You will hear that Keyword Research is, undoubtedly, the most critical part of getting started in your business, no matter what you’re doing.

You want to find out, to the best of your ability, which words are going to bring you business, not just traffic. If you are ready to put money into this, see our article on using PPC to find words that convert. If you would like to go the free route (this is where we each started) stick around and we’ll show you how right here.

As you are ready to move forward in your internet marketing training, we will introduce more technical tools (most of them are not free) and teach you how to use them. We’re assuming that you’re just getting started, and want to get the basics down really solidly before you move on to more complicated things.

Eventually, you will learn techniques that will help you rank for even highly competitive words, but your goal right now with keyword and competitive analysis is to find keywords that are very low competition, while still receiving some searches. The keywords will either have 1000-5000 results on the Search Engine Results Page (when searched for with quotes, or allintitle: before the key phrase) or more results, but the highest ranking sites have done a poor job optimizing for those terms.

1. Brainstorm:
Step One in Keyword Research is to get out a piece of paper (or a Word or Excel Document if you like to brainstorm on the computer) and write down every word you can think of that applies to your business. If you, like Ashley C. sell diaper bags, think of other ways to say it, like Baby Bags, or Baby Diaper Bags. These types of words are going to be your top tier keywords. They are usually very competitive, and not necessarily very targeted. If someone is searching for a diaper bag, they may or may not be ready to purchase the product. Regardless, they are a great place to start.

2. Create Long Tail Keywords:
Once you have this general list of keywords developed, you’re going to work on narrowing it down to what we refer to as second tier keywords, or long tail keywords. These words are more highly targeted, and though they may not receive as many searches as other keywords, they are more likely to convert a searcher into a sale. (We call these conversions). For Ashley C’s site, this meant adding words like “personalized” or “monogrammed” to her top tier keywords. For Ashley R., it meant including words like “discount” or “beach” to her top tier wedding favors keywords.

[ =3,21,22]
3. Try to think like a customer would.
It can be nearly impossible to get out of your thinking as someone in the industry, so you can cheat a little here. Do a search for your top tier keywords in Google. Typically, whoever shows up first has done their research, so you can “borrow” it from them. What are they using in the meta title of their site? (The blue words across the top of their search result).

*Hint: Click on the sites that are showing up at the top for your top tier keywords. On your tool bar, click on “View” and Select “Page Source.” You will see a bunch of html code that is hard to read. Hit Control F to find the word “meta title” on their page. Their meta title tags and keyword tags will show you all the words they are trying to rank for. This will give you new ideas, and insight into what your eventual competitors are working towards!

4. Use Google’s Keyword Tool:
Now that you have a fairly comprehensive list of keywords that you think are a good idea, you are going to use our favorite keyword tool, Google’s External Keyword Tool. Enter those keywords into that free tool, and you will not only get a huge list of Google’s suggestions, you will also be able to see how often these words are searched. Look at the green competition bar. This is not for organic rankings, it’s for PPC, but it can still be useful information for us. If people are spending money on a keyphrase, they are likely making money on it, so if it is very competitive, it’s likely making people money! On the drop down menu that is on “broad” select “exact” and you will get an even better idea of what is being searched. You can start to see these numbers as dollar signs for you, they soon will be!

*Hint: At this step, focus on finding those long tail keywords. Ashley C. may want to rank for “diaper bags” because it receives almost a million searches a month. Unfortunately, because it’s such a general term, it would take her six months of hard work to rank for this term, and may only result in 1-2 sales a month because it’s not very targeted. Pink Diaper Bags receives a fraction of that amount, but the term, since it is longer tail, will be easier to rank for. She will be able to match this keyword up with a page that only has pink diaper bags on it, so visitors will be more likely to be led to the exact thing they are looking for, so they will be more likely to purchase. Now, when she looks how many people are searching for pink toile diaper bag, there are even fewer searching for the term. However, that phrases is easy to rank for, and people who are searching for a term that specific are ready to buy, so it is worth her time and energy!

5. Do not be distracted by the highly searched keywords:
If something is receiving 65,000 searches a month, it is likely very competitive! As we’re starting out, we’re not going to focus on those, even though you want to keep them in mind for down the road. Pay attention to your top tier keywords combined with words such as “buy” or “purchase online.” Those are people that are ready to spend money!

6. Focus on Money Generating Keywords: Make sure that your keywords are ones that buyers would use, not people searching for information or free handouts. Some of these are obvious. Don’t target phrases that have the word “free” or information gathering words. To check up on this, you can use Microsoft’s Detecting Online Commercial Intent Tool. Enter keywords in and the tool will tell you the likelihood that the searcher is looking to buy what they are searching for. Do a search for you keywords in Google. Are most of the results selling something, or are the mostly information sites (if you are doing an information site that will include affiliate products, this may still be a good keyword for you.

7. Select Keywords and Download them into a spreadsheet:
You will have dozens, maybe even hundreds of keywords at this point. Now it’s time to narrow them down. You want to pick three or four top tier keywords that will help the search engines see what your site is about, then develop a list or 10-15 long tail keywords with each of these top tier words. The number of keywords you choose beyond that will depend on the size of your site. A good rule of thumb is that you should not pick keywords that you do not have content for (or are not willing to build content for). You will be targeting 2-3 keywords on every single page of your website, and you will (later) be matching these keywords with your products, so think about what products you sell, what categories you will have, what blog posts you will write, and so on. Each of these pages will be specifically matched with some of these keywords, so narrow down your list based on this. Move these around in the spreadsheet so they are grouped thematically (all the color related words together, or the size related words) in a way that makes sense to you. Make sure the long tail keywords are between 3-5 words long. Any longer and they stop being relevant to search engines.

8. Hang on to this list, we’re going to use it constantly!
These will be used in your content, but also in your title tags, description tags, alt texts, on each of your pages on your site (different words for every page!) and in your anchor texts in backlinks. (don’t worry if you don’t know what any of this is, you will!) If you have an ecommerce store, you will use these keywords on your product pages, and as your categories when you group things. If you have a blog, these will be in your post titles, in your categories, and your tags.

Your next step is to go check out your competition for the keywords, to see if they are worth your time. We’re going to focus on finding some long tail , second tier keywords that are very low competition, so you can rank quickly for them and start converting visitors (making sales) right away!

[/ ]