A good portion of my business involves spending hours and hours using incredibly powerful but difficult to master software to uncover thousands of the exact, targeted keyword phrases people in any given niche market are typing into the search engines.
When people new to the internet discover what I do and see the huge lists of keyword phrases and search data I uncover and compile, they often ask me what the heck it is used for.
My clients and customers on the other hand, tend not to ask questions at all. They just pay me, take their lists and happily disappear into the shadows. Do they know something you do not
It really all boils down to this - you do not have a good chance of creating and launching a successful niche website if you are lacking the keyword data about your niche market.
If you do not know what related keywords and keyword phrases potential visitors are actively searching on and if you do not know how often they are searching for these terms, you will never know exactly what it is they want, how badly they want it or how you can get that information in front of them.
Good keyword data lists for any given niche market are hard to research and expensive to come by, but are invaluable to those who put them to use. Good niche keyword lists serve many functions including:
They allow you to see the actual thoughts and desires going through the minds of those in your target market as they search online. At the very least, these list will give you hundreds of ideas for different websites, info-products, ebooks and more that you can create and profit from, knowing ahead of time that there is a demand.
They are used to launch pay-per-click campaigns to drive targeted traffic to your site. Savvy web marketers know that bidding on large numbers of targeted keywords with low bids has distinct advantages over bidding on just a few expensive top-trafficked phrases.
They are used for creating content for niche websites. For example, the keyword phrases are useful for generating article titles and topics you already know are in demand.
And of course, they can help with SEO. For those with a little more experience in search engine optimization, knowing exactly what phrases people are searching for in any niche gives them an incredible edge and much higher chance of achieving high search engine listings that lead to traffic.
If you are just throwing up websites without incorporating professional niche keyword research into your site planning, content development and search engine optimization, you are truly taking a shot in the dark.
And if you are not able to afford the expensive software and time it takes to learn how to use it to do the research yourself, there are always others who offer their research for your use.
James B. Allen is a niche marketing consultant who provides private research for a small, exclusive client list of internet marketers, website designers and SEO professionals. Download a free sample of his market research at:
By now you have likely heard that keywords and keyword phrases, are extremely important in having search engines display your website. So how do you choose them Guess Ask a friend Check successful competitors sites There is a better way!
First lets digress. There are a lot of things that affect your ranking in search engines and ultimately how many sales you make from you website. The quality of the (and amount of) content on your site, how many links point to your site, what keywords are used, how they are used, even the age of your site can play a factor. Large companies spend thousands on getting their companies to the top of the rankings and keeping them there. If youre a small company trying to compete with these large budgets, you are likely to come up short.
So, how can a small business with a far more moderate budget compete Niche Marketing! People searching for information on products dont always use the keywords you would expect them to use. And just because a competitor has a large enough budget to reach the top with a certain keyword or keyword phrase doesnt mean you will be able to. Niche phrases are sets of keywords that people are using to search in the search engines. If you are able to rate high on these niche phrases you will see an increase of traffic. To find out what words people are using you need to use one of the word tracking sites. These sites find out from the search engines exactly what phrases your potential customers are using.
For example using Google, used cars turned up 36,900,000 results; if you dont show up in the first 10-30 results it is very unlikely you will ever have someone click on your site. In this case every major car dealer and thousands of smaller dealers are competing for those same 10-30 spaces. You have a huge amount of competition. Likely though your potential customers also see this huge number and if he or she cant find what they are looking for they will try to limit the search. If they are looking for a local dealer they may try adding a city. My office is near Redding California. By entering used cars Redding, I still receive 205, 000 results. Thats a lot closer and maybe I could optimize my pages to reach near the top, BUT will my efforts really produce the results I want
So far I have only guessed that my potential customers are really using this search phrase. If I check my competitors site I will only be able to see their guesses. That is where word tracking comes to play. There are a number of sites that offer word-tracking services. Some are free, others charge for their service.
The advantage Ive found of using a paid word-tracking site over the free sites is that at the free sites, you are told how many times a word has been searched for but there is little or no other information provided. These extra features are what help you to make the best decision on your keywords. These features include keyword suggestions based on your starting keyword, and most importantly the ratio of how many people use that phrase verses how many competitors are using the phrase. It takes a little time to learn how to make the best use of word tracking software, but it is well worth the effort. If you are having someone else optimize your site, insist that they find out what phrases are being used.
Using word tracking you will be able to tell how much competition you have for each phrase and how often the phrase gets used, so that you can optimize a website page for phrases that will get clicks to your site. To illustrate the point, would you rather have 0% of the clicks resulting from 1000 searches or 20% of the clicks resulting from 100 searches If you choose keyword phrases that will put you at the top of the search engines lists you are far more likely to see results you want.
Thats the benefit of choosing your keywords wisely!
Dwayne Goerges is the owner of and of Shasta Lake CaliforniaSpecializing in data driven websites for inventory display and client management.