How To Do Keyword Research Revealed

I would like to share with you on how keyword research is done.

Before we start, you are to pick on a Topic of your interest. Next, I would walk you through following steps to create a focused list of keywords.

Let us say we are keen on “kitchen design”. Specifically, we will need to find out three things for this topic and this is the following process:

* Use the keyword databases to find out its popularity
* Research the PPC engines and find out what the top bid prices are
* Go back to the keyword databases and create a focused list of keywords

Step 1: Keyword Popularity Check

Go to the Keyword Selector Tool from Yahoo Search Marketing (previously known as Overture). Enter your main keyword in the box and click on ‘Go’. This will give you a list of keywords with search estimates.

Right click on your mouse and click to copy the top 6-10 keywords in to a text file, like Notepad. We will come back to these keywords list in the next step.

Trick #1 - I do not typically go to the Yahoo search term suggestion tool usually. To save time, I simply use a Free software product called WordTracker.

You can register to use the Free Trial WordTracker software here.

From the link above, you will be taken to WordTracker’s main page, shown below.

Go to click on ‘Trial’ on the Menu, enter your Name and Email Address. Then you are required to re-confirm your request in your email Inbox or Bulk folder by clicking on their link sent to you.

Once you have completed this process, this is the page where you will be taken to, after confirming your email address.

Next, click the Trial button to start. Key in your keywords ‘kitchen design’ in the box shown and click proceed.

Step 2

Wordtracker will reveal up to 15 Related Keywords for ‘kitchen design’. Scroll down to view your list of other keywords.

Next, click on each of these keywords to pick your keywords variations. As you click on ‘kitchen design’, Wordtracker will reveal more variations from the keyword ‘kitchen design’ on the right column of the page, with Count, Predict and Dig.

To find out what Count, Predict and Dig meant, click on the (?) to find out.

Keywords in Basket: 0/30 meant you have not picked the keywords yet. To add keywords into the Basket, click to choose keywords on the Right column. Add up to 30 keywords in the basket.

Go to Step 3.

If you are happy with this list of keywords, go to Step 4.
Here Wordtracker will reveal to you the chosen Keywords, KEI Analysis, Count, 24 Hours and Competing. Click on the (?) to find out more.

The thing I like about this Free Trial from Wordtracker is your Search Results will be sent back to your email address, for your perusal. If you scroll down to the bottom of that page, you can either purchase the Full version to give more comprehensive Keyword Research list or you can get another Go for a different keyword you are researching for.

Step 2: PPC Engine Top Bid Words Price

Most people will tell you to go to the Yahoo Bid Tool and see their numbers to get an idea of what the top bids are.

Instead, I go to Google and use the tools Google have provided to us inside their Google AdWords account. We get to see all numbers for Google AdWords (where we will be bidding), and not some other PPC engine. Get
here.

Thereafter, login to your Google AdWords account https://adwords.google.com/select.

Next, go to Tools > Traffic Estimator (or https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox) to launch Google AdWords’ traffic and bid cost estimation tool.

Enter your previous keywords list you copied off into a text file like Notepad. Not to worry about broad, phrase, exact and negative matches for now.

Next select the maximum cost-per-click that you are willing to pay and set your daily budget. Since we want to get the maximum number of clicks to our website, we will enter a budget amount of $50 to start with. Google will display your ads continuously, because you may not have reached your budget within the 1 day.… given the keywords you have selected.

Leave the Language and location targeting set to your default account values. Next, enter countries that you want to target.

I have selected US. When youu are done with that, click on ‘Continue’ and you’ll be taken to the next page with the Traffic Estimator’s results.

This page is very helpful because it will give you a good estimate as to how much the top Adwords bidders are paying “per click” for each of the keywords you entered. Also, you’ll be able to see roughly how many clicks you can expect to get “per day” if you were in a certain ad position in Google. And finally, you’ll be able to see roughly how much you could expect to pay”per day” for each of the keywords. These numbers are VERY helpful.

At first glance, this seems a very expensive niche to get in. With most of the keyword phrases costing over $2.00 a click to be in one of the top 3 Adwords positions.

With $2.00 a click, considered a high amount, assuming at a 1% conversion rate (1 out of 100 people clicking through your ad convert into customers) meant you will need to spend $200 per sale!

I will cover Step 3 in the next post. I hope you like this article and if you do, please post some comments here, or subscribe to my Feed.

Tags: keyword research, keyword selector tool, wordtracker