The dilemma? Too many keywords...
I made a post on my Facebook wall the other day that caused some confusion. Here is how it went...
“The problem with the SEO world is that there are too many good keywords...”
And I wasn’t kidding. If you think I am crazy or off the wall...or you are wondering where the heck I am finding all my “millions of keywords” that is cool.
I am going to answer these questions for you today. I want to also give you some perspective and insight into the KEYWORD world of 2012. Where does it stand? Are there still “untapped” keywords? Can you still succeed with little to no experience? Are there tools that can help you uncover the what I clearly state, KAJILLIONS of search terms.
How the keywords have changed in the past couple of years...
The keyword market hasn’t really changed too much over the years, not for me anyways. I still think that most people still get “stumped” when they are looking for keywords. Most people tend to think of the most obvious keywords.
Most people don’t try.
Say you were in the make money niche, most people out there would think of the term “make money online” as their first term. I can tell you right now, YOU HAVE ZERO CHANCE of ranking under this search term.
It is far too competitive.
If you did a little bit of research and you spend some time understanding the “niche” you are promoting to, you would realize that a lot of people are looking for ways they can get into Google.
For example, “how do i get my website into google” only has 14 competing pages in all of Google (I used Jaaxy to quickly find this out).
That means if you wrote an article or a blog post on your site, you would have a VERY good chance of ranking on the first page, if not ranking #1 overall in Google.
If you were like everyone and their moms, you would be thinking of terms like “make money online” or “start online business”.
Well, if you try for either of these you can expect to never see your site in Google...I can assure you of that.
“start an online business” has over 11,000,000 competing pages. “make money online” has over 53,000,000 searches! Good luck...
Competition is all that matters!
When you are performing any type of keyword research, you are looking at one piece of data, competition. Before you worry about traffic, you need to make sure you can get ranked under a particular keyword or you will simply be wasting your time.
I don’t like wasting time... do you? Didn’t think so.
The secret to revealing competition is being able to determine the exact number of pages in Google. Back in the day (in 2010) you simply used to be able to put the keyword in quotes and plug it into Google and Google would tell you how many competing pages.
Unfortunately, Google caught on quick to what people are doing and now they provide you with bogus quoted “” data when you plug it into their search (highly inflated).
And this is a reason we created a tool within Wealthy Affiliate (the Get Result within the WA keyword tool) and created a HUGE TIME SAVING FUNCTION within Jaaxy to get at the QSR (quoted search result). The real QSR.
This is really the only metric I care about. Honestly. Competition means jack. The sites on the first page of Google don’t mean anything. I don’t care if they are authority or whether they are owned by mom and pop shops.
I know that if the particular keyword meets my specific QSR criteria there is a darn good chance that I am going to get a first page ranking, either with one of my own sites or using an authoring site (like StreetArticles.com)...or even a Youtube video.
By being able to get at this data in an easy and quick way, I am able to accomplish a good deal of research fast.
This leads me to my next topic...the real aspect that has changed with Google.
The way you address keywords is the only real change...
I am not going to get into too much detail about how to write to get ranked here, but the way people are using keywords within their content and the way they are addressed has changed.
You no longer have to have a specific keyword density within your content, this is now classified by Google (more regularly than not) as keyword stuffing.
Getting ranked under keywords is about (a) finding the keyword (b) writing content naturally.
You don’t have to stuff keywords in your content any longer. This was a big relief for me because I used to find it crazy that you had to put a keyword 6-7 times within a single 500 word article to get ranked under it.
Now all you have to do is put the keyword in your title and within the first paragraph or two and write your content naturally...and you can get ranked even if you don’t have another instance of the keyword again.
That brings us back to the most important aspect, competition. If your target keyword has less than 300 QSR (not Google’s qsr, but tools like the WA keyword tool and Jaaxy QSR), then it is has a good chance of getting ranked. If it has under 200 QSR, then it has a GREAT chance of getting ranked.
If it has under 100, no brainer. Chances are you are going to be on the first page in no time and if your content is quality, you can expect to be in the top couple rankings in Google.
But are there really lots of keywords left?
The keyword market continues to grow....
Every news story that comes out. Every product that is created. Every new theory that is come up with. Every new person that enters this earth. Every new celebrity. Every new question that someone comes up with. These are all new keywords.
Millions of them happening every day.
This means millions of keywords are being created all the time. It has been stated time and time again there there are 100,000,000,000’s of possible search queries that someone could type into Google, this is based on just the noun, adjective and verb combinations in the human language (based on a max of 4 word terms).
Yes this is crazy, but this means that there is still a lot of SEO work left to be done. Which is a good thing for you and I.
To those people that say they are running out of idea for keywords, I say you must be nuts. There are MILLIONS, if not BILLIONS of keywords out there that have limited competition.
Live long...long tail keywords...
Check out this keyword:
"roocase dual view leather case for amazon kindle fire tablet"
Yes, that is a keyword and yes people are typing this in every month. A 10 word phrase used to be uncommon for someone to type into a Google search 5 years ago, but with Google instant and the fact that people are becoming much smarter “web surfers”, the longer the tail on keywords grow.
This is a common term these days, a common entry into the Google search bar. There are unlimited niches, unlimited keyword possibilities and more and more people are continue to spend more and more time on the Internet. If it is not on their desktop, it is on their laptop...or their tablet...or their phone....or e-reader...or even their TV.
Connectivity is at an all time high and so are keywords. They are just too many keywords out there.
TOO MANY KEYWORDS!
Hope you enjoyed this read and feel free to share it with the world of keyword enthusiasts out there!
Recent Comments
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Love this post, as it serves a reminder that there is an abundant (not lack of) supply of niches all the time. It's posts like this that help me have epiphany moments... in fact, I think I just had one :-)
Ephiphanies are good! There is no lack of niches or keywords out there, nothing to be concerned about from a marketing and SEO standpoint.
you can actually manually do quoted searches. But you have to keep going to the next page until you hit the end before they tell you the correct amount of competition. the WA keyword tool does that for you when you click get competition.
Exactly, in order to see the true competition you have to click until you get to the last page of the Google search results (often times they don't even let you get there). So the manual "quotes" in Google will no longer provide you with accurate data, it hasn't for a couple of years.
I am curious what you mean by manual research. Do you mean you type in keyword in quotes and see how many pages appear for that keyword/
Keywords and density .. blah! This is my biggest issue and probably always will be. I dont even like having to structure an article based of of a keyword. I tend to write what is there trying to come out naturally and more for the reader, then backtrack to a keyword that fits. Getting better at it but though - thanks for the great info:)
I have been experimenting with the following method. Go the other way Wayne. Pick your topic, then find 2 keywords to work off of, and then write your article. Only place you need to worry about is keyword number 1 in the title and first paragraph, and 2nd keyword in the body of the article. If you choose your keywords right you will make page one almost every time, which is the whole point, right? Hope that helps!
Me neither...that is why I haven't been following the rules of keyword density or any structure for a couple of years now.
I write to write, I put the keyword within the title (if I am targeting a keyword) and typically somewhere around the 1st paragraph. And then I write the content out in a natural way, if the keyword shows up again in my article so be it.
Hi Kyle
It was a relief to me the first time Jay mentioned that keyword density was no longer an issue. I cringe at some of my early articles and blog posts - they sound utterly grim. My only comfort is loads of other people have examples like that too.
Now I feel the sky's the limit in writing. I have always focussed on the competition and consequently I have lots and lots of page 1 rankings and a lot of number 1 spots.. Once the initial quirks of Jaaxy were ironed out I have found it a reliable tool and just don't use anything else.
I always want to interject when I hear peeople advise newbies that they must have monthly searches of at least 5000 a month - because it's really not necessary and in some niches you just wouldn't get those sorts of number anyway. I always keep in mind that you have regularly said that it's better to get a small proportion of visitors than none at all.
Yeah, it is nice being able to write just to write. It is a flaw in Google back then that was actually preventing people that knew both SEO and how to write from writing properly. Now that Google has put far more weight on LSI and has started punishing keyword density, SEO has truly become a writers dream (what it always should have been).
Traffic means nothing to me either, I would rather be ranked on the top of page 1 in Google under a term that gets trickle traffic than to be on page 10 of a term that gets moderate traffic.
Jaaxy is truly the king/queen of keyword research and will save you a ton of time and reveal keywords by the bundle.
It's funny how things change in a short space of time - and to try, stuff your article with a specific keyword 6-7 times, made it that more difficult to write an article naturally.
People aren't stupid and could easily pick up on this and must have been wandering 'why is this author using the same words throughout his or her article?' .The game has changed with a set of fair rules.Anyhow Great modern info provided by yourself Kyle - Thanks Colin
Yeah, in hindsight it seemed kind of crazy what they were trying to get people to do. The problem was that if you wanted SEO and you wanted to also offer a quality, nicely worded article, it was very difficult. Glad the keyword and writing component have evolved to where they are at today!
Excellent article Kyle. I try to remind myself of this fact all the time. Especially when I run in to problems finding good keywords in my niches,
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great post kyle! i never knew about google inflating their results. was always putting quotes and doing the searches. with that said, i was just playing around with the WA keyword tool, and i would like to ask, whats the difference between traffic and searches? is the google keyword tool inflating those results too? those numbers are usually higher in the google keyword tool
We don't just use Google's data, we use data from all the search engines (Bing and Yahoo as well) and then we run it through our own algorithm to best predict the traffic. Google has been giving bogus traffic for quite some time not only when you type in a search term in "quotes", but also within their external keyword tool. The WA keyword tool and Jaaxy.com are the best sources for realistic and powerful competition search and competition data.