Keyword research is rarely easy since it can be such an open-ended activity, but it can be simple if you allow it to be. What you learn in this chapter and in Chapter 7—search volumes, commercial potential, and competitiveness—are all that you really need. We’ll save competitive analysis for later, but let’s review basic keyword tool usage:
.jpg "Core Principles of Keyword Research")
Core Principles of Keyword Research
• Whenever you log into the Google Keyword Tool, be sure to configure it to the following settings: Match Types: “Exact” (uncheck Broad and Phrase); Columns: “Local Monthly Searches” and “Approximate CPC” (uncheck all other columns).
• The list of keywords that you actually plan to target and had a modest goal of getting 400 search visitors a day to estimate a dozen daily clicks, you would need 100 keywords that generated an average of 32,400 searches a month (i.e. for 432 search visits—monthly search volume x .4 ÷ 30). The corollary is that you need to focus on many keywords rather than being obsessed with one.
• Calculating Google AdSense revenues is a good way to compare the commercial potential of various keywords, using the Search Volume x CPC x .005 formula described. Two long tail variations (“get out of debt fast” and “get out of debt quick”) might seem semantically identical, yet one may have a much higher potential.
• Consider whether a keyword is navigational, transactional, or informational. A navigational keyword like “microsoft” probably represents someone looking for the Microsoft.com site, and there’s no point in targeting a keyword with a navigational intent unless you own the site being searched for. A transactional keyword is a keyword, like “steak knives,” suggesting that the searcher is shopping for steak knives. Informational keywords, like “get rid of bed bugs”) may or may not have commercial intent, and it’s up to you to make that judgment call. The searcher might be looking for free advice, or she might be looking for an exterminator—in which case the keyword is actually transactional.