Striking Keyword Gold - How To Grab Keywords By The Tail by Albert
Ghergich
Anyone can pick out related keywords to rank their websites for. However, it's
the crafty webmaster who knows how to find multiple keyword goldmines among the
thousands of possibilities available.
One popular approach is called the "long tail". In this approach you go after
three word + phrases in hopes of having less competition. The main problem with
this approach is that there is a second aspect of it that most people neglect.
The second and most important part of the "long tail" approach is that with
longer, more targeted phrases you are more apt to directly meet the needs of
the user. While that may seem obvious, many people ignore or poorly execute it.
That's because they don't understand the importance of their client's purchase
cycle as it relates to search engines.
The Purchase Cycle:
The very first thing you need to understand before starting keyword research is
the "Purchase Cycle". Its main steps are:
Attention > Interest > Desire > and Action.
Finding tons of low competing yet high converting keywords is as simple as
understanding your customer's buying habits. When they are in the action stage
you will want to be there with them.
Let me give you some examples. Let's imagine you are a new Real Estate Agent in
the crowded but profitable Los Angeles Real estate market. You have had a site
up for almost 6 months, have done a little SEO but have gotten almost no
traffic and not a single lead from your site. The problem is more than likely
the phrases you are going after. Everyone will be competing in the SERP's for
obvious terms like "Los Angeles Real Estate". Now there is nothing wrong with
competing for the best phrases, however this guide is all about training you to
look at the areas your competition has ignored, and are at the end of the
buying cycle. Trust me, great opportunities are available in every single
market.
Think Like Your Customer
Imagine yourself as a customer who is using Google to find or sell real estate
in Los Angeles. A typical search may go something like this.
Search Term: 1 "Real estate" (hmm too broad what was I thinking?) Search Term:
2 "Los Angeles real estate" (Lots of options maybe I need a local agent?)
Search Term: 3 "Real estate agent in Los Angeles" BINGO!!! If you are a real
estate agent in Los Angeles this should be one of your many keyword goldmines.
Now let me show you how the competition for rankings in Google has diminished
as the customer got more and more refined with their search. I want you to see
just how ripe the opportunity is when you understand the process your customers
go through.
To get a good feel for the level of competition for a phrase one simple but
highly important SEO factor is the Title tag. Using Google we can easily see
how many sites have the exact search phrase we are using, as the title tag to
their website. This is a great initial gauge of the competition you will face.
The command I use in Google is intitle:"real estate" (returns results with the
exact phrase "real estate" in the title tag).
Diminished Competition
intitle:"real estate" Over 59 Million Pages Retuned intitle:"Los Angeles real
estate" Down to 25,000 Pages Returned intitle:"Real estate agent in Los
Angeles" 57 Results and only 7 Domains listed!!! This high conversion keyword
is just sitting there waiting for you "our new real estate agent" to rank for
it. If you do the proper SEO work and point a few quality links to the page
then you should begin to see highly qualified traffic.
Let me give you one more example and then we will move on. Let's say you sell
high-end condos right on the beach in Hawaii, which by the way is where I call
home (Its OK to feel sorry for me). The competition for the condo market in
Hawaii is very stiff and any little edge you can get is extremely helpful.
Again all you have to do is understand how a potential customer searches and
know your own product to find those keyword gems.
Results:
Search 1: "Hawaii Condos" intitle - 11,100 pages Search 2: "Hawaii Condo
Rental" intitle - 147 pages (Great action phrase) Search 3: "Hawaii beach front
condo" intitle - 0 pages!!!
I could literally go on and on finding great marketing opportunities for these
two markets. I promise you if you spend the time you will find these
all-too-easy keyword treasures in your market as well. Now let's take what we
have learned to the next level with action phrases.
Make Use Of Action Words
Ok let's say you sell the latest PC video cards at great prices. You have done
your homework and realize that many consumers do extensive research on specific
video cards to find the one that's perfect for them. They then lookup the
specific model of the video card they want when they are in "purchase mode".
A popular video card series right now is Nvidia's Geforce 6800. However, when
you do an intitle: search on Google you get over 40,000 results for "Nvidia
Geforce 6800". This is where Action words come in handy. Some great action
words are Buy, Lowest price, Purchase, Free shipping etc. All of these words
are used when the customer is in the purchasing phase, which is exactly when
you need them to find you.
intitle:"Buy nvidia geforce 6800" 3 sites!!! intitle:"Purchase nvidia geforce
6800" 0 sites!!! intitle:"Lowest price nvidia geforce 6800" 0 sites!!!
You get the idea. Now that you understand the concept I can suggest a few
keyword research tools.
Now let's put you on a path to find 20 to 40 money keywords you are not
currently using
Keyword Research Steps:
Step 1 - Logs: One great asset that you may not be utilizing is your weblogs.
You should always mine your weblogs for niche keyword phrases and use them as a
basis for what type of searches your users are typing into search engines. If
you have not done this before it can be highly informative. You will not only
understand your audience better - you will also get a great variety of keyword
"goldmines" that you can then use for your organice SEO campaign. I suggest
doing this once a month or every two weeks if you can find the time.
Step 2 - Competition: Your competition can be a great source of keyword
research. Check the keywords in their Title, meta tags, and body text to see if
you find anything you might have missed.
Step 3 - Keyword Tools: Three free tools that you should check out are SEO Books
online keyword tool
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/ and
http://www.goodkeywords.com/
which is a free desktop download that runs off of Yahoo data and
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
which queries both Yahoo and
http://www.wordtracker.com/
(A top tool if your paying) . All three of these tools are very handy and for
the price...who can complain?
A word to the wise, these tools should only be used as guides. They are heavily
biased to PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and are subject to distortion due to
automated queries.
The main thing to look out for with any tool that uses Yahoo is that it does
not separate plurals. It shows Condo and Condos as the same results. So when
you are doing your research be sure to check out the Word Tracker tool over at
digital point because the MSN version will show you how a phrase does for
singular versus a plural version. While search engines are still ironing out
how they handle plural searches its highly important that you select the right
one. Sometimes you may choose to go after a less used plural or singular
version of a keyword because it has less competition.
Bonus 1: Don't forget about hyphenated or potentially hyphenated words. If you
are looking at a term like "increase online traffic" don't forget hyphenated
versions of the same phrase. According to Word Tracker "increase on-line
traffic" is searched for 186 times a day on MSN alone. The non hyphenated
version has over 1,000 pages listed for an intitle: search on Google. While the
hyphenated version only has 21 sites listed.
Bonus 2: Use slang or insider terminology when and where it makes sense. One
great example of that is locally here in Hawaii. Locals call the main island of
Hawaii the "Big Island" A term like "big island real estate" is typed in a few
thousand times per month. But according to Google only one site has the phrase
in their title!!!
Bonus 3: People often type keyword phrases as one word. So instead of typing in
"Hawaii Condos", they'll type in "hawaiicondos". Then engines serve different
results for these 2 phrases, and guess what - the kwkw version is usually a LOT
less competitive!
I must mention that just because you find great keywords that others are not
using in their title tags does not mean you can simply put in a new title and
rank. In some cases that will actually happen but in most you will need to do a
good job with your on-page SEO and acquire a few relevant links. In any case
you will be putting yourself in a great position to be successful with minimal
competition and maximum return on investment.
I hope that I have helped to get your mind churning about the endless
possibilities in your own local market. If you follow these steps you should be
able to quickly generate a wonderful new list of keywords for your site to
dominate the "Action" phase of the purchase cycle. Once you place your site at
the end of the purchase cycle and away from the hordes of competition it is
quite easy to strike keyword Gold.
About the Author
Albert Ghergich is a sales manager for http://www.authoritydomains.com
- Buy Text Links or hire an internet
marketing specialist.
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