary of how
much you might pay per click, the total clicks you’d get each day at that CPC, and the total
cost for each day.

Now, let’s assume that you DON’T want your ad to be in positions 1-3, or that you don’t
want to bid Google’s asking price ($2.13 for “yoga teacher training”). What you can do
with the Traffic Estimator is play around with different costs-per-click to see how it would
affect your average position and cost-per-click.
For example, let’s say you like the round figure of 50 cents (because that’s what your
parents gave you as a weekly allowance when you were ten years old). Plug that into the
“Max CPC $” in the Traffic Estimator, and here’s what you get:

Now Google estimates that you would pay between 33 and 50 cents per click, would
alternate between positions 4 and 5, and would get 6 clicks per day.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Six clicks per day. That’s puny!” And I agree that it is
– but if you’re doing effective keyword research, you should be compiling a good list of
highly-targeted keywords to advertise on, and/or to optimize for the search engines.

 Next stop in the new Google Keyword Tool is the “Starred” feature. When
you’re scanning the keyword results, you can select the ones that you would like to
save by “starring” them (i.e. clicking the little star that is to the left side of the
keyword. This turns the star from white to yellow).
All of the keywords that you’ve starred can be seen in the “Starred” box in the left sidebar:

When you’re finished selecting your keywords, you can then click on the “Download”
button right above the Keyword column, and download your starred list as a CSV file (or
TSV, or XML).

If you’ve used the old Google keyword tool, you probably remember the “Add” feature,
where the word “Add” appeared next to each keyword. Clicking that word added the
keyword to the Keyword Tool’s clipboard. The “Starred” feature in the new tool performs
that function.

 Next up are Include terms and Exclude terms. These two filters allow you to
include (or exclude) words in your keyword list. As Google says it: “Type keywords in
the box and click the + button if you’d like your search results to include only
keyword ideas that contain at least one of the terms you added”. (Same thing applies
to the Exclude terms feature.)

 The Categories feature of the new Google keyword tool does something pretty
nifty: it shows you the categories that it thinks your keyword is related to.
Let me explain what this means by first showing you the screen BEFORE I typed in my
keyword. Notice that Google shows all of its categories:

But AFTER I type in my keyword (“yoga teacher training”), Google shows the categories
(and sub-categories) it associates with that keyword:

What I find interesting about this result is that Google seems to have separated out the
word `training` from my search, and is associating that word with the categories Finance
and Media & Events. That’s not very useful information in this particular case, but could
be a great tool for brainstorming keywords when you’re using researching other root
keywords.
 The last feature of the new Google Keyword Tool that I’d like to show you
is Match Types.

This inconspicuous box in the left sidebar is hugely important when doing keyword
research, because the settings will affect the search volumes that the Keyword Tool shows
you for a particular keyword.

In a nutshell, the Match Type setting tells the Keyword Tool how wide it should cast its
net when searching for your keyword in its database. The easiest way to explain this is
probably to define each match type, first:

When you select the Broad match setting, it means that you would like the Keyword
Tool to search for keywords that contain your root term in any order. It also means that
the Tool will search for keywords that contain terms other than your root term (as long as
your root term is also in that longer phrase).

So, theoretically, if my root term is “yoga teacher training”, the Keyword Tool could
return results such as:

- training yoga teacher

- yoga training teacher

- yoga teacher training new york

- los angeles yoga teacher training

- sydney training yoga teacher

Broad match is the default setting in the Keyword Tool. I think that’s unfortunate,
because when you’re doing keyword research, you want a realistic view of the amount of
visitors you can get to your site. Because broad match includes all sorts of variations of
keywords in its results, it often shows a higher search volume than your site will actually
get.
Here’s an example from one of my sites. A few months ago, I launched a new site
that deals with a particular type of surgery. Here is the broad match search volume for the
top keywords in that market:

The Keyword Tool says that the highest-volume keyword gets 14,800 global searches per
month. At the time I was researching this market, the Tool also said that the average cost
per click for this keyword was around $2.50. So, I figured that if I could get in the number
one spot on Google.com for this keyword, I would make $503.20 per month in Adsense
from this one site.

****** Temporary digression while I show the calculations for this *******

If my website was in the top (organic) position in Google, I could expect a clickthrough
rate of around 40%, which would mean 5,920 visits (14,800 monthly searches on Google
X 40% clickthrough rate).

Multiply 5,920 visits by 5% (the clickthrough rate I expect on my Adsense ads), and you
get 296. (In other words, I expect five percent of the 5,920 people who land on my site to
click an ad.)

Multiply 296 by $1.70 (my payout from Google would be 68% of the $2.50 cost-per-click)
and you get $503.20

************************ End of digression **************************

Well, several months later, my site is now in the number one position in the organic
results. But am I making $503.20 per month? No! Because even though I’m in the top
position on Google, I’m not getting 5,920 visits per month. And the reason is that my
target keyword doesn’t actually get that many EXACT searches per month.

The EXACT number of searches my target keyword gets is 6,600. Which brings me to the
next match type.

An Exact match search in Google’s Keyword Tool will show you the search volume only
for precise matches of your keyword.

Here’s what the Keyword Tool showed me when I selected Exact match in the Match
Types box:

As I mentioned, my target keyword actually gets 6,600 exact searches per month (not the
14,800 that the Keyword Tool showed me when I left the default Broad match on).

And how does this compare with the actual traffic my site is getting? Pretty close. I’m
averaging about 100 visits per day, or 3,000 visits monthly. That’s a clickthrough rate of
45%, which is a typical organic clickthrough rate that has been demonstrated in a number
of studies.

Now, you might be thinking, “But that’s only one keyword!” And you’re right. Over time,
my site will start to rank for more and more long-tail keywords- and with more traffic
from those tail keywords, I’ll generate more Adsense revenue, and more sales of affiliate
products.

Finally, you can also select Phrase match in the Match Type box. Phrase match will
return keywords that contain only your root term, but in any order (as opposed to Exact
match, which contains only your root term in exactly the order you typed it). Here are
some examples of Phrase match results that could be returned for “yoga teacher
training”:

- “yoga training teacher”

- “teacher yoga training”

- “training yoga teacher”

Summing Up

In this post I’ve tried to give an in-depth tutorial on the features of the new Google
Keyword Tool, to help you do effective keyword research – whether it be for pay-per-click
or search engine optimization.

Keyword research is such a fundamental component of internet marketing that I see it as

a core skill that every internet marketer should have. It’s fine to outsource keyword
research, eventually – but you should have a good grasp of the basics before handing over
such a crucial component of your business to someone else.

The new Google Keyword Tool has some drawbacks, but it’s still the gold standard in
terms of keyword data. And it comes straight from the source!
How to Find Keywords with Low
Competition and High Search
Volume: The Ultimate Guide
If you’ve been around internet marketing for more than two days, you know
that keyword research is one of the most important skills an internet marketer can have.
Why?

Because the holy grail of making money online is getting lots of free (aka organic) traffic
to your websites. And the easiest way to get that free traffic is by targeting low-
competition keywords that have large search volume.

There are two ways an internet marketer can find low-competition, high-volume
keywords:

1. Do smart keyword research

2. Hire a monkey to choose some keywords out of a hat, and hope he gets it right!
Now, before you think I’m being smug, let me say that keyword research is a skill that
many people find hard to master (and took me quite a while to get the hang of). I
regularly receive emails from internet marketers (some new, some not-so-new) who are
going about keyword research all wrong.

In this article I’m going to try to remedy that problem by showing you the steps to find
keywords that get a decent amount of searches each month, but that won’t take you years
to rank for.

But first, let me clarify what exactly a “low-competition” keyword is.

What is a Low-Competition Keyword?

When internet marketers say that a keyword is not competitive, they mean it would be
easy to get their site to rank #1 for that keyword in Google. This often means that few
website owners are vying for the #1 spot for that particular keyword.
A crucial mistake that IM newbies make when launching their first website is not
checking the competition of the keywords they’re trying to rank for. I made
this mistake when first starting out, too. I picked a niche (home improvements), thought
it would be neat to make a website about it, and proceeded to launch a site with over 100
pages of content on it. The site took me months to create, and when I finally finished it…
Nothing.

No traffic! Just the sound of crickets chirping.

That site took months to get any visitors, and it was only by luck that I managed to get
any traffic at all.

Eventually I learned that the VERY FIRST STEP in building a new website (once you’ve
completed your niche research) is doing proper keyword research. That insight led me to
learn the fine art of researching keywords, and has allowed me to launch sites that rank –
and start earning revenue – quickly.

(Side note: in no way am I saying that every site I launch is a winner. No way! Search
engine optimization, like internet marketing in general, is a numbers game. The more
things you throw at the wall, the greater chance you’ll get something to stick.)

Once I learned how to do good keyword research (and find low-competition keywords),
finding keywords to build sites around became much easier.

Here are the daily stats for a surgery site I built using the Socrates theme for WordPress:

You can see that this site went from no traffic to averaging 150 visits per day (with peaks
up to 250 visits per day) in less than four months.
Here’s another site that I launched in August of 2011 (also using the Socrates theme for
WordPress):

This one doesn’t get as many searches (it’s a relatively obscure health problem), but
notice the similar pattern in take-off of traffic – within three months this site went from
zero visits per day to an average of 80 – 100 visits.

My point in showing you these numbers is this: once you’ve learned how to do keyword
research the right way, you’ll no longer struggle to get organic traffic. Because you’ll
spend more time UP FRONT in choosing the best keywords – keywords that strike a
balance between good search volume and not too much competition.

So how do you find these exalted keywords?

Let’s jump in and find out.

Three Steps to Find Low-Competition, High-Volume Keywords

Step #1: Develop a seed list of keywords

A “seed” list of keywords is simply a group of generic keywords that have high search
volume. I won’t go into the detailed steps in this post, because I’ve already done so in my
post onbrainstorming a seed list of keywords, but here are the two broad steps:

 Pick a niche that you’re interested in, or have knowledge of

 Brainstorm a handful of keywords for that niche (try to think of keywords that
solve problems or satisfy desires. So if your niche is surfing, you might start by
brainstorming generic keywords like “surf”, “surfboard”, and “board trunks”, then
 dive a little deeper into more specialized keywords like “surf vacation”, “wave report”,
and “surfari” (yes, such a word exists. I’m a surfer!).
 Get synonyms of those keywords from tools like Google Insights for
Search, Deeper Web,Quintura, and Thesaurus.com.

Step #2: Find out search volume and CPC for your seed keyword list
Next you want to take that seed keyword list and run it through a keyword tool that tells
you how much search volume each keyword gets each month, and how much the cost-
per-click is.

There are lots of keyword research tools out there, and most of them only get their data
from Google. In other words, they only tell you how much search volume a particular
keyword gets on Google each month, along with how much Google advertisers are paying
for that keyword. But given that Google has 85% of the global search market, I guess that
makes sense!

And that’s why I prefer to go straight to the source when I’m doing keyword research, and
use the Google keyword tool.

But there’s another tool that I came across recently that has revolutionized my keyword
research, cutting down the time it takes MASSIVELY. This tool also has the best keyword
competition features I’ve seen, and it’s extremely quick (if you’ve used tools like Market
Samurai, you know the pain of waiting for a keyword tool to slowly crank through its
analysis!)

The tool I’m talking about is Long Tail Pro, and I’ll give you a detailed description of what
it does in a minute. Long Tail Pro is a paid tool, so let me first discuss the free option,
which is the Google Keyword Tool.

Two Best Keyword Tools for Keyword Research

Google Keyword Tool (free option)

I’m not going to provide detailed instruction on how to use the Google keyword tool here
(because I’ve covered that in my post Google Keyword Tool: The Ultimate Step-by-Step
Guide), but I will briefly show you how to use the tool to get the information you need to
start your competition research.

I’ve had a bad cold lately, so one of the keywords that’s been on my mind is “cold
remedies” (as in “give me some remedies for this frigging cold, quick!)
When I type the term “cold remedies” in to the Google keyword tool, here are the results I
get:

As you can see from the screenshot above, the term “cold remedies” is searched 9,900
times per month on Google.

Note a few things from the screenshot:

 I made sure to select “Exact” from “Match Types” on the left-side of the
screen. This will show me the average number of times the exact term “cold
remedies” is searched on Google each month.

If I had just kept the default match type on (“Broad” match), the search volume would be
MUCH higher. But it wouldn’t be an accurate reflection of how many people for “cold
remedies” each month, because Google includes lots of related search terms with its
broad match results.

ALWAYS select “Exact” as the match type when doing research on the Google keyword
tool!

 Google says the “competition” for this keyword is “High”. That doesn’t
mean the SEO competition is high – it means the pay-per-click competition is. In
other words, lots of advertisers are paying to have their ad shown on the right side of
the screen when someone searches on “cold remedies”.

High advertiser competition is a good thing if you’re setting up a website targeting this
keyword and want to monetize the site with Adsense ads – because high advertiser
competition means the cost-per-click will be higher, and you’ll get paid more every time
someone clicks an ad on your site!
 Global monthly searches is 9,900. This means that 9,900 people search
Google for the exact term “cold remedies” every month (on average). This is a great
number of exact-match searches to target for a niche website.
 The average CPC (cost-per-click) for the term “cold remedies” is $6.21.
This is a relatively high CPC, and would mean you would get paid $4.22 (based on
Google’s Adsense revenue share).

So judging by the Google tool results, this keyword has some promise – it gets a good
amount of exact-match searches each month, and has a high cost-per-click.

But that tells us nothing about the search engine competition. If the keyword “cold
remedies” gets lots of searches and has a high CPC, lots of website owners must be trying
to rank on the first page of Google for that term, right?

Not necessarily. I’ve seen a good amount of keywords that have little competition and a
decent amount of searches each month (like the keywords that my surgery and niche
health websites are built on). And as Google has reported, 25% of the keywords searched
on Google every month have never been searched for before!

But the simple fact is you can’t tell how hard it will be to rank for a particular keyword by
looking at data from the Google keyword tool. You need a tool that quickly and accurately
gives you key indicators on the search engine competition for a keyword.

I’ve researched – and used – many keyword research tools, and the ones that give the
best data and save the most time are paid tools. Fortunately, some of the best tools don’t
cost very much, especially when you consider the huge amount of time you can save by
using them. I actually don’t see these tools as an expense – I see them as
an investment because they help me make money faster!

The main keyword research tool I’ve used in the past is Market Samurai (and I’ve dabbled
a little in Micro Niche Finder). But recently I started using a new tool called Long Tail
Pro, and it has quickly become my favourite tool.
Long Tail Pro (paid option)

The beauty of Long Tail Pro is that it combines keyword research with competition
research in one simple interface. And while other tools like Market Samurai and Micro
Niche Finder have similar features, there are a couple of things that make Long Tail
Pro stand out from the competition:

 Speed. Anyone who’s used Market Samurai knows how long it can take to get
keyword and competition data for a single keyword. Long Tail Pro is lightning-fast,
which means you don’t have to go and make a coffee (and do the laundry and walk
the dog) while waiting for the tool to fetch your keyword data! Which brings me to the
next point…

 Search multiple keywords at the same time. One of the biggest limitations
of Market Samurai is that you can only research one keyword at a time. I guess that’s
because MS fetches a lot of different data points. But in my mind, the amount of data
that Market Samurai fetches is overkill. Being able to rank for a keyword depends on
a few core factors, so I simply don’t need all of the different types of data that Market
Samurai gets.
(Note: I’m not saying that data is useless. If I was running a search engine marketing
agency, I’d want to have the power that MS provides. But for home-based niche
marketers, I just don’t think it’s necessary.)

 Simple and intuitive interface. The interface of Long Tail Pro is clean,
simple, and easy to navigate. I’ve used many keyword tools that try to be all things to
all people, and the result is an interface that’s filled with tons of buttons and doodads.
Again, ranking for keywords is a straightforward process, so all those doodads simply
aren’t necessary.

Bottom line: of all the paid tools that can fetch basic keyword data (i.e. monthly search
volume and cost-per-click on Google), Long Tail Pro is my favourite. But that’s not why I
love it. Where LTP really shines is in gathering keyword competition data to filter out
keywords that are too competitive.

In the next section of this post I’ll cover how to filter keywords for competition, and I’ll
tell you how to do this for free, or using Long Tail Pro.

Step #3: Filter out the keywords that are too competitive
So now we’re at step #3 in finding low-competition, high-volume keywords. After (1)
brainstorming your seed list of keywords and (2) finding the monthly search volume and
cost-per-click for each keyword in your seed list, the final step is to filter out the keywords
that are too competitive.

By “too competitive” I mean that when you type a keyword into Google and look at the
first page of results, the page is filled with websites that would be hard to rank above.

How do you know if a website would be hard to rank above? Great question! If
you want to build an empire of niche websites that get oodles of free traffic, you need to
master competition research. Once you’ve done competition research enough times,
knowing whether a keyword is too hard to rank for will become second nature.
When analyzing each web page on the first page of Google, here are some of the things I
look out for:

 How good is the on-page SEO of the page (e.g. does the keyword appear in the
title tag or description tag)?

 What’s the PageRank of the site?

 How old is the site?

 How many backlinks does the page have going to it? How many good-quality
backlinks?

How do you get all of the competition information mentioned above? Let’s jump into the
free and paid options:

How to Research Keyword Competition for Free

As I mentioned in the section above, being good at keyword competition research is
absolutely essential for identifying low-competition, high-volume keywords.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of tools out there that can help you with this.

Here are three of the major players in the free SEO toolbar market:

SEO For Firefox

SEO for Firefox is a plugin that inserts competitive research data right into the Google
search results page. The plugin was launched by Aaron Wall, who is a well-know search
engine optimization consultant.

When you do a Google search, SEO for Firefox shows this data for each web page on the
results page:

 PageRank
 Age of site
 Number of .edu backlinks
 Number of .gov backlinks
 Alexa rank

And about 100,000 other bits of information!

Here’s a screenshot of the Google results page for the term “cold remedies”, with SEO for
Firefox installed (note: for this screenshot I disabled a lot of the competitive data that tool
can automatically display, because a lot of the data points are unnecessary and crowd out
the good data).
I’ve put a red box around the competitive research data that the SEO for Firefox tool
shows:

Check out SEO for Firefox by clicking here.

SEOquake toolbar

The SEOquake toolbar is also an add-on for Firefox, it also has a version for Google
Chrome, and it also has a bewildering array of competitive data that can be chosen!

The SEOquake toolbar displays competitive research results similar to SEO for Firefox.
Check out the screenshot for “cold remedies” below:
Check out the SEOquake toolbar by clicking here.

Note: if you’d like to see a decent review of the SEOBook and SEOmoz toolbars, check out
this post.)

Firefox MozBar

SEOMoz is a search engine marketing consulting firm, and is one of the most respected
SEM firms in the business (from what I’ve read, and I’ve been following their blog for a
long time). They also have some great free reports on search engine optimization for
beginners, which I highly recommend.

SEOMoz has a free “Firefox Mozbar”, and it’s set up a little differently than the other two
toolbars I’ve discussed. First of all, when you install the Mozbar it puts a toolbar below
your browser’s address bar that gives you information for the web page you’re currently
on (see screenshot below).

The toolbar also has a “SERP Control Panel” which controls what you do with a specific
web page. One of the coolest features of the Control Panel is the “SERP overlay”, which
gives you a couple of competitive research data points (including “Page Authority”, which
is a number from 1 to 100 that SEOMoz assigns to a web page, and the number of
backlinks).

The downside of the Firefox Mozbar is that they don’t give you a lot of competitive
research data – unless you pay for a SEOMoz Pro membership.

Check out the Firefox Mozbar by clicking here.

So which of the three do I recommend?

If you’re willing to throw down some coin, I’d recommend you sign up for the SEOMoz
Promembership and download the Mozbar. But if you’re not willing to make that
commitment at this point (and I wouldn’t blame you), I’d go with the SEO for Firefox
toolbar. It’s not the slickest or prettiest of tools, but it gives you the data you need, and
it’s FREE!

But it doesn’t have to be this hard.

So I know what you’re thinking at this point: “Man, using those toolbars looks like a lot of
work. You mean I have to do a Google search for each keyword, then write down the
information from the toolbar for each keyword?”

Short answer: yes.

Slightly longer answer: yes, that’s the way to do FREE keyword competition research.

Fortunately, there’s another option that’s only slightly more expensive than free. It will
shave literally dozens (if not hundreds) of hours off the time it takes you to do
competition research…and it’s so easy it actually becomes a little addictive!

That option, of course, is using Long Tail Pro.

Using Long Tail Pro for Keyword Competition Research

As I mentioned above, the thing that Long Tail Pro excels at is quickly retrieving keyword
competition data and displaying it in an easy-to-understand format, so we can rapidly
make decisions on which keywords to target for our niche websites.

I created a video that will take you step-by-step through the Long Tail Pro interface, and
show you how easy it is to find low-competition keywords. In the video I actually
stumble across a keyword in the “remedies” niche that’s ripe for picking
now!

You can watch the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qd308SyssKA

And if you’re interested in buying Long Tail Pro, get these BONUSES for
buying through my affiliate link:

 List of 424 proven niches, with hundreds of related keywords. One of

the biggest obstacles that new internet marketers face is brainstorming a niche. In
this PDF I share hundreds of niches (with related seed keywords) that you can use to
kickstart your niche empire

 My Niche Site Development Checklist. Once you’ve found keywords with

low competition and high search volume you’ll need to set up a website, right? Get
the checklist that my virtual staff use to set up my niche websites.

 That’s on top of the bonus video that comes with Long Tail Pro, in which
the software’s creator (Spencer Haws) describes the criteria he uses to find low
competition keywords.

Here are the steps to buy Long Tail Pro and get my bonuses:
1. Clear your browser’s cookies (in Firefox click on Tools > Clear Recent History >
Cookies)
2. Click on any of the Long Tail Pro links in this blog post and purchase the software
3. After making the purchase, you’ll receive a receipt from Clickbank. Forward that
receipt to me (moe at keywordsblogger dot com) and I’ll send you the download link
for your bonuses!

One last thing about Long Tail Pro: Spencer is selling it through Clickbank, which means
it comes with an automatic 60-day money-back guarantee. So even if you’re not happy
with the software (which I doubt), you can get your money back.

Wrapping Up

We’ve all the heard the saying that 80% of new businesses fail within their first five years.
Well, I can tell you from the emails I get that an equal number of newbie internet
marketers are struggling to get traffic to their websites.

The reason? They focus on keywords that are just too competitive.

Targeting low-competition keywords doesn’t just make good business sense. It’s also
crucial to one’s self-esteem. How many websites have you toiled over that ended up
bringing in no visitors…and no revenue? I’ve been there, and it feels like a kick in the
cajones.

In this post I’ve outlined the steps you can take to home in on keywords with little
competition but good search volume. It’s an approach that I’m going to be using going
forward to achieve my goal of $10,000 in monthly Adsense revenue (stay tuned for
updates!)
 Resources

With all of the tools out there for making money online, it’s hard to know which ones are
worth the investment.

In this free report I’ve mentioned some of the tools and services that I use. If you’re
interested in buying any of these, feel free to check them out through my affiliate links
below 

All of the tools and services listed below are ones that I use on a weekly (if not daily)
basis. I would never recommend products that I don’t personally use and value, so I
wholeheartedly vouch for them:

Keyword Research:
Google Keyword Tool (free keyword research tool)
Long Tail Pro (paid tool for keyword and competition research. I use this tool every day.)

Niche/Market Research:
Niche Sherpa Video Coaching Course (my paid course)
Desperate Buyers Only (ebook on how to find a niche with “desperate buyers”)
Survey Gizmo (online survey tool that I use. Free 14-day trial)

Paid Traffic:
Google Adwords
Bing

Free Traffic (how-to guides):

SEOMoz Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
Get More Buyers (paid guide on how to partner with successful websites)

Email Marketing:
Aweber (the email marketing service I use)
Pop Up Domination (excellent tool for putting email opt-in pop-ups on your site)

Affiliate Marketing:
MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate plugin (this awesome plugin cloaks your affiliate links)

Website Development:
Wordpress (all of my sites are built on Wordpress. Free and highly recommended)
Socrates Theme (this is the Wordpress theme that I use for most of my niche sites)
Thesis theme (another excellent Wordpress theme, but requires some technical skills)
Manage WP (if you have multiple Wordpress sites, manage them in one interface)
Sales Page Development:
WP Sales Engine (the best plugin for creating sales pages. No technical skills needed!)

Web Analytics:
Google Analytics
Crazy Egg (provides heat maps to see where your visitors are clicking. Cheap price)

Domain Registration:
GoDaddy
Bluehost

Hosting:
Bluehost (by far the best hosting company, especially for IM newbies. I use it for all my
sites)

SEO Tools:
Unique Article Wizard

Outsourcing:
oDesk.com (the main freelance site I hire from; excellent writers)
Scriptlance (excellent freelance site to hire programmers; quality of writers is not so
good)
Elance (excellent freelance site to hire designers and writers; can be a little pricey)
Guru (the most expensive freelance site, but very high-quality freelancers)