Keyword Research – The Foundation Of Good SEO

AcnePreventionEtc.com - SEO Project #2 - Update 1
2 Hours Spent On Keyword Research - 40 Hours Left

I started this acne prevention site a little more than a year ago. It earns less than $20 a month and doesn't rank for much. It is no mystery why this site isn't a good earner. The keyword research I did a year ago is terrible. I used a tool called Keyword Elite. Keyword Elite isn't a bad tool. Part of the problem was I didn't know how to use it or examine the data it gave me.

I know A LOT more about keyword research than I did a year ago. I started using an excellent keyword research tool called Micro Niche Finder. If you are serious about building content sites or have other projects that require keyword research, I can tell you it is one of the best keyword tools I've ever purchased. It is absolutely excellent.

There are two main criteria you should look for when picking keywords for your site.

Traffic

Someone has to be searching for it. If the keyword doesn't have traffic, who cares if you rank #1 for it. You won't be getting any traffic in return. I require my keywords to have a minimum of 500 searches a month. Any less than that and I'd rather not waste my time.

Strength Of Competition

In addition to traffic, you have to examine your potential keywords and determine how easily you can rank for them. You can pick a keyword that gets 1 million searches a month, but if the competition is so fierce that you have nearly zero chance of ranking for it, it doesn't make sense to target it.

Micro Niche Finder has a great feature built into the software. It is called Strength of Competition (SOC). This feature of the program uses an algorithm to examine different characteristics of your potential keyword competition and assigns a number based on how easy it would be for you to rank for that keyword. In theory, the lower the number, the easier it will be for you to rank for your targeted keyword.

Bad Keywords Equal Bad Results

Here is a list of the keywords I was targeting and an explanation of why they were bad choices.

acne causes
This keyword gets nearly 1,600 searches a month so it meets our traffic criteria, but the SOC is 2,500 making this keyword nearly impossible to rank for.

best acne treatments
This keyword gets 1,300 searches a month but the SOC is 138. This isn't off the chart, but it is a lot more than my SOC target of 100 or less.

acne prevention tips
This keyword phrase only gets 210 searches a month. It has an SOC of 30, so it'd be fairly easy to rank for. But even in the #1 spot you can only expect to get 42% of the clicks on average. It just isn't worth working to be #1 if that only means less than 100 clicks per month.

acne treatments that work
Finally a decent keyword phrase! This keyword phrase gets 720 searches a month and has an SOC of 20. This meets our traffic and SOC criteria.

best acne medications
Here is another one that isn't bad. This keyword gets 1,300 searches a month and has a SOC of 4. This is certainly a keeper.

home remedies for acne
This keyword gets 3,000 searches a month but has an SOC of 223 making it to hard to rank for.

natural cures for acne
Another keyword phrase that isn't so bad. This keyword gets 2,000 searches a month and has a SOC of 21.

acne skin care tip
This keyword phrase fails our traffic criteria with only 359 searches a month.

acne scar laser treatment
This phrase gets around 1,100 searches a month and has a SOC of 69. This is a keyword phrase we could potentially rank for.

acne scars
This phrase gets more than 7,000 searches a month, but the SOC is a chart topping 31,400. No chance of us ranking for this one!

acne diet
Acne diet gets nearly 2,000 searches a month but the SOC is 1,770. There isn't much chance of us ranking for that phrase.

As you can see, I missed the mark on nearly 80% of the keywords I chose. When you do a bad job of keyword research, your only spinning your wheels. You have to get this right! It is the most important aspect of SEO.

Take a look at my new keyword list created with the criteria above.

Keywords Created With MNF

Posted by: Brent Crouch on 03 Apr, 2009No Comments »