Keyword Research Common Sense

Keyword research is a pretty hot topic for beginning or advanced Internet Marketers alike. After all, if you want search engine traffic, you need to rank well for the specific terms of your industry. However, far too many people rely heavily on keyword research tools. And by heavily I mean exclusively. It’s not that it’s bad to consult the different keyword research services. It’s just that they can sometimes be misleading.

And this is where keyword research common sense comes into play. What this basically means is the fact that if you want to start a new website, the best thing to do before consulting the keyword services is make up your own list of keywords. Of course, this implies that you have at least some intermediate notions about your niche, but that’s the best way to succeed online, right?

Ok, let’s think about a niche, for example soccer – I picked this one because I know something about it, and unless you want to build a thin MFA website, you should know something about your topic also. It is a big niche, and I would advise to start a site on a more specific one, but this is just for the sake of example. Now we can go to the drawing board, and we will do that before consulting the keyword services in any way!

Now think about the work “soccer”, and start writing every keyword that you think YOU would type in the search engines related to the topic. Big chances are that many of the other soccer passionates are looking for approximately the same keywords. I will tell you why that’s important in a second, but not before I present you with another approach.

Write down the word soccer, and also think about the first three verbs and nouns that come into your mind. Also, write down commercial keywords, like “buy”, “cheap”, “free”. If I think about it for a few seconds, the first three soccer related verbs that come into my mind are: play, watch, learn. As for nouns, they are: match, equipment, teams. So we have: “play soccer”, “watch soccer”, “learn soccer”, “soccer match”, “soccer equipment”, “soccer teams”. Now, all you need to do is extrapolate from that. For instance, you have “soccer equipment”. Where do you go from there? “Soccer shoes”, “Soccer balls”, etc. Of course, if you have any other root words that pop up into your mind while doing so, write them down. Like “soccer field” or anything else. If you think about them in relation to your niche, chances are that other people think about them too.

Keep doing this until you have a pretty consistent keyword list. Don’t forget to include the plurals, where the case requires. Then, you can go to your favorite keyword service. You will notice that many of the keywords you thought about in your list are there. However, some of them will not be there but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are not searched for. This is where the keyword research common sense comes in. If you take it into consideration, you might attract traffic from the most unusual sources.

From my experience, this is an important factor. I’ve optimized sites for keywords that supposedly got thousands of hits each month. For instance, I got a 4500 hits/month keyword (according to a keyword research service) to number one on Google. All I got from it were a few hits in a few months (not in one month, in a few months). Then, working on the same site, I came up with another keyword. I checked it on the same service, but it didn’t have records of the respective keyword. But it only seemed like common sense to me, so I got it to top 10. Imagine my surprise when the respective keyword got an average of 10 hits/day, and it wasn’t even on the top spot on Google, it was just top 10. So even though working with Overture, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery is important, don’t forget about the common sense keywords. You might just be surprised!

Tags: Keyword Research