If you are getting started with creating a blog, affiliate website or just people to build a website for information, you’ll want to make sure that you optimize the search engines so people can effectively find you. To do this, you need to learn how to find keywords for your website and implement them properly.
High Monthly Search Volume
Before you create a webpage or post, you want to make sure that it is something people are interested in and searching for online. The first thing that you look for when you do keyword research is to analyze the monthly searches. Ideally, you want a long tail keyword that gets more than 50 searches per month. This may mean that you are writing content that only about 5-15 people per month see, but that is ok. It is much better to get just a handful of people viewing your content than no one.
Typically, the higher the monthly search volume, the greater the competition. When you see a keyword that has over a thousand searches per month, it usually has a few hundred competing websites.
Look For Low Competition
Because your website is newer, you don’t want to be competing with other websites that have been around for a long time. You should be looking at the quoted search results. This gives you an idea of how much competition is already on the internet for that keyword. If you find a high volume keyword that has over one thousand searches per month, with more than 100 competing websites, you may be able to reduce the competition by adding words to the keyword, which will make the keyword more focused.
Ensure that Your Keyword Makes Grammatical Sense
Sometimes you can throw a few words together and find high volume with low competition. The reason that this result comes up is because no one is going after that random keyword. An example of that would be something like, “Affiliate Marketing Dummies.” This has a monthly search volume of 519 and 64 competing websites, but it doesn’t really make sense. I think that some people may be using the keyword “affiliate marketing for dummies,” but no one really wants to be called a dummy whether they are doing affiliate marketing or not. If you search for “affiliate marketing for dummies” the competition jumps to 214. This means that you may not make it to the first page of the search results and likely won’t get any of those monthly searches.
If we look at another related keyword that is more specific, “beginner affiliate marketing dummies,” it has 144 monthly searches and only one competing website. Sounds great, it is high enough that you should generate traffic, and you would only have to compete with one other website, right? The problem is that it doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Make it Specific!
When someone comes to your website, you want to deliver the most relevant content for the search that they did. You want them to feel like they found the information that they were looking for. Therefore, your keywords need to be very specific. Forget something like “Make money” or even “make money online.” There are dozens of ways to make money online. A better option would be “Make money online with a blog.” This has 121 monthly searches and only 63 competing websites. If you consistently work on your website and ensure that you have great content, it is likely that you could knock out some of that competition and make it to the first page for that keyword.
If it is getting difficult for you to discover keywords, there is a neat little trick you can do. Go into google and type the main keywords that you want to use. Under your search, google will pull up more things that people have searched for that are similar. If we use our “make money online with a blog” example, google showed us that similar keywords that people searched for were “make money online with your blog,” “Make money online blogging free,” and “make money online with blogspot.” All of these would be great potential keywords for you to target for a make money online type of blog.
This can be applied to other areas as well. If you are a gardener and want to write about how to grow tomatoes, you would research the keyword, “how to grow tomatoes.” You’ll find that has 9083 monthly searches! Wow! However, it also has 229 competing websites. Yours will start at the bottom of the list. If you look down the list of things that Jaaxy pulled up, you will discover “how to grow tomatoes in the winter” only has 9 competing websites and 152 monthly searches. It is highly likely that you can learn how to grow tomatoes in the winter and generate some traffic to your website just by getting a bit more specific.
Go For the Low Hanging Fruit
When you first get started with keyword research, it may seem counter-intuitive to be searching for keywords with only 50 or 100 searches each month. You want to maximize the reach that you have. However, when you realize that most people only check out the websites on the first page that the search engine brings up, you start to understand that you need to find a niche angle to your content that people will actually find. It may take a few months for Google to start trusting your website, so targeting keywords that don’t have much competition is imperative.
Building a website takes time. It is better to use keywords that you will rank for in Google that may bring you 5-10 new visitors each month and continue to build multiple pages than it is to shoot for the moon and hope that your content will grab that ideal keyword that has 500 searches and competes with 200 other sites. Consistent effort wins out every time.
