Internet Marketing Keyword Research
I decided that before I blindly ran off trying to drive traffic from here, there and everywhere it would be a good idea to do a little keyword research first. Afterall this is a long term plan, so knowing which keywords I want to rank well with, and that I have a chance at ranking well with, will help me with my overall traffic strategy.
I’ve done a fair bit of SEO and keyword research before as a few years ago I set up my own dating website (www.phlirtz.com) and spent a lot of time trying to get the site up in the search engine rankings.
So I started off today with this great bit of software called Market Samurai (http://www.marketsamurai.com/). I was originally using it for adwords campaigns, but its good for general keyword research too. For the full version you have to pay, but the keyword research tool works great with the free version.
Basically, you enter a generic keyword phrase, I used ‘Internet Marketing’ and it goes out to find all the keywords it can, using Googles synonym tool. It can also use SEO digger to generate keywords but this is a paid service so you would have to be a member of SEO digger for that option to work.
This generated 103 keywords for me. I then went to google’s keyword tool and used the option to get keyword ideas using a website’s content. Now seeing as I am trying to get keyword idea for my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to see which keywords google thinks are appropriate to the top blogs that Alex showed us in module 4. So I took 2 of the top blogs in that list and plugged them in. Google came back with a load of keywords that it thought these blogs were about.
I plugged these in to Market Samurai as well. The good thing about doing this is that Market Samurai automatically ignores any duplicates. This bumped my keyword list up to 276.
The next step was to use Market Samurai to analyse these keywords. So pressing the ‘Analyse Keywords’ button gives me a few options to choose. I want to know how many people are searching on these terms and how much competition for them is out there. There is also an option for it to estimate how much adwords traffic you should get with them, it’s up to you if you want to check this, if you’re running any paid traffic campaigns it might be worth it. I also checked the SEO Comp option. Usually the only way to gauge the competition for keywords would be to count the search results returned by google for that keyword phrase. Market Samurai uses a different algorithm to gauge the quality of the sites you are competing against as well. For example, if wikipedia.org or amazon.com are ranking highly for certain keywords, then you are unlikely to ever be able to compete with these and Market Samurai takes this in to account.
Once you have all this data, you can then use something called Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) to determine which keywords are going to be worth targeting. KEI is worked out with this formula:
Searches * Searches / Number of Results.
I worked out the KEI using the the SEO Comp number from Market Samurai as the ‘Results’ parameter, which should be a more accurate reading.
This should give you an idea of which keywords people are searching on in this niche, but that don’t have overwhelming competition for them. The higher the KEI the better. Some keywords I would ignore as they are too broad to be worth competing on at the moment. And some will be out of context. But some of the more specific, high KEI keywords will be handy to know for using in blog titles, anchor text for incoming links, headings, phrases to use in your blog posts etc etc.
And if you can’t be bothered to go through all this yourself, you can download the data I came up with here.
I have hardly touched on the surface of Market Samurai but it looks like a very impressive bit of software for creating traffic friendly websites, and it’s still only in beta! I will probably upgrade to the full version when I have time to sit down and make proper use of it.
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Comments on Internet Marketing Keyword Research
Hi Anthony
I am most impressed by your blog and the keyowrd searching tool/strategy you are mentioning above. It was certainly most interesting way to optimize websites to be traffic friendly
All the best
Nigel
Very cool use of Market Samurai
I liked how you used the data to calculate KEI
Brent
Hi Anthony,
Excellent Post and very informative site you have here! Well done!
I think think keyword research is something most of us have over looked. I’ve taken the liberty of downloading your keyword list and I’ll have a close look at it in detail in a bit.
It’s all the various things we need to learn when we’re starting out in online marketing. It can be very intimidating if we try to do it all at once!
I’m trying to take it all on board but go steadily along implementing a bit at a time.
I’ve added you to my student list on my blog and when you get time feel free to call by and say hi.
Cheers,
Dean Hohn
http://www.deanhohn.com
Sorry Carl,
I got you mixed up with my last visit. Classic example of what interruptions due for you.
Cheers,
Dean Hohn
hey
im glad to see you active with your blog and i thought
id drop by to update you with my latest blog post
(i thought you would maybe like to oil rig hop)
http://marketingwithyou.com/its-time-to-shine-in-2009/
I hope to see you on the live brainstorm session tomorrow
talk soon
Alex Jeffreys
Hi Carl,
Great post and lots of information. I have market samurai too, I got hold of it when it was at beta stage but have the full one now.
I really need to watch the videos again as it is a very powerful tool but I don’t know how to use it to its full potential yet.
All the best
Mark
http://missioninternetmarketing.com
Hi Anthony,
I also have also been using Market Samurai and this program not only works great for finding niches but it also gives you a lot of great information. To date they are not done with it and are adding even more tools to make it that much better. Thanks for the great post and look forward to your success.
Be well and prosper,
Mike
Hi Anthony,
I just want to let you know I have a new post about the traffic competition. Feel free to check it out, the more people join the better for all of us. It`s a program that is made by Mike Filshaime
http://www.whatarethestepsincreatinganonlinebusiness.com
Thanks for the comments guys
a lot of “Hi Anthony’s” here but I guess you were a bit misled by the first comment. It’s actually “Hi Carl” !
Anyway, glad that you’re enjoying the traffic tactics that I’ve posted and I’ll be posting more soon..
Cheers,
Carl.
Hey Carl great stuff! Fellow Alex Jeffreys student here. Mind tossing me in your blogroll, I’ll do the same for you. I’ve heard of this market samari. Great keyword research product. Is it expensive?
Stay in touch, Matt
http://www.matt-cross.com
Hi Carl,
thanks for great info about keyword research. I like the clean style of your blog, but I would like to have the Alex form info area smaller, but maybe it is only me. On my blog I have little newbie info about embedding keywords, maybe useful for some of you.
For our success
/Ali – Internet Marketing Tips
Hey carl
hows it going
i have added you to my blog roll
your site is looking cool and plenty of great advice aswell, i see quite a few of us have been using the alex jeffreys images next to the opt in box. Im trying to figure out how i can upload it to my site but cant seem to work it out
Im also having probs trying to edit my header, if any of you know how i could do this it would be great to get some pointers
its good to see most of the blogs up now, im not the fastest person when it comes to building blogs so i know it can be a bit difficult
anyway speak to ya soon
paul
Hey Carl,
WOW… SEO and Keywords….. I really need to study this more, may need some help!
AWESOME BLOG!
Listen, I was hoping to interview you as a student of Alex…
Are you up for it. I am teaming up with Mark Austin and Garry Parkes and want to feature you on StudentsOfAlex.com in Janurary when we release the site.
Give it some thought and if you are up for an interview leave a post here
>>> http://markcall.com/blog/?p=107
Thanks for considering!
If you can help pass the word on to other students it would be great!
Your a true leader, mate!
Mark Call
http://www.MarkCall.com/blog
Hey, Carl
Yes Keyword searching is what i have been using to drive over
over 30,000 unique visitors a month to my car audio site. I am working on my blog now. What I am finding out is social marketing is so strong right now, another great way to generate traffic.
Also Carl,
I am beginning to LOVE twitter. My followers are growing by the day.
thanks for the twitter tools.
Keep up the good work,
You are well on your way. I am still building my blog. Let me know if you like the New theme, Alex did not like the sportcar.
To One student to another
Merry Christmas
Vince Craine
VMC Marketing
http://www.vincecraine.com/blog
Hey Carl,
Been messing around with Worstracker,so your post on keyword research rang the bells for me.Have you had experience with Wtr.?
I’m only a week into it,but feel like going deeper into this thing.Powerful stuff.Will be glad to share experiences along the way.
Cheers
Big Paul
http://www.bigpaultactics.com
Hey Carl,
Really interesting post.
I’m downloading MarketSamurai as we speak!
… and I’m going to go through the same exercise you did, so I can try and get my head around how it all works.
Thanks again, Carl!
Joe
http://www.JoeTrueman.com
Can Market Sumurai calculate the KEI values? I am not sure about your formula.
Total Searches = “Searches”
SEO Comp = “Results”
Therefore KEI in Market Samurai = Total Searches x Total Searches / SEO Comp
Hi Vincent,
You’re absolutely right, I wrote ‘searches’ when I meant write ‘results’, thanks for pointing that out.
I used the correct formula in the spreadsheet though, so no boby went away with incorrect data
I don’t think Market Samurai calculates KEI, I just do it in a spreadsheet.
Cheers,
Carl.