If you have been around in the Internet marketing or online business world for a little while now, perhaps you have heard of the following phrase….
“If content is KING, then KEYWORD is the QUEEN!”
I can’t recall who is the first person who came up with that phrase as I read it quite sometimes ago. This phrase is absolutely true!
Content or rather “quality content” is the basis for attracting traffic on the web. However, keywords are the ones that are responsible in opening the door of your web site. You may have the best content on the Net but if nobody can see it, then it becomes useless.
But how do you find keywords that attract the right people?
Well, the answer is through keyword research.
Keyword research doesn’t have to be complicated. When your website or blog is still new, focus on long-tail keywords (those keyword phrases that have 4 or more words). Long-tail keywords will have a low search volume but are very easy to rank.
Here is an example, if you type “anti aging” (with quotes) in Google, you’ll see there are 16,500,000 websites that use the words ‘anti aging’. It will be extremely difficult to rank such a generic keyword.
Now type “anti aging with herbs and lifestyle changes” (with quotes) in Google, and you’ll see there are only 8 websites using these keyword phrase. This is an example of a long-tail keyword.
Are you going to compete against 16,500,000 websites or 8 websites? Well, the answer is obvious!
If you write an article using that keyword phrase as the title, and mention it a few times in your article body, it’s very likely that your article will appear on the first page of Google’s search result.
Another example of a long-tail keyword in an anti aging market is “anti aging creams for sensitive skin”. Type that in Google, and you’ll see there are 1,100 competing pages.
Now, put the word intitle infront like this intitle:”anti aging creams for sensitive skin” in Google, and you’ll see there are only 36 competing web pages shown. The operator ‘intitle’ is used to find out how many websites are putting that keyword phrase in the title of their articles. These are your actual competitors.
To confirm that you have found a long-tail keyword that is easy to rank, you can type in the following in Google.
intitle:”anti aging creams for sensitive skin” inanchor:”anti aging creams for sensitive skin”
If you type that in, you’ll only see 5 competing websites. It means that there are ONLY 5 websites who are targeting that phrase and constantly building backlinks using that phrase as anchor text.
How do you find these long-tail keywords in the first place?
Easy, just go to SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Both of these keyword tools are FREE! Go and look for keywords that have at least 3 words or more. Then, use the method discussed above to confirm that the keyword has low competing web pages.
How low is low?
If you use the two operators ‘intitle’ and ‘inanchor’ I mentioned above, and get a number that’s smaller than 100 then, you’ll have a great chance to land that particular keyword phrase on the first page of Google. Higher number means that you need to work a bit harder to get it ranked well (such as writing and submitting articles to high-traffic sites and building links using your targeted keyword as anchor text).
Hope you find this article useful.
PS1: Want to learn more how to do proper keyword research? Then, visit: Keyword Elite.
PS2: For more information on keyword research, read this article: Keyword Research.
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