Keyword Research 101
TweetIf you are going to employ any kind of search engine optimization (SEO) into your marketing efforts then it is important to know what keywords your market is searching for. Keywords are nothing more than the terms that a user puts into the search engine to find what they are looking for. Don't know the best way to do keyword research? Don't worry as our Keyword Research 101 will bring you up to speed.
The search engine results pages (SERPs) are simply the best ways to get long-term targeted traffic to the landing pages you use to promote your affiliate products. These users are very targeted, they are looking for exactly what you are trying to offer them!
What are the keywords that you should be targeting? Well here are the three things that I look for in a good keyword that I'll detail out in a little Keyword Research 101:
Volume
This is obviously the most important. If you are sitting on the first page for a keyword that nobody is using then you won't get any traffic and thus, no sales. The more people that are searching for a keyword, the more traffic you will get to your site if you are high up in the results.
Specific and Targeted
If you are promoting an ebook that gets rid of acne then ranking for "how to get rid of acne" is a lot better than just "acne." If someone is looking to get rid of acne, then most likely they have a problem and they want to "get rid of it." They are ready to act, which means buy from you. When choosing a keyword think about the attitude of the searcher. Are they going to be in a buying state of mind?
Competition
It would be great to rank no. 1 for "auto insurance" but if you take a look results there are 21,500,000 competiting pages. With 13,600,000 searches each month for that term alone, it's no wonder there are so many people trying to get a piece of the pie. If you want to get to the top of these results then you are going to be in for one heck of a fight. Instead, I would focus on a less competitive term.
How to Find Keywords
The first step to finding keywords is to come up with a few terms on your own. Let's start with three in the online dating world. Off the top of my head I would go with "attract women", "approach women, and "meet women". Think broad right away. You won't be trying to take over these keywords right away, but will use them to build a more complete list.
Next go to Google's Keyword Tool and type in the phrases that you came up with. Google will give you more keyword ideas. Things like "how to get a girlfriend" and "how to approach women in a bar". More specific and more targeted. That is what we are going after here. Put all of this information in an excel spreadsheet that lists the term, search count, and competing pages. You want to compete with as few as pages as possible, so try to find less than 30,000 competing pages at first. The search count should be over 100 so you aren't wasting your time building pages based off of terms people aren't really searching for.
After going through this process you should have a pretty good keyword list built up.