3 Innovative Ways to Use Google Keyword Research

 

By: Matt Bacak

Although Internet marketers strive to rank on page one of search engines for their product or service, they strategize for the coveted position, planning and tweaking each detail until they reach their ultimate goal.

There is a number of commercially marketed software available to help you research the best keywords to use on your website, but many entrepreneurs begin with the Google Keyword Research tool.

The Google Keyword Research tool is affiliated with Adwords, Google’s main advertising program. While you don’t have to run a Google Adwords campaign to use the tool, if you sign up for an Adwords account, the tool will group your keyword results by category. This strategy will allow you to spread your keywords across different pages in your website.

If you are considering starting a business or taking your existing business to the next level, you should spend the most time doing keyword research. The following steps show you how to get the best results:

1. Find a niche. Whether you chose a niche you are passionate about or one you have extensively researched, it’s important to understand the consumer buying behavior in every niche. What are consumers searching for? What is their main source of frustration? What is their number one problem?

One option to finding this information is to do a Google search on your “niche+issues”. Look at the number of websites (and issues) as a result of your search. A results page with 1,000,000 hits is more competitive than one with 200,000 hits. Look for forums or chat rooms to see what types of questions or concerns people are discussing as it relates to your niche.

Another option is to use a free question tool to obtain a list of questions potential customers are asking regarding your niche. Look at the types of questions people are asking. Based upon the questions, tweak your keyword phrase until you find one that has high traffic and low competition.

2. Focus on keywords that have high traffic but low competition.  As mentioned in a previous post, as a small business owner or budding entrepreneur, it will be extremely difficult to rank on page one of search engines with a broad keyword like “mortgage”. Many larger corporations have dedicated staffs whose only job is to rank for broad keywords.

Using a keyword tool, you should find keyword phrases that are less competitive with high traffic. For example, using the Google Keyword Search tool for a broad search of “mortgage” produced 13,600,000 results. A second search, this time looking for a phrase search of “mortgage” offered one option of “mortgage payment” which produced 246,000 results.

3. Compile your research. You may be wondering “why ignore the keyword mortgage with 13,600,000 hits and focus instead on the phrase ‘mortgage payment’ with only 246,000 hits. Won’t that give me fewer potential customers?” Actually it will do the opposite. By focusing on a narrower keyword search phrase you will reach a pool of potential customers who are looking specifically for your product; those who are ready to buy.

You can fine tune your results even farther by using another tool: Google Insights. With Google Insights you will be able to research the latest news on your topic, what regions potential customers live in, and the top 10 popular search terms.

By entering our keyword phrase “mortgage payment” in Google Insights, and limiting the results to the United States and Canada, a sample of the results show:

A. Regional interest (by city)

B. Search terms

C. Rising searches

D. Top headlines (media)

Armed with this knowledge, you can further define your original keyword search phrase of “mortgage payment” to include “mortgage payment Charlotte” or “mortgage payment Washington” to see which search phrase produces high volume of traffic with the least competitive results.

You can also write articles supporting those articles that are trending with links back to your website. Finally, if you are looking to generate leads, you can add a mortgage payment calculator to your landing page and offer people the opportunity to use the calculator (or get the results) in exchange for their email address.