How to do Keyword Research for squidoo

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How to find that precise subject for your lens...

It is an under statement to say that keywords are important for getting your squidoo lenses (or any webpage really) found in google or another search engine.

If you are going to be making a lens to make money, you had better find out two things:

  • what words are people typing in search engines to look for what you are selling?

  • what's the competition?


But first...

What are keywords 

Keywords are words, just words

I have found that when people hear the word keyword, they often think of squidoo tags. This is perhaps understandable, but it's misleading.

Tags are keywords - yes.

But keywords are also those same words used in the title of your lens, in the title of your modules. In the subtitle of your lens and the subtitles of your modules.

In fact: those same keywords should be used in the text on your lens as well.

But the main thing is the title of the lens and the lens URL.

That is, if you can get:
www.squidoo.com/keyword - take it.

Books about keyword research 

Keyword Research and Web Traffic

Keyword Research and Web Traffic

Amazon Price: $0.99 (as of 11/25/2009) Buy Now

Key Phrases - collections of keywords 

People looking for widgets don't only type in 'blue widget'. They also type things like 'cheap blue widget'. 'Cheap blue widget' is a key phrase.

Guess what: if you have that precise phrase on your lens, it is more likely to rank highly when someone types that into google.

Checking the competition - How do I do keyword research 1 

You do keyword research by keeping Google as your friend.

Google is your ticket to knowing your competition.

I often make lenses after having checked whether my topic is represented well in the top 10 in google. If not: make your lens, especially if you know your topic is likely to be hot anyhow.

But it can go a bit further than that. Sometimes you know the official term for something. Say the medical term for a disease. You look up that disease in google and it looks awful (from the perspective of someone looking to make a buck): all kinds of specialty advice from people sharing their knowledge about this disease.

But you're not done: now check that same disease in layman's terms. Chances are - not so much competition.

If that still doesn't help - try adding a word like 'curing ...' and searching that in google. The longer your phrase, the less likely your competition has snagged it yet.

But still, many people may be looking just how to cure your disease. Or maybe not...

Which brings me to step 2.

What are people looking for online? How to do keyword research 2 

Is my topic popular?
To figure out if your topic is popular at all, you can check Google Trends. I don't really use this much, because my niches tend to not be popular much. But if you want to go for money, it helps if your general topic is popular anyhow.

What are people typing in google?
Once you know whether your topic is popular at all, you want to know the precise phrases people are typing. Google and all the other search engines want to match the text a person types with the text on your lens or webpage. The closer the match, the higher your lens is likely to come on the page.

There are all kinds of tools out there to do this: to find out keywords and key phrases people are typing in google. But you will get by easily with the following two:

  • Google Adwords
    Watch out: by default this tool is geo-targeted. So if you don't live where your customers live, tweak your settings.

  • Word Tracker

Squidoo helps with keyword research - How to do keyword research 3 

Once you've got a lens that gets a lot of traffic, your squidoo stats can help you find out what you should make more of.

Is your lens getting decent traffic for some phrase you are using only once on your page? Devote a whole lens on that topic and use that key phrase as the title.

Is your lens getting drops of traffic on some subject you hadn't thought about that belongs on your lens? Devote a module on it.

Are you getting sales of a specific product related to your lens - but more specialized than your current lens? Make a lens about that specific product (or range of products).

To the next level: allinanchor and allintitle 

I have to admit, I don't use these at all when doing keyword research and it may be why some of the lenses I've made with keyword research ended up at the bottom of my lens list. So don't do as I do, do as I say and check the following in google:

allintitle:keyword or key phrase
This checks how much competition there is for the precise phrase you had in mind. In most cases this will not add much to searching for the phrase itself, but it does filter out results from high trust sites that come up in the serps anyhow.

allinanchor:keyword or key phrase
This one is the really advanced stuff: what is the competition that has links with the right keywords pointing to their stuff? The more links like that the competition has, the harder it is to beat them and rise to the top.

If you want to search for a phrase, or a set of keywords, you should also try using double quotes:

allinanchor:"keyword1 keyword2"

That's not the same as the following, so while you're being thorough, try that too. Pick the version with the least competition.

allinanchor:"keyword2 keyword1"

Need more help? Check out this example on how to do keyword research 

And if you still didn't quite get it - I did a review of a lens in a very high potential (but also high competition) area: Weight Loss.

Tags 

Tags on your lens are important. They link to pages that are on topic for your lens. Your lens also gets links from tag pages. Those links are counted by google when it calculates how important your lens is and whether it is important within the subject it's about.

Tag pages are organized to show lenses with that specific tag as their primary tag first. That means that you should pick your primary tag well. It should be used by other lenses in your niche and it should be one of the few that uses that tag as the primary tag.

Your tags should not be too repetitive. Don't list every combination of keywords you can think of. This will lead to over optimization. In other words: it looks spammy to google and it may decide to rank your page less well based on that. Go with 10 or 15 tags, each as different from the previous one as you can manage while staying relevant to your theme.

Use the squidutils addon to see quickly whether the tags you picked are being used by anybody else. For unpopular lenses (say lensrank of more than 2000) I recommend sticking with about 10 tags that turn light green with this addon. Don't use tags that are white (not used), but also avoid tags that are too popular.

To be even more precise, check out my optimizing tags for squidoo lens.

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