If you haven’t heard keywords are kind of a big deal. It’s how prospects find you and a huge factor in how search engines rank you. But how do you pick the right keywords? What does that even mean? Are there wrong keywords? Yes. There are keywords that can hurt your site just as much as help them. Today we’re going to cover how the everyday man can successfully do some keyword research.

A Noobs Guide To Keyword Research

STEP 1: Set An Objective

For the sake of this guide let’s pretend you are creating a landing page for “OC, SEO Services.” Our objective is to have organic and paid traffic find their way to this page. On this page are three basic services we want prospects to purchase.

Also, we want this list to be achievable, which means we want to keep it between 5-20 keywords. That’s realistic if and when you decide to setup a PPC Campaign. Keep that in the back of your mind as you create this list.

STEP 2: List All Search Queries

There are a bunch of different tools you can use for this step. Some are paid, some are free. For the everyday man, we are going to go the free route. Google —>  Keywordtool  it’ll get the job done. All you have to do is type in your keyword and it’ll spit out variations that look like the image below.

This list is just to give you some ideas.

STEP 3: Think Like Your Buyer

With the list above write down a couple search terms you think your buyer would be looking for. In this case, “Cheap OC, SEO Services” or maybe, “Fast, OC SEO Services.” What would you type in Google to find this product? Those are the keywords you want to keep track of.

You really want to take a step back from all the technology stuff here and focus on human factors. Try jumping on YouTube and searching for videos that are relevant to your objective, make note of “buzz words” they use.

Another idea, try going on Amazon and looking up books relevant to your niche. Make note of the chapter headings. These tend to be awesome keywords to target.

STEp 4: List Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are keywords that get you results but have nothing to do with your services. It’s the same deal here, you can pay for a fancy tool or use a free one. For the everyday dude tryout WordStream.com    <—- this link points to free the tool above.

Below I’ve highlighted negative keywords that don’t really apply to the OC, SEO Services I’m dishing out. You’ll make note of these and want to avoid them at all cost when setting up any PPC Campaigns.

STEP 5: Look At Your Competition

At this point, you should have a pretty good list, but now you need to cross reference it with the competition. Most people reading this are not pros and just really need to know if they’re on the right track.

To get your hands dirty in this arena you’ll want to find a keyword density checker. There are a ton of paid tools and free ones. For this guide, we are recommending an oldie but goodie —- Tools.SeoBook.com

Type in the space above a URL that is in your niche. This tool will spit out rows and rows of data. Like the image below. You have to use some common sense here. What you’re looking for are keywords you didn’t think of, that deserve to be on your list.

STEP 6: Bring In Adwords?

You may have noticed the question mark in the header above that’s because some brands will not be launching a PPC Campaign where Adwords will give insight into what keywords get traffic. If you’re just looking to develop some organic traffic you can probably stop reading here and knock out your keyword research.   However if you keep reading you will find out search volume for keywords, which might impact the keywords you use.

Jump onto —–> Google Adwords. On the top of your dashboard look for “Tools” and select “Keyword Planner.”

You’ll have some pretty nifty options to select from — play with the options. For this guide, we will go into option 2 “Get Search Volume Data and Trends.”

Here is where you will enter your list of keywords. Remember to update your target location — you can have this narrowed down to state, country, globally. Also, remember to add negative keywords.

Now the fun part — search volume. How does it look below? Prospect are searching for these terms and we are able to see two extremes in the form of competition.

When the competition is low that means not many marketers / brands are spending revenue on those keywords. When it’s high, that means there’s a lot of marketers / brands spending big bucks on that keyword.

If you were to launch a PPC Campaign you’d have to go against that competition in terms of bids. Having a marketing strategy at this point is essential to save you big bucks. Keep that in mind guys.

STEP 7: Leverage Long Tail Keywords

After doing the research you may find that the competition is crazy high. What you need to do now is make your keywords a bit more specific. Focus on long tail keywords — these are phrases that are 3-5 keywords long.  With the research you’ve done, you’ll already have an idea of what those long tail keywords are.

-Treehouse 51

PS. The guide is meant for the everyday man or woman looking to dive into some keyword research. It touches on the basics of keyword research. Our agency is known for doing kick ass keyword research among other marketing services. If you’re really interested in taking your marketing to the next level reach out to us, we offer consultations and guide you through this process. Or you just hire us and we’ll do all the heavy lifting for you. Regardless, this guide will at least put you on the right path to stellar keyword research. If you want to learn more about us poke around our website at www.Treehouse51.com