When coming up with my keyword for my article I always use Google adwords! if im writing about acne ill type in remedies for acne. i find the keywords that have between 1000 and 2000 searches per month. then i go to google and lets say the keyword i found was herbal acne remedies. i just type in "herbal acne remedies" and click search. if the results show 50,000 or less in the search then I know that it will do well in the ranking! hope this helps!
Nice thing that you have stated but the major thing is that Google adwords tool is not specific and sometimes delivers irrelevant results. So if you are trying to find some keywords for your website then better use some recommended keyword tools.
SEO Elite is a good choice. Google adwords keyword tool is good for an overview for what you want to search for but drill down use SEO Elite or Market Samurai.
Thanks for the tip - but isn't the goal to find a good ratio between supply and demand? 50'000 supply for 2'000 demand doesn't seem like a good ratio. What experience have you had with this?
1000 to 2000 global monthly searchs is a good amount of searches! under 50-100k is great! under 10k is phenomneal if the keyword gets traffic
Lol, pwned.... Just someone else trying to increase their post count. Anyway, to comment on the OP's post, the whole idea of "if something has under X amount of competition in quotes it will work" is flawed. Who cares if there's only 10k competing pages if all the results on the first page have 500 links and are all PR5 and above? On the other hand, there could be 200,000 competing pages but all the results on the front page are weak and you can easily outrank them. The only way to tell is by looking at the first page and see what's ranking and why. I forgot who said this but I heard someone use this example when referring to that method: "If you know how to swim, does it matter if the water is 5 feet or 50,000 feet? You are only worried about staying above the water and it doesn't get harder to swim because the water is deeper." I think that sums this up perfectly. A better method that I like to use to initially check competition is to do an allintitle search on Google. So if your keyword was acne remedies, go onto Google and type in allintitle:"acne remedies" making sure to put it in quotes. The rule of thumb I use here is under 2,000 competing pages. Then once you have your keyword that's under 2k competing pages with an allintitle search, you want to type in the keyword normally without quotes or anything and analyze the first page results. The reason why I feel this works better is you get an idea of how many people are trying to target that keyword specifically. Plus, you do get some added SEO weight if your exact keyword is in the title along with the description and URL. Everyone has their own methods but this has been working for me. I've found quite a few keywords that only have like 75 competing pages or less with an allintitle search but if I put it in quotes there's 100k plus competing pages. So my guess is that only 75 people are actively trying to rank for that keyword. If the first page results are weak, I go for it. Hope that helps you and some others who are still on the idea of only looking at competing pages in quotes.
Yeah I think it fits perfectly with how everyone only looks at competing pages in quotes. If you do that, there's a good chance you may never rank for certain keywords. The quote isn't mine though, I saw someone either here or on Warrior forum say it and I liked it a lot too.
This is true, but I was merely trying to give a basic "rule of thumb" method for newbies to keyword research. Checking the Adwords Keyword Tool and then checking for pages competing for that word is a great starting point for those that are new to keyword research. Using the "allintitle" technique is also a quick and simple way to check competition. But, I like to also use: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ to check the URLs that come up in the search results for backlinks. Even if competition is extremely low, if the top sites have thousands of backlinks, it's going to be almost impossible to rank.
That is the point I was trying to make. I know you were just trying to give some helpful information to new people and it's good that you're being helpful, but just because they are new doesn't mean that technique will work any better for them than it will for a veteran. Sending them on a mission to only check competing pages in quotes while they are still new could be setting them up for disappointment and failure. When they don't rank for a certain keyword because it had only 10k competing pages but the first page was very competitive they will wonder what went wrong if they don't fully understand researching competition.
True. I get what you're saying. But, when I was new, I would have been very confused with competing pages, PR, backlinks, etc. Following the simple method, if I write (or have written) several articles, some (and in many cases quite a few) will rank without checking backlinks if competition is low enough. I'm a believer that a newbie taking action is more important than having it all down... in many cases too many details can easily lead to "analysis paralysis".
You're right, but I don't think it's much more complicated to tell them to type in allintitle:"keyword" instead of just "keyword". Even if they have no idea how to gauge competition, they are more likely to rank for a word that has few allintitle results because that means less people actively targeting that exact keyword. Just my opinion.
True, but if someone is going to do "allintitle", they also need to check backlinks with Yahoo. I think we're agreeing here on the appropriate way to do keyword search. I was just trying to give the basic research concept to the newbs out there, but I appreciate your additional information. This is becoming a great thread for keyword research! Anyone else have any tips to help us all in our never-ending quest for great and profitable keywords?
Yeah we do both agree on the proper way. But, you need to check backlinks no matter which method you use. The only reason for using a method is to narrow down the results so you're not checking every single keyword you come across. What it all boils down to though is how strong the 1st page is and nothing else really matters.
What bugging me is google keyword tool reports a result much more different than other keyword tools. My guess if that google tool count a search from its ads network also?
The Google Adwords Tool is only looking at the Google network. Other keyword tools look at other networks or even multiple networks.