Keywords play a major role in Search Engine Optimization. Generally people choose 2 kinds of keywords while optimizing a site.

They are:

1. High competition – highly profitable keywords.
2. Low competition – highly profitable keywords.

Generally it takes couple of weeks to months to get ranked for high competition – highly profitable keywords as the competition for these keywords will be too high.

I always go for low competition – highly profitable keywords as the competition for these keywords is low and they are easy to get ranked in Google in a shorter time.

Here is my strategy for finding low competition – highly profitable keywords. The goal is to find relatively high-search-volume, low-competition ‘keyword phrases’.

1. Open a spreadsheet.
2. Brainstorm and write down all relevant keywords that are related to the product you’re selling including synonyms. For example, if your main keyword is “dog beds”, list other keywords also like “pet beds”.
3. Go to google keyword suggestion tool and type in with the keywords from your spreadsheet. Make sure to select “Broad search’, analyze the results. Select the appropriate keywords by clicking the Add button at the right-side column. It is a bit tricky to select the keywords as nearly all results seem to be related to our products. Just choose the key phrase that you think is closer to your niche and for which you can write content for your website. Do not select, say, “discount on dog beds” if you don’t have or can’t provide discount on your products.

Note: Approximate Search Volume is not exactly the search made in Google.com. According to Google, this column shows the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network.

Google Suggest

Go to Google.com (not a regional Google website like google.co.in) and start typing the keywords from the spreadsheet. Google Suggest analyzes what you are typing in the search box and provides relevant suggested search terms. You can choose one of the suggested key phrases by moving up or down the list using the arrow keys or mouse. As you type, it gives you you key phrases. You find few key phrases that are not in our spreadsheet. These are hidden keywords.

Try to find more and more key phrases by typing slowly in the search box and going alphabetical.

Examples:

“dog beds ab”
“dog beds b”
“dog beds ba”
“dog beds c”

Note down all such keywords. Put everything that you discovered to the spreadsheet.

Yahoo!’s version is called Search Assist.

However, unlike Google, Yahoo! suggests phrases that do not necessarily start with the letter or word you typed in. You find few keywords that do not exist in initial search of “dog beds” in Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Try different terms and combinations to reveal more key phrases. Note all the keywords you discovered in the spreadsheet.

Yahoo Answers

Since most people visit Yahoo! Answers to ask a question, you have very valuable data — the actual keyword phrases used to find information related to your niche or the product that you’re selling.

Within the questions, we can spot phrases such “quality dog beds online” and “cheap place to buy dog beds“.

With a little imagination you can find more long-tail keywords that have little to no competition at all. Add all these phrases to the spreadsheet.

Confused about all the keyword research tool and service options available to you?

No small wonder — it seems like there is a new piece of keyword research software or a new service on the market every other day.

So, I’m going to help make choosing the right market research (or PPC campaign helper) simpler for you with my ‘short list’ of keyword software and services… those that I’ve used and recommend.

But first, a quick blurb about keyword research…

Keyword research is essential for determining market size, competition in the marketplace and zeroing in on the specific products that your target market is searching for. To gather all that information, internet and affiliate marketers use keyword research tools.

Note: The following keyword research software and services are listed in alphabetical order, so you’ll have to check through each summary description to learn which is my personal favorite.

1. Google Cash Detective

   Returns real-time information FAST unlike other tools for which you can wait days (sometimes WEEKS) for competitive intelligence. GCD is powered by vast server clusters capable of tracking millions of keywords, advertisements, landing pages and dozens of other pay per click metrics.

   Google Cash Detective Review | Visit Google Cash Detective

2. Google Keyword Tools

   For those quick keyword and keyword checks, I usually go first to Google’s Keyword Tool to glean some basic insights into my target market. However, for more indepth information, I tend to use one of the tools below, preferable Wordtracker. To find out why, read my | Google vs. Wordtracker article.

   Google Keyword Tool, Google Insights

3. Keyword Country Software

   A comprehensive and complete keyword research tool, Keyword Country connects to major search engines for keyword research (including Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK) and also connects to the industry by performing a deep analysis of the competitor websites. It also steals the niche keywords that competitors in your industry are using.

   Keyword Country Review | Visit Keyword Country

4. Keyword Elite

   Keyword Elite (updated) lets you build long tail keyword lists with lightning speed to generate the largest, most diversified keyword lists imaginable and uncover keyword phrases I guarantee you had absolutely no idea people actually searched on!

   Keyword Elite

5. Keyword Spy

   KeywordSpy really does spy on top affiliate marketers and then gives you a list of all the keywords that make money for them. So you can let all those smart Super Affiliates do the hard work of researching and testing to find the most lucrative keywords – and then you can turn around and use them in your own PPC ad campaigns.

   Keyword Spy Review | Visit Keyword Spy

6. Speed PPC

   Developed by Jay Stockwell – a qualified AdWords Professional – Speed PPC is a keyword research tool for more advanced Internet and affiliate marketers who want to lower their bid costs, increase CTR (click-through-rates), CR (conversion rates) and increase their Adwords quality scores.

   Speed PPC Review (V.2), Review (V.3) | Visit Speed PPC

7. Wordtracker

   Wordtracker is my personal favorite amongst all the keyword research tools available and perhaps the most popular keyword analysis tools being used today. From a massive 340 million keyword database you can learn exactly which terms your target audience are search for and how many times each keyword has been entered.

   Visit Wordtracker | Wordtracker Review

Note: Most of the paid services listed above also offer a free trial version.

How would you like to spy on your affiliate competitors?

KeywordSpy really does spy on top affiliate marketers and then gives you a list of all the keywords that make money for them.

So you can let all those smart Super Affiliates do the hard work of researching and testing to find the most lucrative keywords – and then you can turn around and use them in your own PPC ad campaigns. Watch the video below for a quick peek at what the Keyword Spy free trial offers:

Here is a list of the affiliate marketing intelligence that the KeywordSpy service offers:

Affiliate Marketing Intelligence

• Trace affiliate ids
• Trace affiliates’ keywords
• Search product ids
• Analyze affiliate ads
• Graphical data presentation

Once you’ve checked out the competition, you can create targeted lists of keywords that are proven to generate sales in just a few clicks.

Affiliate Networks

Want to find out which products are being promoted most heavily by affiliates on the Clickbank network – or how many different keywords are being used to advertise a specific product? You can do that easily with KeywordSpy. Affiliate networks supported by Keyword Spy include:

1. Amazon
2. Clickbank
3. ClixGalore
4. Commission Junction
5. Linkshare
6. MaxBounty
7. PayDotCom
8. ShareaSale
9. TradeDoubler

Pay Per Click Intelligence Data

Of course, no keyword spy tool would be worth it’s salt if it didn’t also offer pay per click intelligence data. Here is a list of things that you get with Keyword Spy to dig up the dirt:

• Research on ppc keywords and domain
• Find competitors within your industry
• Mine competitors’ ppc keywords
• View competitors’ ad Copy
• View keyword history (Time Machine)
• Keyword analytics and statistics
• Graphical data presentation
• Keyword storing and monitoring

Want to save money on PPC advertising?

Use KeywordSpy to find the best keywords to use in your ppc campaigns and on your website without risking your money to experiment.

In response to Q and A: Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing, Joe asked “Doesn’t Google Adwords keyword tool give you the same info regarding number of searches as wordtracker? What’s wordtracker’s advantage that you don’t get with Google?”

Those are good questions to ask, especially when you might be thinking about buying a subscription to Wordtracker, so I’ll do my best to answer them.

First of all, what you’ll notice when you do keyword searches using Google’s Keyword Tool and Wordtracker, is that you see wildly different numbers.

Here’s an example. The screenshots below show search results for the keyword phrase “weight training” using both services.

As you can see, Google Global Monthly Search Volume returned 550,000 searches versus Wordtracker’s Count of 434.

OK, so what we first have to realize is that Google is reporting monthly figures and Wordtracker is reporting daily figures.

More importantly, the default search on Google returns Broad match results whereas Wordtracker returns an Exact match. (See below for more definitions of Google’s Global Monthly Search Volume, Broad Match and Wordtracker’s Count and Predicted Count returns.)

Below are the results of a refined Google search, set to “Exact Match”.

Note how the Local search volume decreased from over half a million to 49,500 and the Global results amounted to 74,000 — both of which still amount to much more than Wordtracker’s 434 x 31 = 13,454 total results for the month.

Why the big difference?

Wordtracker is open about the fact that they extract and extrapolate their data from two metacrawlers, Dogpile.com and Metacrawler.com – services that query all the main search engines simultaneously. Their results represent approximately just under 1% of daily searches across all search engines.

However, only Google knows the size of the sample that they use to extrapolate their information, although it is known that Content Network search results are included.

Too, you must consider the fact that Google has a vested interest in making their numbers appear large – as primary users of the Google Keyword Tool are either current or potential Adwords customers.

Wordtracker, on the other hand, has no reason to inflate numbers. They simply provide a keyword research service.

Now, here’s one reason I’ve maintained my Wordtracker account for many years…

If you look back above at the results for “weight training routines”, you’ll see that Google reported “Not Enough Data”.

However, Wordtracker shows a daily count of 146 for the exact same phrase. (see screenshot below).

Furthermore, Google will only allow you to download 200 results, while Wordtracker allows up to 1000.

In overall terms, I prefer the Wordtracker interface which I think displays related results in a more intuitive manner and is faster to use. For example, the first 10 related keywords to “weight training” in Wordtracker were:

1. bodybuilding
2. exercise
3. weight lifting
4. strength training
5. weight
6. weightlifting
7. training
8. workouts
9. fitness
10. nutrition

You can click on any of those results and immediately get their Count and Predicted Count, whereas with Google, you have to type the word in again. Too, Google’s system logs you out after a short period of inactivity, and I usually find myself clicking on “Get Keyword Ideas” several times before the Captcha form comes up again.

Ultimately, I use both Google’s Keyword Tool and Wordtracker. I use Google for quick and dirty searching and Wordtracker for fine-tuning. To me, that “fine-tuning” is worth the price of maintaining a subscription year after year.

Visit Wordtracker (FULL service free trial for 7 Days) | Read my Review

Definitions

These definitions are taken directly from Google and Wordtracker.

Google

Google’s Global Monthly Search Volume shows the approximate average monthly number of search queries matching each keyword result. This statistic applies to searches performed on Google and the search network over a recent 12-month period. It includes traffic in all countries and languages and is specific to your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu. If we don’t have sufficient data for a particular keyword, you’ll see not enough data.

Broad Match – This is the default option. If you include general keyword or keyword phrases (such as tennis shoes) in your keyword list, your ads may appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. For example, your ad may appear for the queries buy tennis shoes and tennis sneakers but not tennis players. Your ads may also be displayed on relevant variations of your keyword phrases and plurals, as well as some related keywords and phrases via our expanded keyword matching technology.

Wordtracker

Count shows the number of times a particular keyword has appeared in our database.

E.g. Our database currently holds 312,095,827 words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times in (this is over 160 days).

Our keywords are taken from major metacrawlers (a service that queries all the main search engines simultaneously).

Our main sources are Metacrawler and Dogpile, the two largest Metacrawlers on the net. Metacrawlers have the major advantage of matching the search profile of the search engines very closely. But are not subject to the same kind of skew from software robots that continually check web site and pay per bid positions.

Predicted Count is the maximum total predicted traffic for all of the major search engines/pay per bids and directories today.

Get a Full Service FREE 7-Day Trial of Wordtracker

With your FREE trial you’ll receive the 7 Profit from Keywords Video series in which you’ll discover how to:

• Create keyword lists.
• Build a basic SEO campaign.
• Avoid common SEO mistakes.
• Optimize a web page.
• Plan PPC campaigns.
• Build quality links.
• Beat your competitors.

Completely risk-free. Cancel anytime.

Curious about pay per click search engine marketing?

Here are some of the most common questions that I regularly answer on the topic:

• What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
• Does Pay-Per-Click Advertising Really Work?
• Should I Bid the Top Spot?
• How Many Keywords Do I Need?
• Where Do I Find Merchant Keyword Lists?
• How Do I Do Effective Keyword Research?

What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Pay per click (PPC) is an web-based advertising model where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s site.

Advertisers bid on keywords and keyword phrases and when a search engine user types searches for a term matching one of the advertiser’s keywords, their ad may be displayed under the ‘sponsored listings’. In the screenshot below, sponsored listings returned for the phrase ‘Flip video camcorder’ are outlined in red.

The cost to advertise on PPC search engines varies according to the amount of competition for a specific keyword phrase.

Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest providers of pay-per-click advertising opportunities.

Does Pay Per Click Advertising Really Work?

Q. I noticed that you are currently advertising your web site on Yahoo! Search Marketing. I am thinking about using Yahoo! Search Marketing to advertise my company, and I was wondering how Yahoo! Search Marketing has produced for you. Are you generating leads, sales and traffic from Yahoo! Search Marketing and other PPC search engines?

A. I think pay-per-click search engine advertising has been an absolute gift to Internet marketers!

What could be easier than to list specific keywords and phrases that your potential customers are searching for anyway, and be able to pay as little as a few cents per click to have them visit YOUR site?

I’ve been using Yahoo! Search Marketing as a traffic generation tool since 1998 — STILL do — and yes, a HUGE portion of my traffic, leads, and sales originate from my Yahoo! pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

I particularly appreciate Yahoo! Search Marketing (as opposed to Google Adwords) because it appeals to a slightly more mature demographic which fits most of my niche markets well.

But as for PPC marketing in general, I use a variety of different search engines to drive targeted traffic to my various sites and at different costs.

I think that the greatest benefit of using PPC marketing to drive traffic to your site is both speed of delivery and the fact that you can worry less about search engine optimization or other ways of driving free traffic to your sites — which ultimately means spending less time working on your marketing strategies and more time for you!

Should I Bid the Top Spot?

Q. Would it be a good idea to for me to pay top dollar to be at the top?

A. Being in the #1 spot on a pay-per-click search engine doesn’t guarantee sales. It just means that you are likely to receive more traffic than advertisers farther down the list.

To determine whether it’s worth spending big bucks to be near the top you have to know and understand conversion rates, ie. How many clicks does it take to produce ‘x’ number of sales? What is your return on investment?

For example, if you make two sales per hundred visitors, then your conversion rate is around 2%. If your revenue per sale is $10, then paying 20 cents per click would completely negate your earnings.

REVENUE     – 2 X $10.00 (revenue/sale) = $20.00 EXPENSES    – 100 (clicks) X .20     = $20.00 NET         – $0.00

However, if your cost per click remains the same, but either your conversion rate or revenue per sale increases, then it might be worth paying 20 cents per click (in this case).

You need to work with your variables and test, test, test your campaigns.

Decide what percentage return you want on your investment, then work the numbers to make that happen.

How Many Keywords Do I Need in a PPC campaign?

Q. You mention that most of your traffic is from pay per click search engines.

How many keywords is necessary to become successful? How many do you have for sage-hearts.com? (I already use Yahoo! Search Marketing and I would think that the fierce competition would demand that I have thousands of targeted keywords.)

A. When it comes to keywords and pay-per-click advertising, I’ve found that it’s definitely a case of ‘the more the merrier’.

For sage-hearts.com, I advertise about 2500 different keywords and phrases at Yahoo! Search Marketing. I also advertise that site on several other PPCSE’s. In addition to wide exposure, having many keywords allows you to ‘dollar cost average’ your bids.

For example, if you pay 30 cents for 1 keyword, and 5 cents for another, and both receive about the same number of hits, your average cost has just gone down to 17.5 cents per visitor.

The trick is to bid on highly targeted keyword phrases (long tail keywords) at relatively low cost.

The best way to dollar cost average is to run numerous campaigns across different pay per click search engine accounts. The following 3 PPCSE’s are the most popular and will therefore drive the most traffic.

• Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Google Adwords
• MSN AdCenter

For PPC account deals and discounts, read FREE Pay Per Click Search Engine Traffic.

Where Do I Find Merchant Keyword Lists?

In a comment on How to Use the Buying Cycle to Choose PPC Campaign Keywords, Carolyn asked “Does every merchant give you a list of keywords you can use? I’ve never noticed these on linkshare or on cj. Can you tell us where they list these?”

Different networks and merchants handle their keyword rules differently. For example, on Commission Junction you’d click on the Advertiser Detail link, find the Keyword Link under Get Links and then click on Get HTML as shown in the next 2 screenshots.

How Do I Do Effective Keyword Research?

Q. Do you have any suggestions for doing effective keyword research?

A. Keyword research is critical both to determine profitable markets and to create web pages that get listed in the search engines and then found by visitors.

There are several articles that pertain to keyword (and market) research in the Find Your Niche section of NPT and I recommend that you first read Niche Market and Keyword Research.

For keyword research, I use both the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool and WordTracker.

I particularly like WordTracker as it provides me with daily search estimates and lets me ‘drill down’ to the longest of the long tail keywords… just 2 of the many features that the service offers.

Here is an example of the keyword phrase ‘dog training’ dug to the first depth using Wordtracker’s Keyword Universe tool:

Click the image to see the full size image.

Click the image to see the full size.

Notice the little shovels? You click on those to go deeper and into each keyword phrase. For example, ‘dog training equipment’ produced the following keyword phrases (Count & Predict included_:

• dog training equipment 31 38
• dog training equipment in texas 6 7
• police dog training equipment 4 5
• Dog Training Equipment Dog Fence And Ring 2 2
• guard dog training equipment 2 2

‘Searches’ is the number of times the keyword has appeared in the Wordtracker database over the last 90 days. ‘Predict’ is Wordtracker’s prediction of the number of times the exact keyword will be searched for in a 24 hour period across all search engines.

With the Keyword Researcher, you can evaluate the number of results that appear when you search for the exact search term and check the ‘Google KEI’ — the keyword effectiveness index for Google.. ‘Google 24 hr Predict’ is Wordtracker’s estimate of the number of times the exact keyword will be searched for on Google.

The real trick is to go as deep as you can go, while still getting a fair number of searches without TOO much competition.

Wordtracker offers a free trial of their service at WordTracker or, you can read my Wordtracker review.

“How do I tell if the keywords I’m picking are low competition but high in popularity?”

shalisha42 asked this question in the NPT Forum…

I’ve written 100s of articles and have submitted my articles through Ezine Articles, GoArticles, Hubpages, and American Chronicle. I tried Squidoo and I NEVER get traffic. The topics are very popular – weight loss, dating and making money online. I promote 3 affiliate products so I make sure I put links in my article – sparingly.

I’m having trouble understanding how to determine if a keyword is worth using in my articles. I use my Wordtracker (I have the full version since last year and still don’t know how to use it despite having read the manual) and Google Keyword Tool. When I see there are at least 11,000 or higher searches monthly, and the bar is completely colored in, I interpret it as being a popular keyword phrase.

But how do I figure out if there is competition? What is the competition barometer? How do I tell if the keywords I’m picking are low competition but high in popularity? I have an EXCELLENT NICHE but because I don’t understand the keyword concept, I think that is what is not enabling me to make sales.

Keyword Phrase Competition

There are many factors as to why articles may not got noticed or ranked, but targeting a keyword or keyword phrases with too much competition could certainly be a problem.

What you should evaluate first is the KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index of a particular keyword to determine whether it’s worth targeting in your articles.

What is KEI?

KEI is a measure of how effective a keyword is for your web site.

In very simple terms, keyword effectiveness is determined by comparing the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is searched (popularity) and the number of times it appears on competing web pages (competition).

The KEI isn’t a strict ratio however, as sheer volume is also considered. So, where the ratio between popularity and competition may be the same for 10 searches/3 sites and 100 searches/30 sites.. the latter would have a higher KEI than the first because it is more popular.

Simply understand that you are looking for HIGH numbers. Here’s an example.

I used Wordtracker’s Comprehensive & competition searches from the “Full Search” link (in the old interface) to study the KEI for ‘dating’ keywords in Google. (See “Wordtracker Terms Defined” at the bottom of the post if you are unfamiliar with the terms “Count, 24hours & Competing shown in the graphic). At the top of the list, the following keywords were shown:

At the bottom of the list, these were the keywords returned.

Note the differences. At the top are very unique searches whereas at the bottom are the most generic terms. The keyword ‘dating’ itself has a KEI of 0.00 – so on it’s own, it’s not worth targeting.

So, if you are focusing on very generic terms in your articles, it’s doubtful surfers will pick them up through the Google listings.

Find a Niche within a Niche

However, as shown in the screenshots above, if you want to catch a popular and increasing trend, you’d do well to work celebrity names into the titles and body of your dating articles. Other worthwhile niches to combine with dating (not shown in the graphics above) are astrological signs such as “Aries man” and geographic regions, i.e. “Indonesian Girls”.

Finding a niche within a niche applies not only to article marketing but to your entire online business as well. For example, if I were starting my online dating review service today, it’s highly unlikely that I would take the broad-based approach that I did with 101Date.com. I would focus on just one of the categories listed in the long sidebar (on the interior pages), such as Mail Order Brides or Disabled Singles.

Ergo, you should hone in on and combine another popular niche (or even 2) with a very generic subject such as dating. An example of a very finely honed niche would be Prince Harry’s dating escapades about which you could write a series of articles. You might branch out from there to write about other royal singles dating adventures and then work that into a promo for Wealthy Men or Millionaire Mates.

Besides, who Prince Harry is dating now is essential knowledge — isn’t it?

The topic of finding a niche within a niche is discussed in the Super Affiliate Handbook as a way to attract more targeted traffic to your site and specific pages.

Wordtracker Terms Defined

Count – This shows the number of times a particular keyword has appeared in our database. E.g. Our database currently holds 296 million words. A count of 147 tells us that this particular word has appeared 147 times out of 296 million.

24hrs – This is the number of predicted traffic you would expect to receive in 24hrs if you were the top bid of the google search engine alone.

Competing- Each keyword has been submitted to the google search engine and the number of competing web pages given in response. The lower the competition (particularly under 300) the easier you will find it to reach the top of google using this keyword.

Do you post your articles on article directories?

Save time. Use Article Announcer to blast your articles to all the right and relevant article directories. The package consists of 4 Audio CDs a transcript of the CDs, the Article Announcer software, a user guide and video tutorial.

I received the following from Wordtracker yesterday morning about their beta version of the new Wordtracker tool.

We’d like you to try out the new tool and tell us what you think, as your feedback will help us prioritize what still needs to be done.

You’ll discover:

(i) A new dashboard feature that allows you to manage all of your keyword projects.

(ii) A quick summary of the number of lists, keywords and the total number of searches in each project.

(iii) That we’ve increased the pool of raw searches from which our data is drawn—from 288 million to over 700 million searches. This represents data collected over a period of 365 days rather than 160 as at present. And it means…

(iv) That we’ve increased the number of unique keywords from 24 million to 152 million keywords, giving you many more long tail keywords.

Note that last statement.

If you’re using PPC marketing, having more long tail keywords means you can get more visitors to your site for less money.

I checked out the new interface yesterday afternoon and definitely prefer the top-to-bottom structure to the original side-to-side. Seems more fluid and user-friendly. You can copy your existing keyword lists and projects from the Keyword Universe and Keyword Researcher into the new keyword tool and then access them all from the Dashboard – with numbers of lists, keywords and searches available at a glance.

Wordtracker does admit that many “features are missing from this new user interface” and that they are working hard to add more functionality.

So far, so good, I’d say – and I look forward to seeing what they have planned as “Alternative ways of assessing competition”.

Visit Wordtracker.

Note from Ros: This is the 2nd in DinerDave’s series. Click here to read the first, Affiliate Site Case Study: Introducing Diner Dave

In order to determine what content to put in the pages and posts of DinerDave.com I need to figure out what my target market is looking for on the search engines. Fortunately, there are lots of great tools out there to help with this market research. I used a couple of reputable keyword research tools from Ros’ post on “10 HOT Market Research Sites“, Wordtracker and Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Since I want to provide helpful information on locating restaurant coupons, gift certificates, and reviews, I decided to test these aforementioned keywords first. Here is just a sample of the keywords I plugged in to both Wordtracker and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to determine what type of traffic I could expect. I selected these keywords because each one has an affiliate program associated with it (ie Restaurant.com and Entertainment.com).:

1. Restaurant
2. Restaurant Coupons
3. Restaurant Discounts
4. Restaurant Gift Certificates
5. Restaurant Gift Cards
6. Restaurant Reviews
7. Dining Coupons

The results showed a VERY viable market for these keywords! I’ve included a couple of screen shots from Wordtracker and Google Adwords Keyword Tool to illustrate:

As you can see Wordtracker shows 1,113 searches yesterday on the keyword phrase “restaurant coupons” and Google Adwords Keyword Tool shows 550,000 searches done on the same keywords last month. I wondered how this discrepancy was possible and, after doing some research, I found that Wordtracker gets its data from Dogpile and Metacrawler as opposed to Google Adwords, which is ALL Google searches. Here are the results from my research on some other keywords I plan to use in DinerDave.com:

OK…So what do all these numbers ACTUALLY MEAN to me when preparing content for my blog? After reviewing the data, I made the following deductions:

1. When writing content for my site it will be very important to incorporate the word “restaurant” and “restaurant coupon” several times. According to the data these will be THE most popular keywords to include on DinerDave.com. I was planning on using the words “diner” and “dining” frequently throughout the site, but there are relatively few searches for any variation of “dining”. Good to know!
2. I’ve researched these keywords over the last 3 months and I’ve noticed that, even though the numbers change from month to month, their popularity remains consistent. “Restaurant coupons” always ranks higher than “restaurant reviews” and “restaurant gift certificates”. Therefore, I need to allocate more posts to “restaurant coupons” than any other category on my site. This is great news because my top 2 merchants, Restaurant.com and Entertainment.com, have high conversion rates on these keywords!
3. According to Google Adwords Keyword Tool there is a TON of competition for the top keywords I will include on DinerDave.com. Obviously, I will not be able to outbid other websites for these very popular keywords. However, I have the advantage of marketing my affiliate programs to a 15,000 subscriber email list! This will be the first order of business when making the transfer from DinerDeals.com to DinerDave.com. Plus, there are other less costly methods of marketing my site to fans of dining out (social media, visiting forums, back links, etc…)
4. Even though there is stiff competition for these top keywords, there are still opportunities with other restaurant related searches such as “restaurant gift cards”. “Restaurant gift cards” had 6,600 searches last month, but the competition was not as fierce for these keywords. I could write an entire post on reviews of the best restaurant gift cards available online. I have already signed up for the affiliate program for GiftCertificates.com and will incorporate that link to monetize that post.
5. When I reviewed the Wordtracker data on “restaurant coupons” I noticed some interesting variations I would not have thought of otherwise. For example, I would not have thought to include the keyword phrase “PRINTABLE restaurant coupons” in my content…but it fetched 469 searches in ONE DAY! Not too shabby. I’ll definitely be using that phrase too.

There you have it…and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I now have a list of over 250 keywords and phrases that I could use in DinerDave.com to drive traffic to the site using just these 2 keyword research tools.

Now I just need to incorporate these keywords into my site. In the next post I will explain how I created content on DinerDave.com by utilizing google alerts, email newsletters and reviewing affiliate sites.

I spy with my little eye and see a Clickbank affiliate paying $4.01 per click to promote a product via a direct-link from the top spot in Google Adwords on a term that shows an average of 5,400 searches per month.

He’s also paying $2.52 for another keyword phrase with that gets 6,000 searches per month… and in one case he’s paying as much as $5.77 per click!

Moreover, those are only 3 of 316 keywords and keyword phrases in that affiliate’s Adwords campaign.

Is he NUTS? and how do I know so much?

Click here to find out…

“STILL my TOP PICK in the keyword research tools category”

Wordtracker is undoubtedly my TOP PICK in the keyword research tools category, and it offers a FREE trial version.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch said this about Wordtracker:

“If you are serious about search engine optimization, then WordtrackerWordtracker is an essential investment, a must have resource for any search engine marketing professional. It combines both a respectable search term database with tools that make mining the information easy.”

How does Wordtracker work?

You simply enter your keyword or keyword phrase, and Wordtracker will generate a list of related keywords, displayed on the left-hand side of their interface.

Better yet, that list includes related keyword phrases and combinations, some of which you may never have considerred!

Click on one of the phrases in the left column and another list of keywords related to THAT keyword magically appears on the right-hand column showing you the number of times that word or phrase was searched for in the previous 60 days.

It also tells you how many of your competitors use those keywords by scouring each major search engine, directory and PPC (pay-per-cick) search engine for results.

From there you have the option to click on individual keywords in the right-hand column to ‘dig’ for even more related keywords and phrases.

Using the paid version, you can add up to 5000 selected keywords to your ‘basket’ which can be emailed to you.

Although the free version is limited in scope and use, I suggest you give it a whirl.

You may purchase Wordtracker’s service by the day, week, month or year. Many professional Internet and affiliate marketers buy short subscriptions of Wordtracker for a day or a week, and concentrate their keyword research during that time.

As of 2007, Wordtracker’s subscrition rates are as follows:

• 1 Year £149.00 / $299.00
• 1 Month £29.00 / $59.00
• 1 Week £15.00 / $30.00

Their service comes with a full 30-DAY money back guarantee.

Summary

No other tool surpasses Wordtracker in terms of accuracy of results and scope of service. I HIGHLY recommend that you sign up for the FREE trial at very least!

Wordtracker