How to Do a Proper Keyword Research

If you own a blog you should know by now that keyword research is the very foundation of your online business because if you don’t do a proper keyword research your business will not grow. Keywords drive traffic to our sites and make us money.

If we don’t make money from our sites then there is no reason to put so much effort into our sites. But before thinking of money we should of course think first of helping people by creating quality content on our sites. Quality content and proper keyword research is the foundation of any online success.

Doing proper research

Although keyword research may seem simple enough, it differes a lot from a proper keyword research.

By this I mean when we do the research we must know exactly that the keyword we want to focus on is not too competitive because if it’s too competitive then trying to get ranked for this keyword may be a waste of time and effort.

But how do we know if it’s competitive or there is still a chance to rank for this keyword? Which keyword tool to use in order to get an exact data?

Or is it possible to do a research without keyword tool? In this article I’m going to shed some light on this topic based on my experience and I believe you can benefit from it and avoid my mistakes.

How to get an exact data when doing keyword research

First off, there are different ways to do a keyword research and you are free to use any method you feel comfortable with.

You can either use keyword research tool or Google search. The advantage of Google search provided you know how to use it exactly is that it provides you with the most accurate data.

The advantage of using keyword research tool is that it gives you many variations of keywords which gives you more ideas for creating new content you have never even thought about.

I personally have created a lot of content on my site thanks to this awesome option that all keyword tools provide us with.

If you want to get an exact data on competition, you need to do your search in an incognito mode if you use Chrome browser.

When you do the search you must use quotations in order to get an exact number of competing pages for any given keyword.

Because if you use your keyword without quotations you will get both related and non related search results. So, keep this mind when doing your keyword research.

I personally use a keyword tool included in my membership to this affiliate program. But there is another keyword tool called Jaaxy which uses the same search algorithm. In fact, if you use quotations, you can get an exact data without using any keyword tools.

But I personally use keyword tool because as I said above, it gives me multiple other keyword variations which alone is worth the price you pay for these tools.

Also, if you don’t use quotations when doing a keyword research, Google gives you thousands or even millions of search results, but this is not true results. If you scroll through search results, page by page you will realize that actual search results are WAY less than those that are seen on the screen.

Just as an example, take a look at the results that Google gave me for the keyword “How to do a proper keyword research.”

It shows me over 6 million results while in reality if you use quotations for the same keyword, you will get a little over 1000 search results.

Also, even if you use quotations, you need to scroll through all search results manually, page by page to see the correct results.

If you do so you will realize that the number of competing pages is even less than the number you’ve got after using quotations. So, don’t forget that.

Google rankings and traffic

The next thing you need to pay attention to is the proper keyword research before writing content. Focusing on competitive keywords doesn’t make any sense because most likely that you will never outrank old sites for the same keyword.

I know it doesn’t make any sense when you see a short article on an authority website ranked on the first page of Google and your in-depth article that is WAY better and it is still burried in search results.

You feel frustrated, and you are not alone with this feeling. But this is how Google ranking algorithm works and we can do nothing about it.

The only way to getting Google’s first page ranking is through creating quality, in-depth content and focusing on less competitive keywords. If you do so, you will get good rankings over time.

Just as an example, I have 290 pages on my blog and over 150 pages are ranked in top 10 and 20.

I’m getting between 100–150 visits a day from search engines, most of which come from Google. My traffic is not so great as I expected, but it’s growing every month.

But to be honest, my traffic should be much higher and below I’m going to tell you about my mistakes so you can avoid them.

My mistake

My mistake was that I didn’t pay much attention to choosing less competitive keywords. I mainly focused on keywords that had over 100 competing pages which is wrong as I can see it from my experience.

Because when you choose keywords that have over 100 competing pages it’s still not easy to outrank old sites. From my experience I can say that it’s highly recommended to focus on keywords with under 60 competing pages.

Take a look at the images below. The first screenshot was taken from the keyword tool and the second one from Google search.

As you can see, it shows only 27 search results which means you will be competing with 27 pages. If you compete with 27 pages or even 50 pages your chances to rank high in search engines increase significantly.

Focusing on less competitive keywords gives you better ranking results

Of course, if you choose a keyword with a small number of competing pages it means traffic is low too. But if you create many such pages you will start getting a good amount of traffic. Let’s say you have created 200 pages of content and only 100 pages got ranked on the first page.

If each of your top ranked pages gives you 1,2 visits a day you can start getting around 150, 200 visits a day. Not bad at all. Some of your pages can even give you more visits which means your traffic may be even higher than 200 visits a day.

It’s much better and more realistic way to get traffic instead of trying to outrank old sites through highly competitive keywords.

That’s why I strongly recommend to choose keywords with under 100 competing pages, preferably under 60.

This is what I learned from my experience and this is what I’m doing now and once I get better ranking results with and increase my blog traffic I will definitely write a case study and share my experience with all of you.

About the Author: Adam

My name is Adam. I'm the founder of Your Income Advisor. My goal is to help others succeed online, by exposing scams and reviewing top rated products. I can help you start your own business online