If you are finding it really difficult to figure out which keywords to target for your organic or paid search campaigns, here are some tips that will help you resolve your keyword research problems.
1. Check out Competitor’s Keyword Combinations
If you are looking to rank better than your competitors that why not have the keywords which they are going after. Your competitors much have listed out some of the best keywords or the keywords that will drive maximum traffic from your industry.
So, let your recognized and authoritative competitors do the keyword research for you.
You can utilize the Google’s Free Keyword Tool.
Utilizing Google Keyword Tool
- Just identify your top 5 competitors that are ranking in the top positions for your targeted keywords.
- Enter the top 5 URLs that are ranking for your term in Google Keyword Tool’s Website Box.
- You can choose the location and language based on your targeted demographic. Choose Global and English if you are having whole world as your target audience.
- Choose exact match or phrase match as keyword match types. I prefer to use phrase matches because it can help me find “hidden long tail keywords” later on.
The best thing about this strategy is that you will be able to see the search volumes for the keywords that you have chosen.
Select keywords that you feel will be you should be targeting and group them together to create tightly themed set of keywords.
2. Identify hidden long tail keywords in the phrase-match/exact match difference
This strategy shall let you identify long tail keywords that might be less competitive than most main targeted keywords.
The secret behind this is the difference between Phrase Match and Exact Match Search volumes.
Google Keyword Tool generally shows the Phrase match and Exact match search volumes, but it seldom show related long tail keywords which can be targeted for your organic or paid search campaigns.
So, you’ll need to get the phrase match and exact match search volume of a particular keyword.
If there’s a big difference between the search volumes, then you have a winning keyword.
You can find the “missing long tail keywords” using Google instant searches or you can try some PPC advertising to get some impressions and clicks which will help you identify these “hidden keyword opportunities”.
Check out an example:
SEO Services (in Local Search)
“seo services” (phrase match) = 74,000
[seo services] (exact match) = 12,100
“SEO Services” Phrase Match/Exact Match Difference = 62,900
SEO Dallas (in Local Search)
“seo dallas” (phrase match) = 1,600
[seo dallas] (exact match) =720
“SEO Services” Phrase Match/Exact Match Difference = 880
It can be seen the bigger opportunity lies in optimizing for the term “SEO Services” since it has 62,900 hidden long tail keywords.
These hidden long tail keywords include:
“seo services company”
“seo services dallas”
“seo services portland”
“seo services austin”
seo services agency”
and more
The objective here is to identify keywords that have big difference between the search volumes of the phrase and exact match and create content around those keywords.
3. Blog on upcoming events and launches
Keep a close watch on what competitor are doing in terms of launching new products or offering new services, package offerings or participating/organizing in various industry related events.
If you can optimize and rank for keywords which are not being searched today, but shall be highly searched in the near future, then you shall be in a great position to get a lot of traffic through those search terms.
Here are just a few examples:
Date Based Searches
Thanksgiving 2013
Christmas 2013
Product launches
[Product name] launch
[Product name] review
[Product name] information
Basically, this strategy banks on anticipating keywords that will be searched large volume in the future. These keywords are also easier to rank in the search engines because no one else is still targeting or optimizing for these terms.
4. Add geo-qualifiers to your Keywords for Local Search
If you are promoting for location specific audience or your business caters different geo locations or demographics, adding geo-targeted keywords for search can help you rank a lot faster than regular ‘generic’ keywords.
Let’s look at an example.
If you want to optimize your website for “SEO agency” and “SEO services” it might take a long time, even years to rank ahead of your competition.
Instead you can target geo specific keywords:
“SEO Services Dallas”
“SEO Agency Dallas”
“SEO Services Portland”
“SEO Agency Portland”
“SEO Services Houston”
“SEO Agency Houston”
These keywords might have less search volumes, but they are highly targeted and have more changes of getting quality traffic and conversions than the Fat Head keywords.
5. Monitor your existing Google Analytics Data for Long Tail Keywords that you might have missed
Google Analytics in itself has abundant keyword research data. But, the websites have to old enough and should be receiving a good amount of traffic through organic or paid search before. Using Google Analytics Regular Filters you can create a list of long tail keywords.
You can filter keywords with 3,4,5,6,7 or more words in the search phrase. This will help you find content ideas, title or topic of next blog post and also identify keyword opportunities.
So, by now you must have discovered 5 Keyword Research Tips which are unconventional yet effective and can solve your keyword research problems with ease.