Before you waste you money and time resources on that jewel of a keyword you just found, think again. It could be a Trojan keyword that leads you down a primrose path to nowhere.

Keyword Stats VS. Search Results

You need to remember that keyword stats and actual keyword results will vary and sometimes by a great degree. Who knows exactly why in all cases, but in the case of Trojan keyword the reasons are very clear. Google wants the most relevant results for its users.

Google is not evil and it is not out to get anyone. It is simply a behemoth plodding in the direction of producing relevant results to its users. More relevance the better it does as a company. This is its business.

Having said that, it stands to reason then that Google tries to divine the intention of its users and this is where Trojan keywords are created.

The Anatomy Of A Trojan Keyword

A Trojan keyword is a keyword that can have multiple meanings such as "driver" or a keyword that Google decides that what the searcher is really looking for is not that exact keyword. When a person types in "driver" and hits the enter key, Google's software has to determine the probability of whether the searcher is looking for golf equipment or searching for a long haul trucker.

If you have a website dedicated to long haul trucking and need drivers, your webpage will receive very little traffic even if the search stats looked great.

There are other factors as well, such as the general subject matter the keyword is indicating. I once found the long-tail keyword "lose leg and thigh fat". I almost wet myself when I did the keyword research. The numbers were outstanding. I built the sight howtoloselegandthighfat.com and to this day it sits quietly in one of the cyber back-alleys of the internet collecting cyber dust. And that is because Google feels the people typing in this keyword are better served with sites whose keywords are "lose leg fat" or "lose thigh fat" and not a long keyword that is probably being used by a spammer.

PBR Is The Bottomline

PBR stands for phrase to broad ratio. In other words, how many times does that exact keyword phrase show up in the Google results when it is typed into Google without quotation marks. If the ratio is low, then you don't stand much of a chance at getting your keyword to show up, even if there is zero competition. When you type a word or phrase into Google, you want it to show up at least 15 percent of the time or more. If it doesn't then skip that word.

How can you tell what the PBR is? There is software that will do that for you, but an easier way is to type in the phrase without quotation marks and then check the results on the first couple of pages of the search results. If you barely see the exact phrase you typed in showing up on these pages, you know you have a Trojan keyword. Looks great but it ain't.

An Example

I wanted to start a page about the hCG diet and I discovered that a lot of people transposed the C and G typing in "hGC" instead of "hCG."

Therefore hGC was a great keyword. High search volume with very little competition. I got my site built and the visitors started flowing in until Google realized that most people typing in "hGC" really wanted "hCG". Now if you type in "hGC" you will get the results for "hCG" which is swamped with high PR, aged domains and there's not a snowball's chance on a griddle that I will ever be listed again for "hGC". So, that site joins loselegandthighfat.com in a cyber back alley hoping for some PPC traffic--again, a snowball's chance on that griddle that they'll ever get it from me.

This highlights the danger of picking a keyword that appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. Also, it should be noted that playing around with keywords that are misspellings or typos isn't a good long-term strategy since once Google figures out what people are really searching for your great little keyword will go Trojan on you.

Conclusion

Check out your keyword's PBR before you waste a lot of time and effort building a site around it. Make sure that it show up in the search results on the first few pages of Google. If it doesn't then skip it no matter how great the stats are. Remember, keyword stats are only showing what people are typing into Google and how often. They are not showing how often that keyword actually triggers a webpage being displayed.

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