How to research keywords

Wikipedia defines keywords as:

An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records. They are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the function by which libraries collect, organize and disseminate documents. They are used as keywords to retrieve documents in an information system, for instance, a catalog or a search engine.

A popular form of keywords on the web are tags which are directly visible and can be assigned by non-experts also. Index terms can consist of a word, phrase, or alphanumerical term. They are created by analyzing the document either manually with subject indexing or automatically with automatic indexing or more sophisticated methods of keyword extraction. Index terms can either come from a controlled vocabulary or be freely assigned.

Keywords are stored in a search index. Common words like articles (a, an, the) and conjunctions (and, or, but) are not treated as keywords because it is inefficient to do so. Almost every English-language site on the Internet has the article "the", and so it makes no sense to search for it. The most popular search engine, Google removed stop words such as "the" and "a" from its indexes for several years, but then re-introduced them, making certain types of precise search possible again.

Please read before you go any further!

As the heading says, there's no definitive right way to go about your keyword research. But there's plenty of mistakes you can make along the way!

The biggest mistake is to make assumptions about what people are looking for on the net.

This lens will take you through the procedures and thought processes that I use when I am preparing a new lens, article, blog post and definitely before I bought some domains. I will attempt to get you thinking about various factors that can make the difference between getting traffic and not getting traffic.

There's no guarantees that if you follow what I do, that you will end up on the first page of Google, in the Top Payment Tier on Squidoo AND make any sales.

For the purposes of this exercise we are going to assume that you have a topic in mind, but you are starting from scratch. No Domain name, no article title, no lens title, no blog post title.

To illustrate how to research keywords, I decided to make a lens about a recipe. So, I made the dish for a Sunday evening meal and as I cooked, I took photos.

I thought I could guess what my lens title should be, but once I did my keyword research, I realised that I could have made a dangerous assumption.

I hope that what you are about to see demonstrated will stop you from making a big mistake. Although it is easy to change the title of a blog post or an article, you CANNOT change the URL of a Squidoo Lens.

You could start over and create a new lens and transfer the content across, but if you are already getting traffic, it may set you back for awhile or even permanently and of course once you have bought a domain name, then it could be money down the drain.

Keyword Research Important Note #1:

Research your domain name, Squidoo Lens URL,
Hubpages URL etc
BEFORE you are committed

Keyword Research Note #2

It is dangerous to assume if a key phrase
has a high Search Volume that this is the
phrase you should be using for your URL

Remember! We are looking for a keyword or phrase that has high search volume and low competition.

We want a phrase that:

1) Is searched for a lot on Google

2) Has little competition - ie a low number of pages featuring the search phrase

and if it is a Squidoo lens or an article on Ezine, Hubpages etc

3) Very few or no lenses/hubs/articles that will rank highly for that phrase

Look at the results for "Chicken recipes"

Is it a high volume search phrase? Yes (Good!)

Is there a lot of competition on the web? Yes (Bad!)

Is there a lot of Squidoo lenses already published on the topic? Yes (Bad!)

So probably best to forget about using chicken recipes as our main keyphrase!

Why are the figures disappointing?

There's NO Squidoo pages and there's only NINE pages on Google returned when you search chicken one pot recipe, BUT the GMSV is only 590. This will be a phrase to drop into some headings and in the content but it is probably not the phrase I will use for my Squidoo Lens URL.

If I was selling a book about Chicken One Pot recipes (now there's an idea!) then this would be something to take note of and 590 visits in a month is not to be sniffed at but it may not be enough to get me into the Squidoo Top Tier on traffic alone.

Time to start narrowing the focus.

I looked at the phrases that had come up so far and threw a few more phrases into the search box. (You can see from some of the screenshots below that you can search for more than one keyword or key phrase at a time.)

I searched on:

One pot chicken recipes

Quick chicken recipes
Easy chicken recipes

Roasted chicken breasts

Chicken with Ratatouille
Roasted ratatouille chicken

Keyword Research Note #3

So there's very few Google pages or lenses on your topic?
Great - but unless people are searching for that phrase
you aint gonna get traffic!

My recipe is "Roasted Chicken Breasts with Ratatouille"
but look at how many people search using
a combination of those words!

At the end of the day, you can analyse and you can analyse and there is no sure fire method of picking a URL and the related keywords that will guarantee you traffic. Neither will any of this guarantee sales.

However, recipe lenses on Squidoo do make sales of related cooking equipment - you only have to ask Giant Squid Organiser RMS - so at this stage I am hoping that due to external traffic I will be able to maintain this lens in the Squidoo Top Payment Tier (i.e. top 2000) and make some related sales.

I already have my favourite piece of cooking equipment to personally recommend and I am planning some related products (more about that another time) that I can link to in the future.

The phrase roast chicken recipes looks very promising but because the term roast chicken generally means a recipe for roasting a whole chicken and my lens is about roasting chicken breasts, I felt that to use this phrase may look as though I am deluding my visitors and am using an "unethical hook" to con them into visiting. However, I DO have a lovely roast chicken recipe so I have grabbed the URL and need to get my camera out PDQ!!

In the end I decided to go for volume of traffic from outside of Squidoo and am targetting the phrase that has a GMSV of 74,000. I will try to ensure my lens will be so well optimised that I will rise above the competition on Google, where there's 56,900 pages to watch out for but the link with Squidoo is always an advantage, for many reasons.

On Squidoo, there's 42 lenses in direct competition for the phrase but as none of these lenses are currently featuring in the Top 100 on Google, I figure it is worth taking a chance.

So here it is - drum roll please . . . . .

http://www.squidoo.com/baked-chicken-recipe

All the other phrases that ranked well against the criteria I used will be sprinkled through the lens as well, in the content and the headings.

July 2010
Another lens where keyword research turned up the fact that hardly any websites were using my top phrase in the URL or Title:

http://www.squidoo.com/green-cupcakes

Christmas 2010

The results of some keyword research I did in August 2010, resulted in the wrong name for product, getting me massive traffic during the Christmas shopping season. The correct name for the product was the Wii U-Draw, however, careful keyword research showed me that people were searching for Wii Draw:

http://www.squidoo.com/wii-draw

OK, so you have done your keyword research. But good keyword placement is also crucial - see below.

Then you could Build a Link Wheel, which I show you how to do in my series Blogging for Profit.

The Squidoo Step by Step Guidebook will also show you how to get Backlinks - also crucial to ranking high with Google and also how to promote, promote, promote but NO spamming!

For Squidoo Lenses these include:

URL (and please do not listen to anyone who says the URL does not matter - it DOES!)

Title

Introduction heading

First two sentences of the introduction - your strongest keyword or phrase should ALWAYS be in the first line of your intro. (Why? Because it is this "excerpt" that is shown on Google in the search returns! It is the hook that may entice searchers to click through to your lens)

The lens Bio (in the top right hand corner of the lens)

Module headings (but vary the phrases used and beware of keyword stuffing)

Module sub-headings (ditto)

Content

Your Guestbook - how many times do you just ask people to stop by and say hello? Put a meaningful message in there, that includes keywords and phrases (and you can help others by doing the same in their Guestbooks. Not only should you leave a meaningful comment, but also use the author's own keywords and phrases).

You will find more about keyword placement in the Squidoo Step by Step Guidebook.

And finally!

Beware of "keyword stuffing" to the extent that your lens, article, blog, looks Spammy. The Google and other search engine spiders know the difference between quality content and Spammy content and they will penalise you.

Use variations of your main keywords and phrases, use other keywords that you have researched. make sure your keywords are used in a natural way so as not to affect the flow of your content.

Good luck!

Market Samurai is a complete Keyword Software package, that I am just getting to grips with.

There is a two week free trial, but even if you decide not to buy the complete package, you will still be left with an awesome keyword research tool.

October 13, 2010
This lens has been awarded a Squidoo Purple Star!
Purple Star?



According to the Purple Star lens,
they are awarded to Lenses that are:

"Masterpiece lenses. Lenses making a name for themselves.
Lenses trying new things."

What an honour!