One of the mantra of online marketing is that ‘Content is King!’
Once you have a targeted audience or market that you want to focus your resources into you would want to know exactly what is it that people are looking for in that market.
In the previous example for 3 golden rules of make money online we looked at people who want to lose weight, get fit or into shape. Those are the outcomes that people are attempting to achieve, the overall specific aim is to lose weight.
To be able to assess what content to create that will be attractive to visitors of your site and those who can be converted into subscribers and then into buying customers you need the correct ‘keywords’.
Keywords are the missing link. Keywords show you what people are interested in. Now some people are under the impression since the dawn of social media the old school method of keyword research is dead and we should be hoarding around web 2.0 sites and focusing on social media and networking. This is not actual true.
Sure, social media and social networking should play a role in your campaigning to gain more traffic to your site but we are still seeing companies pumping in billions of dollars into search and search engines.
Search engines are fundamentally built on keyword search. You put in a search term and results are shown to you, those search terms are ‘keywords’. Even if you were to create a video and post it on a social media site, it cannot gain any traction without keywords; at the least you have to put in a title and that title needs to include the keywords(s) that a potential viewer will find attractive.
So we can establish that prior to content being king, keywords are the ministers or spin doctors that advise the king on what the masses are interest in i.e. what is going on, what are people talking about or interested in.
The formula for this is very easy, find the keywords that competitors are attempting to rank for and create content around those keywords.
I mentioned competition here, competition is extremely healthy. Especially if it is a competitor that has done the research in your chosen target market.
Let’s take this back to the basic.
Keywords are either broad or specific.
Broad is a term like ‘health’. It is almost impossible to assess exactly what are person is thinking if they just typed the search term ‘health’ into a search engine. It simply is not targeted enough for you to create a product. Sure if you were to get to the top of a search engine for that term you will see a lot of traffic but it will be equally tough to convert these people into subscribers or paying customers, on the simple notion that you cannot cater specifically to the needs of that visitor.
You could make suggestions to them once they come over to your site, but that is just about it.
However if the keyword term is ‘healthy eating’ then you know you are cooking! This term starts to become more specific, the searcher is looking for content related to eating healthy. You can start to create content that is target to these keywords.
If a searcher is to type in the keyword ‘healthy eating diets’, you can assess that this is an uber search term and that content created can be exact.
Part of your marketing strategy is to identify as many keywords as you can that you intend to create content for. Keywords which will attract buying customers.
One of the simplest tools that you can use for keyword research is Goggles Keyword tool.
If you head over to the tool and type in ‘eating healthy’ you get a result of 550,000 searchers globally a month, I filtered it to show also local searches last month in the UK and got a result of 201,000. The reason I did a local based search (which you should do for western countries) is that I am confident that people from these areas have access to credit cards and other methods to spend money online.
But as you can see from the list below collectively over the combination of keywords there are millions of searches.
There are specific keywords such as ‘healthy eating plan’ that gains an estimated 22,000 searches a month global and in the UK 8,100 even ‘healthy meal plan’ gets an estimated 8,100 searches.
Now you would take the list of keywords and assess which one of these is sound? How do they make sense in the mind of a searcher? Can they be profitable?
The following two keywords give me indications that they can be profitable.
- Healthy eating guidelines
- Guide to eating healthy
But, you should not leave it to you inclination or instinct. In the dawn of the internet it is easy to assess what findings our competitors have found in this area.
From the combination of keyword list that you have made (you should target about 200 keywords) you want to assess the following:
- Who are the big and small competitors in that particular market that you are targeting. Punch your keywords in to Google and see the results. See what the top 20 sites for those keywords are doing to monetize their sites. What products are they promoting? Are they eBooks, adsense, affiliate marketing products?
- Compile a list of products that are already available on the market, there is no need to go out and be the first on the market. There is a simple probability that if there are not several products on the market it is not a profitable keyword. Go were there has already been proven solid keywords that have products.
If you are thinking of selling hats for cats then check if there is competition with products. I am assuming that there is not much going on in this area and therefore it is not a profitable market. But to be sure just go and check to see if there are any products being promoted. So you similar want to be looking to see what others are doing and improve in that area.
If you are unable to find a products monetized in the keyword or even target audience (market) there is a good chance that it is not profitable and you want to be looking elsewhere.
- Punch the keywords into Google and look at the sponsored ads that appear on the side. If you are seeing a fair few ads on the side then this is an indication that it is a viable keyword and market. If it was not then people would not be willing to advertise there for very long.
- With your list of keywords visit blogs, forums, yahoo group, Google groups, review sites, etc. See what the feel is over there, what are people asking for related to these keyword terms, not only will this give you an idea about the mindset of the searchers but also a feel about the kind of products or more specifically the content with those products that people are looking for.
What you are doing here is looking deeper into the problem. Always remember the internet is just a medium, no matter how much hype there is about it; it cannot fulfil basic human needs and tendency. It can only provide information towards that fulfilment that is why it was originally called the ‘information super highway’ inter-net is about inter connection, the connection of information. Granted social media has changed that landscape to a certain degree but the internet at its core will be a place to find information towards a solution, fulfil an urge or a need.
Anyway, enough of the philosophical discourse. Just think of it from this angle, ‘people are not looking for a hammer to put in a nail they are looking to hang up the picture’. If you provide a solution to putting up the picture on the wall and explain why your solution is better than buying a hammer and a nail; then you can sell your product.
So if they looking to lose weight then you will search into the mindset of the people and seek out what solution is already out there or what solutions can be offered.
- Track, note and list everything. This is extremely important. Make notes next to your keywords; write down the number of searches. The forums, blogs, sites that you visited for that keyword.
Chances are that you will be visiting those locations again for further research or to promote your stuff.
So that is the basis of keyword research, hopefully you will be able to go away and find approx’ 200 keywords that are profitable in within a target audience.
