One of the most important thing when it comes to making money through niche sites and making money through your blog are without doubt finding valuable keywords with low competition.
Most people usually have two different problems when it comes to making money online. Finding valuable keywords and getting visitors to your site.
I’ve met people who have succeed into driving hundreds of unique visitors each day and getting a high CTR but never made any good money simply because their PPC were way to low. By simply rephrasing their headlines I had one guy who went from PPC $0.2 to $1. Small tweaks which improved his revenue with 500 percent. Think what that could do for you.
Find Keywords and Their Search Volume
To be able to research the value within your keywords your first step is to find as many keywords as possible when you’ve decided on a niche.
For this purpose I use three different tools:
Personally I tend to use Google AdWords Keyword Tool of old habit and because it’s possible to search for Swedish keywords where I currently have all of my niche sites. Just remember to change Match Type into Exact.
MSN AdCenter Research Keywords Tool seems to be a bit more accurate but for some reason I’ve never been particularly fond of using it.
Last we have Wordtracker Keyword Tool which is not very accurate and also lack support for Swedish keywords. On the other hand they sometimes displays keywords not mentioned by Google and MSN.
I’m also using a custom made tool created by me to display all keywords on a specific page. Subscribe and find out when I release this tool for free.
Understand Temporal Fluctuations
Looking on search volume is all about the past, but since we are creating a new site or finding keywords for our new blog post we want to see what’s ahead for our specific keywords.
Why is this important you may ask yourself. If the keyword have had thousands of unique visitors last few months it will most certainly also have it the next few months as well. I will use Tamagotchi (wiki) as a great example to show you why this is not the case. A few years ago it seemed to me like everyone got a Tamagotchi everywhere. You were supposed to feed it, hug it, play with it, etc. Everyone had one until suddenly no one did.
As you can see in the graph above it would have been a great idea to create a site about it in the end of 2004. If you on the other hand were slow to find out about this gadget and decided to create one in the end of 2007 it would only have been downhill for you. With that said you might still make money.
Tools to use:
As with the case with search volume I also tend to use Google here.
Find Out if Your Keywords are Valuable
Now it’s time for the most important part. We have a long list with high search volume keywords and the question is; “are they valuable”?
As you can see there are a huge difference in estimated revenue for every click on these specific keywords. I always recommend everyone to use the keyword buy instead of information. This is simply because it’s easier to get someone to spend money if they are already looking to buy something.
On the other hand you are probably going to have more competition in keywords including buy, but more on this later on.
Tools to use
In this case I actually prefer MSN instead of Google but as always Google have so much of the visitors so they are most often the one to follow.
Besides these two free tools you also have hundreds, if not thousands, of premium tools with different results. These two are those I use and therefore are able to recommend for you to use.
Check Your Competition
Since this is such a huge topic which anyone can write several pages on I will save this for later and write a specific post about it. Until then I would appreciate to hear all about your methods to check out your competition.
How do you research keywords?
I usually use webmasterwebsite.nl to check my keywords and other important stuff. You must have a look at it.
Looks like a handy service Rick. I will check it out.
I only used Google Keyword Tool for research keyworks. Thanks for nice post
This is what a lot of people do and by doing so you will miss out on maximum revenue for a specific keyword. As I mentioned above I had one extreme example where one person succeeded to raise his revenue with 500%.
All the ways mentioned by you are really good to find worthy keywords bu for me I would like Compete and Adword tools.
It’s a great idea to find good keywords in your niche. But when you write any article to rank well for particular keyword make sure you write it for your readers and not for search engines.
I agree with you Harshad. You should always try to deliver quality content, but more on that in my content section.
That’s true Harshad but a post can be written for both : Users and Search engine. Else within time frame that post will not get traffic….
Harsh you are absolutely right because without traffic blog can not publicly known.
Without traffic blog can go into darkroom,I mean it will unseen to public.So posts should be written for both.
In terms of MMO, I’m not really into pay-per-click as of now. Though before, I used to heavily concentrate at it. I recommend Keyword Country though. At first, it might get quite expensive but the tools are really the best in the industry. It’s been recognized by a lot of Adsense Masters too so I came to trust it. Then again, as what I’ve said, PPC is not my thing right now. Though I encourage everyone to at least know the basics of this.
I think a lot of people are using PPC and Google AdSense to make their first money online since it’s so simply. If you get a click you are sure to get some revenue. With that said it’s usually a lot easier to make big money in the end by using affiliate networks.
Nice tips. Very helpful. I have never tried much of keyword research but I understand it is very important. So thanks.
Stefan,
I usually stick with Googles Keyword Tool. I used to not even do keyword research, but then realized how big of a mistake that was. Keyword research is essential before getting into a niche.
You can get far by simply using Google Keyword Tool but the best thing about Google Traffic Estimator is that you can also calculate how much you are going to earn through PPC. If you on the other hand tend to use affiliate marketing instead it’s not that important to use their Traffic Estimator.
Yeah, I agree. I’ve used Adwords a few time, but haven’t had much success. Just a quick question — as you seem you know quite a lot about Adwords.
Let’s say it says that the Minimum First Page Bid Is $0.11. If I bid $0.12, my ads will appear on the first page, right? But when the ad begins running, I see it in my Adwords account that it shows average ad placement, and shows numbers such as 3.6, 5 — obviously not one. How do I know how much to bid so that my ad is 1st for the specific keyword?
You can use Traffic Estimator to see how much you have to spend to get your ads to show within 1-3.
When you have showed your ad a few times you can use the bid simulator. While listing keywords you simply head over to Max. CPC and press the small button right to the amount: (image)
There you can see how many clicks you will get if you raise your amount.
Thinking about it, Google sometimes have up to 8 different ads on one search so you are sure to land on the first page if you follow their recommended amount.
Thanks Stefan! Understand it completely now
Stefan I use this while compiling my posts…This give me an idea how much I can expect for click on adsense and more over sometime just tweaking a single keyword gives my more value to my ads and search engine traffic
This is the best thing about keyword research. Just by doing small tweaks you can make several hundreds more percent revenue.
Where exactly we need to place these high paid keywords? In post content? in All in one SEO?
Its difficult to compose a post keeping keywords in mind. That’s where am failing
The most important thing is to place them in your title (< title >), headers (h1, h2, h3) and also within your content. Just remember to not use them everywhere and to many times. I’ve seen bloggers putting in their keywords in almost every sentence, which will not help you in terms of SEO.
I have very question regarding COMPETITION of keywords. how you know which keyword has less competition. because i face problem in this. when we add keywords on search engines, we get search assist from them Google and yahoo. Like how many pages have make money online” terms and how many pages have ” how to make money online ” term. Because make money online is general term, for all make money online types of keywords. So, obviously higher number of pages indexed on Google.
Usually, we assume how to make money online is less competitive then make money online.
My question is
1) what if more powerful websites target how to make money online” then make money online. Because we are assuming make money online is more competitive then how to make money online.
2) If, i start blog with very narrow keywords in title “make money online now”. So, will i rank easily for that keyword on search engines?? Because i saw many websites have only one page indexed and getting on the top of Google. not on money niche.
Reading through your questions I feel a red line which basically is about how we can check our competition and find out which keywords we should target.
There are a lot of answers to this question and even though I know some of them, search engines still doesn’t tell us everything. I will post a long article on this later on so subscribe if you don’t want to miss it, but until then I can tell you that quality is more important than quantity.
Sometimes it’s better to target a keyword with 1 000 000 other sites instead of targeting a keyword with 1 000 sites. Why? Simply because it’s all about being on the first page. Even though there are more sites targeting for one keyword they could have worse SEO, backlinks, etc.
I subscribed for your blog. I will ask questions later.
Excellent article Stefan, as I have a blog since not too much time I always look for keywords ranking high on the present moment so i can create some good contet but I think your strategy is more accurate as, you check on more than one site, I only do it on googleadwords always.
You’re welcome Luis, I’m glad you found it useful.
important post for me , hope this help me to reach my goal,
I am new to internet marketing and I have read so many times that keyword research is the most important thing for your project.
Thanks for explain how could I can perform the keyword research, very useful article.