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Friday 15 February 2008

How To Research And Find The Best Keywords

Let me start this section with a small statement that I urge you to take notice of.

Firstly identify a problem, and then supply the solution!

This is absolutely crucial to your success, and, to your keyword research to find a niche. Let's look at how keywords actually work before getting into using them for research. This is the most common form of text search on the Web.

Most search engines do their text query and retrieval using keywords. A keyword can simply be any word on a webpage. Keywords can be entered into a search field as "How to make money" or how to make money or [how to make money].

Without using any brackets or speech marks the search is extremely broad.

You need to narrow the search by searching for exact matches by using the " or the [].

As you will see with using AdWords this is extremely important.

Keywords can also be entered as meta tags in the index page of your website. I recommend no more than the top 4 here. Essentially, this means that search engines pull out and index words that appear to be significant, hence the reason for a maximum of 4.

You don't want to confuse the spiders.

Search engines are software programs, not rational human beings, they work according to rules established by their creators for what words are usually important in a broad range of documents. The title of a page, for example, usually gives useful information about the subject of the page (if it doesn't, it should!).

Words that are mentioned towards the beginning of a document (think of the "topic sentence" in a high school essay, where you lay out the subject you intend to discuss) are given more weight by most search engines.

The same goes for words that are repeated several times throughout the document. Some search engines index every word on every page. Others index only part of the document. Get your meta tags as close to the top of the index page as possible.

Let's look at how we use a site called wordtracker to search for "problem statements". Remember a keyword is only what people are typing into search engines to find a solution to a problem. To target these people you need to know what they are typing in. From this you can then research sites that they are visiting. For example the top rated sites on Google .

What we cant do is guess this so we need to use a program like wordtracker or overture by Yahoo. Wordtracker is my personal choice as it is comprehensive in the fact that you get competition data and 24 hour information for each keyword. It's worthy pointing out here that a keyword can be a phrase too not just a singular word.

What to do? Think of your interest and passion. Let's say it's horses. So, you type in excel, horse, horse jump, horse food, horse hoof, horse how, horse what, etc. You will need to think up about 100 things at least to do with horses.

You can then change horse to pony but keep all the seed words. Go to www.wordtracker.com open up keyword universe and to the screen on the right copy paste in your seed words. It will then show you up to 300 results that you then add to the basket. Then click step 3, then click on the competition circle. Click the Google box and 100 results will appear. It looks like this;

No. Keyword Why quotes? KEI Analysis Count 24Hrs Competing
1 "how to tie a rope horse halter" 800.000 40 33 2 2

2 "how to determine a good horse" 441.000 21 17 0 3

3 "how to gain respect&trust in a horse" 324.000 18 15 0 4

4 "how thick is the hoof wall on a horse" 289.000 17 14 0 5

5 "how to make a horse wagon" 256.000 16 13 0 6

Know you can see that I only have room here for a few but you see the idea. It just so happens that on all these the competition is low but the searches are good. Over 100 results for a day.

However you now need to copy and paste these to a spread sheet from all the seed words. You may end up with over 2,000. Next, you must break these down into "PROBLEM STATEMENTS" Then cluster into lets say, "How do I make a horse jump", maybe "How do I stop my horse from coughing?

These are problem statements and if you have enough daily searches for this you are on your way to finding a NICHE. Next, you will need to research the competition. Do this by using Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL etc. See what they offer. Make up your mind if you would buy off this person.

If nothing makes you tick then see what you can do better to solve the problems people are experiencing in this market. This could be a whole book on it's own but we need to keep focused on the big picture here.

Ask yourself:

1) Does my cluster have a clear problem?

2) Do all these keywords have the same problem?

3) What is the daily demand (24hr) for the problem?

4) What is the competition?

These are the key elements of how I research a niche. You need to do your breakdown of what is known as Seed words, power words, combination words, clusters and problem statements.

Tools I use for researching niches using keywords are, wordtracker, overture, Google sandbox, Amazon, and ebay. You will need to take into account when using wordtracker the columns detailing 24 hour daily demand and competition. These are key to your research. I could say that with the horse niche, that, my niche is people who are teaching their horse how to jump fences and gates.

You must determine that there are a lot of people looking for this particular solution but at the same time there are few people offering any help. If this is true then you have yourself a niche.

I do hope this has helped you understand that keyword research is most crucial and not to be taken lightly. It really can be the difference between your success or failure. I know I will be cursed for giving this information away for FREE.

In the meantime, to your success
Ashley Banfield

www.onlinebusinessmarketer.com

Hi and welcome, my name is Ashley Banfield and I have been making money from the Internet in many various niche markets including buying property at below market value and spread betting on the Internet and Internet Marketing for the past 5 years

I stick to a formula for all the sites I have set up and it continues to work. A simple 8 step process that is easy to follow. http://www.onlinebusinessmarketer.com

You will hear many times that you need a passion for the product or service you offer for sale, and this is mine. The joy of seeing people through to absolute success is amazing and very rewarding.

If you do one thing right then do this, don't just sell to your customers, SERVE them. Give them the right content that is of high quality. Treat all your customers with respect and try putting yourself in their shoes.

I can tell you it will increase your sales and profit more than you imagined.

Ashley Banfield http://www.onlinebusinessmarketer.com

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