Finding Good Keywords – Keyword Research

Keyword research therefore is something you should dedicate much time and effort to.

How to find keywords
Finding keywords is easy enough for any topic. However, you should aim for the best keywords - those that have high demand (number of searches, search volume) and low competition (not too many websites aiming for the same keyword), and that bring you buyers.

Obviously, you will need keyword research tools to support your efforts on finding good keywords - it's impossible to «figure out» what those valuable keywords might be. But before looking into what tools you could use, let us have a look at how keywords typically are being used (or should be) on a website.

Let's say you have decided to build a website about «guitar music», and you intend to sell guitar music related products through that site. Then you need to find the 'best' keyword that reflects the concept or theme of your website (and online business). As this will be the «overall» keyword for the whole site, it should be a broad term with high demand.

Each page must have a Specific Keyword
The main keyword for the whole site ('theme keyword') will also be the specific keyword for the home page (the keyword you build that page around). So if your site (and business) concept is 'guitar music', the specific keyword of your home page should be 'guitar music' also. In addition, you should implement it in the domain name of your website, if possible.

Keep in mind that each and every page of your site 'must' have its specific keyword that you create that page's content around. The specific keyword tells what the topic of that page is, and it's important that the content be tightly related to the specific keyword (and topic of the page). Therefore, finding good keywords is also about finding keywords that are easy to create content around.

Three Levels Website
A well structured website will typically have three levels, or tiers. Tier one is the home page, tier two holds category pages, and tier three forms the descriptive pages that go into more detail.

As mentioned, the home page should have a broad keyword like 'guitar music'. The category pages need narrower keywords, though broad enough to have good demand and potentially several sub-pages, while the tier three pages (which are sub-pages under Tier 2s) will have more focused keywords with less search volume.

Ideally, all keywords should have high demand (many searchers) and low supply (little competition). However, for the home page high demand is first priority, so you may decide on a keyword with high search volum even if the supply is high, too.

The level three keywords will typically be longer (consist of more words - «long tail») than the tier 2s. The tier 3s are also more targeted than their parents, and people using these search terms are more often buyers than people using broader search terms.

As you understand, finding good keywords is critical to getting traffic from the search engines, as well as attracting potential buyers to your web pages. So, researching and choosing keywords is the single most important task to perform in order to achieve success with your online business!

Different «types» of keywords for different levels
As a concrete example of keywords for the three levels of your Guitar Music website, your business theme and specific keyword of the home page of course would be guitar music. It has high demand, but also large supply; however that's OK for your home page.

One of the level 2 (category) pages could be 'acoustic guitar music', which has good numbers. Then you could have lots of level 3 pages with specific keywords like acoustic guitar songs, sheet music for acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar lessons for beginners, and many more.

It's easy to understand that a person who searches for 'acoustic guitar lessons for beginners' is far more likely to buy something from your site than s/he who uses the more generic search term 'guitar music'. Therefore, finding good keywords is also much about finding buyer keywords, which will be the 'long tail' (multiple words) targeted key phrases with relatively low search numbers and little competition. Because it's those keywords that will make you the most money!

Then of course you need a lot of those keywords to make any substantial money, so you will have to create a reasonable number of pages, each optimized for its specific keyword. As you build more and more pages the traffic snowball will start rolling at an increasing speed, bringing you more and more visitors and buyers, and more money!

Keyword Resarch Tools
It's impossible to 'figure out' what the best keywords might be, so you will need a keyword research tool to help you. Fortunately, there are a number of tools - both free and paid - that can assist you in the very important work of finding good keywords.

The one I recommend, is Site Build It!'s Brainstormer, which is an excellent keyword research and brainstorming tool that will give you lots of keywords. It's very simple to use – you just put in a seed word (search term) - for example 'guitar music', click 'go', and the tool returns up to 1,000 keywords related to the seed word.

But that's only the start; Brainstormer lists the keywords in a table, showing the demand (number of searches), supply (number of competing websites), and profitability (what profit potential a given keyword might have based on demand and supply).

That's only the surface of what this Brainstormer can do, though – it's an amazing tool that can help you a long way with your business - read more about it here (on that page, click on the link that says «Here's a complete list of all SBI! Tools»).

In fact, the Brainstormer is part of a service dedicated to help people start and run an online business. As mentioned above it's called Site Build It!. It is a membership site that gives you absolutely everything you need to start your business, and is highly recommended (I'm a member myself, of course). It's not expensive either – it costs $29.99 per month, alternatively $299 per year. And you'll have a 90 day money back guarantee.

There are other tools that can assist you on finding good keywords, of course, and the second best is Wordtracker. However, it costs $69 per month (or $379 per year) so it might not be for starters. There is a 7 day free trial so you can see if it is something for you, and you are allowed to do some limited keyword research on their site for free.

Another good keyword research tool is Keyword Elite, which is a piece of software that you install on your computer. I costs $97 (one time payment).

Free tools for Keyword Research
The best free research tool is Google's Keyword Research Tool. It's fine to use their external tool, however using it inside your Google account yields much better results. If you don't have an account with Google you should absolutely sign up for one (it's free), because you then will have other tools like Google Analytics at your disposal, and lots of valuable information.

Another OK free tool is GoodKeywords, a software application that you can download and install on your computer.

As said earlier, finding good keywords is the single most important thing to do when starting an online business. Keywords are the foundation of your web business; it's what drives visitors – potential customers – to your website!

To learn how to actually implement the keywords in your web pages, see our Keyword Optimization page.

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