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Understanding Keyword Research

The problem with an internet business, or any business for that matter, is NOT finding a product to sell. Finding a product to sell is the EASY part, trust me. The hard part is finding out if there are people who want to buy your product AND how many other websites are selling the exact same thing you are!

It is amazing to me how many people start a business just assuming that there are people who want to buy what they are selling. What I mean is, there are thousands of people each year who borrow money, rent a lease space and buy inventory without doing ANY market research what so ever!

And nowhere is that more true than on the internet.

Which is so sad. Because there are very simple ways to determine:

 

1.      IF there is a market for your product,

2.      HOW big that market is

3.      and WHAT kind of competition you will be facing

Now, most traditional businesses would give their right hand (and a sizable sum of money) to get this kind of information. For example, I sell books and CD’s at homeschool book shows. What if I knew in advance..

1. which books would be in demand...
2. how many people would want those books
3. and how many other vendors at the show would be selling the same books.

Do you think that would affect which book I would take? You bet! I would load up on the books that I knew people wanted AND that other vendors would not be bringing. Meaning, I would leave the unpopular books at home AND I would leave the wildly popular books that every other vendor was carrying at home as well!

What Are Keywords?

So, you want to sell something that is in demand, but has relatively few competing web pages. How in the world do you find this information? Well, on the internet, you have to do keyword research. Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into the search engines when they are looking for something.

If you want to know about dogs, you type in “dogs” into a search engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask Jeeves and it returns millions of web pages about the topic you typed in. In this case, dogs. And it gives you these pages not randomly but with the most important pages first. Meaning, each search engine has formula, called an algorithm, for determining which pages are MOST related to the subject you typed in.

So why is this important?

Well, if you want to sell a product consistently...month in and month out...year in and year out, then you have to have a fresh supply of customers looking at your product.

Four Ways to Get New Customers

Let’s face it, there are only FOUR ways to get a fresh supply of customers to come to your website looking for your product:

1. Send them an email

But how many email addresses do you have of people who want your particular product? And how long will it take to go through those...a week, a month?

2. Have someone who knows your product send their friend an email about your product.

Again, although this can be effective, it takes lots of time to build a network of referrals

3. Pay for advertising on the Search Engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo.

When someone searches on a term, like “Dogs”, you will see advertisements on far right hand side. People are actually paying to put their advertisement there. And while this is effective, you had better know what you are doing and watch your pennies!

4. Figure out how to get your webpage to show up on the first page of a search engine like Google when people type in a search term. Then they will visit your page and buy your product.

Think about that. Hundreds or thousands of new customers every month! That is what the search engines can give you. Now, not everyone who visits your site will buy, but that’s okay because you will have brand new visitors the next day and the next day and so on and so on. So, researching what search terms, which is another name for keywords, that people are using to find your particular product is essential to stepping into that oncoming traffic.

Basically, you want to see where the traffic is and then set up your “lemonade stand” right next to that traffic. And it is much easier to go where the traffic already IS and set up your lemonade stand there rather than try to redirect traffic to your lemonade stand on some isolated street! And keywords are the way to find and intercept that traffic.

How do Keywords Signify Demand?

So, you know what people are looking for by how many times they type a keyword into a search engine on that subject. And if you can tell how many people are searching on a particular keyword phrase, you can use that information to tailor the product to what people are looking for.

What I mean is...when people want to buy something on the internet, unless they know exactly what page to find to get that item, the exact url for that page, they will usually type the item in a search engine and see what results are listed there. And the more specific the search terms, the more ready they are to buy. For example if I type in “dogs”, I am just curious about dogs in general. I’m just browsing. But if I type in “electronic dog training collar”, I probably have my credit card next to my mouse pad ready to purchase that item.

So, if I can find,  not only how many people are searching on the term “dog”, but also searching on “electronic dog training collar” and “hunting dog training video” and “dog grooming tips”, then I can them focus on niches within the area of dogs. And this is important to avoiding a lot of competing pages.

How does all this work? Let’s do a real life example to try to make this clearer. Suppose you want to write a best selling book on dogs that you think every family should have. Or maybe you have already written a book or curriculum and you want to find customers for it on the internet. So let’s check the demand for the topic “dogs”

Go to the link below and type in the search term “dogs”.

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

If I type in “dogs”, and click in the arrow we see…Whoa! Over 1.6 million people searched on the term “dogs” in the last month alone. Now what does that tell you? That tells you that tons of people have an intense interest in “dogs” because they typed that search term into a search engine.

The Problem of Competition

So, we see there IS demand and a lot of it, but we still have a big problem. Do you think that if over 1.6 million people a month are searching on the keyword “dog” that there are a lot of websites trying to capitalize on that demand? To use a metaphor, do you think there are a  lot of lemonade stands all vying for the same corner?

You bet there are!

Actually if we type “dog” into Google search engine, we can see the number of web pages that are competing for the first page of Google.

84 million competing sites.

Now what are the chances of you getting on the first page of Google when 84 million sites are competing for those same top ten spots? Can you muscle out 85 million lemonade stands to set your lemonade stand in front of that oncoming traffic?

Not very likely.

AND, if you are not on the first page of Google, the top ten, then why bother? How many of YOU look past the first page when searching on a topic?

So what to do? Well look at the related keywords for dog. Many of these related keywords represent dog niches. These are niches that are not as wildly popular as “dogs”, but still represent a lot of demand by the number of people searching on those keywords. However, they probably have fewer competing sites as well, because they are more specialized.

So, if we can find a keyword that still has a lot of demand, but has fewer competing pages, then we stand a chance of selling a lot on the internet. Do you see why keyword research is so important? It tells us where the demand is and which keywords have demand, fewer competing pages. And this can help you tweak your product to fit a certain profitable niche.

Building Web Pages Around Keywords

But what does this have to do with my web pages? Well, I’m glad you asked. If we know which keywords are most desirable because of their demand and lack of competing web pages, then we can build our web pages around those keywords! And this has to do with getting our webpage to be one of the top ten results on a search engine and capitalize on that free traffic.

Here’s how search engines work. Search engines send spiders to your webpage and first look at the title. What does your page say it is about? That is important. If your title is “Welcome to our website!”, the search engine doesn’t have a lot to go on. It thinks you are about “welcome” or “website.” So, the first thing is to have the keyword we want to build our page around be in our title.

Next, the spiders are looking to see how often the keyword is used in the page in relation to other words. This is called keyword density. Meaning, if the search engine is trying to give visitors the best pages about “electronic dog training collars”, well it would make sense that that phrase is used in the webpage every so often. So use your keyword early and often in your copy, but don’t overdo it or Google will think you are just trying to trick it and may penalize you.

Another thing the spiders look for is how many backward links you have. Meaning, how many other websites say that you are about your keyword. And they do this by using the keyword in the text for the link back to you. It is one thing for you to say you are about “electronic dog training collars”, it is quite another when 30 other sites say you are about “electronic dog training collars” by using that phrase when linking to you.

Doing the Research

So we know where the demand is by what people are typing into the search engines. And we know that we want to build websites around the keywords that are in demand and have relatively fewer competing websites. So, now we need to research the keywords to find out how many competing web sites there are for that keyword. Meaning, we need to take all of these dog related keywords and type each one of them into Google and see how many competing pages there are. We then begin to prioritize our keywords according to the highest demand with lowest competing sites. And you need to type those keywords into Google using quotations. If you type in “electronic dog training collar” without quotations, you will get results for “electronic”, “dog”, “training” and “collar” and the numbers will be inflated.

So, are you really saying I have to type each of these related keywords into Google one at a time and find out how many competing pages there are?

Are you crazy?

Who has the time?

Well, what is better - spending time finding or developing a product and then making a website for that product that is not optimized for a keyword and consequently, the search engines will not point to it? How much time wasted is that? No one will come to your site because they will not know that it is there. Sure, you tell people through emails, newsletters, and loops...but you will not get consistent sales month in and month out. People will not know that you have what they need.

But, there is a solution.

There is a software program called Wordtracker. And it was designed for just this kind of work. When you click on the link above, I suggest taking the tour, but what I really wanted to show you is the screen shot of competing pages. Go to the “tour” tab and then click on “step 4-cherry pick keywords”.

Once you type in a keyword into Wordtracker, it will then return related key words AND will go back to Google and tabulate the number of the competing pages. In this example, “golf putter choice” has 18 people searching per day and only 33 competing sites. With a little webpage optimization and some backward links, links from other sites, you can be ranking in the top ten for that term in no time!

And one of the best ways to get a backward link is to write an article that links back to your site and give the article away to other websites. This is also a great way to capitalize on the other keywords that have a high number of visitors and few competing pages.

Since you can usually only build a webpage around one or two keyword phrases, you can write an article for a few others and it will rank high in the search engines and point people back to your main website. You can write as many articles as there are really good keywords. And all of these articles can point back to your main page.

Of course, as with all good tools, whether a table saw or a drafting table, Wordtracker will cost something. The nice thing about this tool is that you can rent it for a day...I think it is about $7 a day. But you can do a lot of research in a day!

I am trying to illustrate a principle. Anyone who does not want to invest either in his education or his tools is not serious about starting a business. If you want to build a business that your whole family can be a part of, you are going to have to learn how to do it right. You need specialized knowledge, the right tools and a plan of attack.

When I first started selling on the internet, I didn’t take into account competition. Meaning, competing websites. And that ignorance costs me dearly. I would build my pages around topics that I had not thoroughly researched. I assumed everyone liked lemonade and put my lemonade stand on the side of the road. But I didn’t know that it was a road not many people used and the people using it were not looking for lemonade.

So I got smart and starting researching keywords that people were searching on, and placed my lemonade stand in a busy intersection with lots of traffic, but I was behind 120 million other lemonade stands that were well established! Finally, I did enough research to find out which keywords had demand AND did not have a ton of competing pages.

Now, I have a lemonade stand on a corner with good traffic and only 2 other lemonade stands...I can deal with that level of competition. And since I am continuing my education, I will be the best and most popular lemonade stand on the block! So, the moral of this story is don’t make the same mistake I made. Get the tools you need, get the specialized knowledge you need and get a plan.