The Big Free Keyword Research Mistake
There is one basic but very COSTLY mistake when it comes to keyword
research online. And as one of my readers I want to make sure you know about this as it is important!
If you’re a more experienced marketer then you probably know about this and it’s a given, but you’d be surprised by the number of people that go about this the wrong way!
This is done with the best free tool I use and recommend which is Google’s
which is found here:
http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Anyway it’s easy to be ‘fooled’ into thinking a certain keyword gets a lot of searches when it really gets hardly any.
THIS CAN BE VERY COSTLY
Especially when you start getting backlinks, writing articles, shooting videos
and building new sites…
…all based on trying to rank for a keyword that
gets hardly any traffic!
WHAT’s THE BIG MISTAKE THEN?
Well it’s just the way most people use Google’s keyword tool and also how many other marketers have taught how to use it.
It goes like this:
You type in your main keyword phrase and see what comes up. You then look at the number of searches it gives you for your main keyword and other related keywords.
Lets look at the keyword:
xbox for
Here are the Google search results:
Wow Millions of searches right?
WRONG!
As this is for the BROAD term.
But change the settings for ‘EXACT MATCH’ and it goes right down!
Now the keyword XBOX FOR isn’t something I would go after even if I was in the X Box market. It just serves as a clear example for you 
The take away from this is if you want to an accurate idea of how many searches a certain keyword *really* gets then just choose the ‘Exact Match’
option in Google’s keyword tool.
HERE’S HOW
This will be on the right hand side – you should see a drop down menu which will show ‘Broad’ by default.
Just click on the arrow and choose ‘Exact’ instead!
Hope this helps.
Speak soon,
Dave.
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Tagged with: adwords keyword research • free keyword research • free keyword research tool • google keyword research • keyword marketing research • Keyword Research • keyword research tools • ppc keyword research
Filed under: Keyword Research
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Hey Dave
Nice tip. I completely forget about that drop down window and option all the time!
By the way, a good tip for determining which keywords worth going after is to find keywords that have at least 360 searches per month, but less than 40,000 competition in Google with quotations.
Dave
Hi Dave,
Good to hear from you…
Thanks for sharing that extra tip too!
Best,
Dave.
Better yet is quotes. eg. “keyword”
It narrows the results even farther.
You’re looking for high search volume (1000+ per month) with low competition (less than 10,000 competing pages).
Alright then Dave. I’ll have to say I needed that. something helpful. Thanks. Too bad this doesn’t let me ask a question. Because I have one. Good to hear from you.
Talk soon enough DJ
Hello Dave,
Thank you very much for that little tip, I was always wandering how you go about finding out this information.
Keep up the good work,
Regards
Ray.
Hi Dave I havebeen following your emails and have enjoyed them very much. I wrot you an email a few times but they always ccame back I think some one help me have a problem but its straight now.
I am a newbi and dont have a web page as of now but hope to in the near future and the information that I found on your twitter blog will surley help and I copyed a couple. thanks.
At present I am interested in affilliate bussiness (sellling other peoples products) and any good solid addvice you could give on this project sure would help as I am very slow at present. Dave Have a good day. will talk soon. Thanks again.
George McDaniel
Thanks for all your comments!
To David J & George if you do have marketing questions you can submit them here:
http://www.publishingsuccessblog.com/askdave.html
I always forget to mention that, but any questions that I get may get answered in a future email or blog post!
Thanks,
Dave.
When I do the page analysis using the keyword tool I almost ALWAYS forget to pull the phrase down instead of broad
One more little tip. I use google keyword search tool and then at times go to Yahoo search marketing instead due to the insane cost of some of these phrases
Rick
Dave…
It is indeed very useful to evaluate the exact search volume for certain keywords and I totally agree that something like “xbox for” wouldn’t be useful… however, for certain long tail keywords (4+ words in length) it may be quite ok to have a lower volume and those would also be winners as such.
Here is why. If you have a high search volume for a 1-2 words length keyphrase, you should usually expect a much higher competition too. in certain niches, that would be so fierce that it would be almost untouchable directly…
But let’s say it is a medium type of niche and you still get good volumes… IF you’re on the #1 spot!
But to get there – that’s another story.
Let’s say you manage to be on the first page and get some piece of the pie. To do so, there would be more than on page SEO necessary (lots of off page work involved.)
However, to get the same amount of traffic would be much easily achievable by targeting #1 – #3 SERPs from long tail keyphrases with very few competitors, usually being reported as such simply because there is no one else knowing what they do there.
When we (SEO wise people like you and me) come there, we do a few tricks with the magic SEO wand and Voila… #1 achieved.
The volume of traffic we can get from that may be quite similar to the piece of the pie I was talking about initially.
IMHO, looking for the long tail keyphrases, even with as low as 30 searches per day for #1 SERP is a good move…
My 2 cents, he, he…
Steve Lorenzo SEOVirtuoso
Saw your Blog bookmarked on Reddit.I love your site and marketing strategy. By the way, if you get a moment, check out my Warcraft Gold Guide – http://bit.ly/dcYOCj
gr8 resrch bro
The information presented is top notch. I’ve been doing some research on the topic and this post answered several questions.