Keyword Research

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Here's one of the easiest ways to do keyword research: First, go to: http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Once there, type a word or short phrase into the box that says 'enter keyword or phrase per line'. Next type out the catchpa, underneath - hit enter. Let's assume the keyword you're reasearching is 'red bag' Once the page reloads, look to the mid-righ and you'll see a box that says 'wide' or 'broad' (depends on the country you're in). Click it and change the term to 'exact'. Next - directly above it is a box that says 'choose the columns to display'. Click that and then click on 'hide local search volume', then once it's done that, go back and click 'show estimated CPC'. Now you're left with columns that show you how often the term is searched for, the estimated CPC and the competition. From that, you can start to research further. You need to check out the sites that are on the first page of google that use the same keywords that are down the left hand column. 'red bag' has 12,100. 'laptop bag' has almost 250,00 - avoid it beause the competition is too high. I'm going to use 'mens shoulder bag' and check the strength of the sites on google that use the same keyword/phrase. Straight away I can see that there are ads on the page, to the right. Good. Next I'm going to check the page rank (Googles tool bar includes it, if you don't use it, download it and allow it's button on your toolbar). I can see straight away that there's room for me to write an article using the keywords - 'mens shoulder bag'. Most of the sites are either unranked or have a low SERP rank, 1's and 2's. Now I'm going back to the keyword tool. I'm entering just the keyord into the 'enter keyword or phrase per line box'. Hit enter. It brings up the exact match and one other directly below - the plural version. Plus I've got related keywords I can use as tags, once I write an article. And there you go - as much as I can get keyword research into a nutshell - I have. Now all you have to do is go and try it out :) Remember - aim for keywords with relatively low competition. Use related tags. make sure that the searches per month are a minimum on 1000, though I'd aim a bit higher and go for a minimum of 3600.