Keywords And Keyword Research

Keywords And Keyword Research

Word or group of words that a person enters into the search engine to do a search.  The word keywords is also used to describe the words or group of words that you base your web site around.

The keywords that you base your web site around are important, because these are the same keywords that people will use to do a search, and have your web site be one of the listings that comes up in the search results for the search engines.

People usually classify keywords in two different categories (although there is a third category in between) and that is the two following catetegories:

1. Broad Keywords
2. Long Tail Keywords

Broad keywords are not specific at all, and in turn often bring less targeted traffic (more on this later in the learning center).  Broad keywords are also harder to rank for in the search engines, because they have much more competition (and also many more searches).

Long tail keywords on the other hand are very specific, and bring much more targeted traffic.  Long tail keywords are much, MUCH easier to rank for, yet they get much less traffic.

Lets do some example of broad keywords and long tail keywords…by breaking down a broad keyword, we will use dog training as an example.

Very Broad Keyword: Dog Training

Broad Keyword: Puppy Training

Mid-Keyword: Golden Retriever Dog Training

Long Tail Keyword: Golden Retriever Puppy Training

Very Long Tail Keyword:  Train Golden Retriever Puppy To Stop Barking

When picking keywords for your web site, it is important to pick keywords that have a mix between low competition and high amounts of traffic (for the most part). I don’t wan’t to mix niche marketing and keywords too much here, as I am going to talk about niche marketing in another section, so I don’t want to look too far into this example right now.

But you have to pick a happy medium for your keywords, depending on what kind of specific site you want to make.  The best combination is keywords that get a lot of traffic, but are also specific.

If you pick keywords that are too competitive, then you will most likely never rank for those keywords in the search engines, because there is way too much competition.  This means no traffic, which means no money.

If you pick keywords that are not competitive enough, it often means that those keywords get barely any traffic, which means the keywords are most likely worthless, as you need traffic.

Now don’t get me wrong, you can make tons of money off small amounts of traffic if that traffic is targeted enough (depends on the niche, and many other factors), but you want to get as much targeted traffic as possible in all cases, which is why keyword research is so important!

Keyword Research Is Very Important…

Keyword research is so, so important for you to become a successful online marketer.  You MUST do your keyword research before you start any site.  Let me explain why, and lets stay with our dog training example.   And remember…

Targeted Keywords = High Conversions = Profit!

On with the example.  Lets say you spend a few weeks building a site on dog training, and you never did any keyword research.  You poured your heart into this site, over 100 hours of hard, finger cramping work!

Note: I am just making the following example up; numbers, stats and all.  The important part is the lesson and the point.

Your keywords you pulled out of the air, that you THOUGHT were good, without doing any keyword research, were the following:

• training dogs
• train my dog
• dog training online
• train my little puppy dog

Six months later you are still getting no traffic!  Oh no!  You just wasted all that hard work!  This is how a lot of beginners get frustrated and quit!

If you would have just done keyword research and made the simple changes (often adding a simple word, or even making a simple switch) to the following keywords:

• training dogs to training little dogs
• train my dog to training my dog
• dog training online to online dog training
• train my little puppy dog to train my little dog

You would have been getting TONS of traffic, it makes the largest difference doing keyword research.  And you don’t even have to spend money, you can just use Google’s Keyword Tool, at least for now.  As you progress you may want to pick up some other tools, but don’t worry about that now.

Go ahead, click the link and open it up.  Now type in dog training, enter the captcha, then click get keyword ideas.  As you will see from the results, you get information on advertiser competition, amount of searches, and other keyword ideas.

If you then go to google.com and type in the keyword you are thinking of using, you will see how many organic listings there are, which will show you how much competition you have.

Keyword research does go a lot deeper than this, but I just want to give you an idea of what it is all about, and how important it is.