Keyword research is a critical aspect of Internet marketing and yet it is probably the most difficult skill to understand for those just entering the field. It is hard for one to do keyword research manually as there are so many variables that need to be considered. In this free keyword research tutorial we will go over some of these methods and try and clear up some of the mysteries surrounding the subject.
To better understand the necessity of keyword research one must first take a look at what keywords are and why they are so important to the success of an Internet marketing campaign.
How Much Content is There On the Internet?
In July of 2008 Google announced that it had just broken the 1 trillion unique page barrier, Yes, over 1 trillion unique web pages had been detected by their robots. It was also found that over 250 million web properties, web sites and blogs, were in existence. These numbers are even greater today!
How Many People are Searching the Internet?
The world population in July of 2010 was estimated around 7 Billion, and it is thought that around 28% of the population were Internet users, or in other words, almost 2 billion users of the Internet were estimated.
Now of those Internet users it is estimated that around 90% of them use search engines to locate information they are seeking. There are many Internet search engines available, the most popular being Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, Ask, etc… However, Google is the most popular and is used by over 75% of Internet users to search the Internet.
Recently Google estimated that the search volumes had been reached:
* 34,000 searches per second
* 2 million per minute
* 121 million per hour
* 3 billion per day
* 88 billion per month
These figures mentioned above are staggering to say the least.
What Does All of this Have to Do With Keyword Research?
Now users of the search engines have become more and more sophisticated over the years and realize that they need to use good search terms in order to find what they are looking for because there is so much information available on the internet. The average search engine user will use on an average of 4 words in a string to find their targeted material.
The words they type into the search engine query field are referred to as keywords. The material they are searching for is considered a niche.
So by entering information called keywords into the search engine they are looking for a particular niche or subject that they are interested in either getting additional information on or to make a purchase.
As internet marketers we are looking to identify the keywords that searchers are entering for a particular niche with the intent to purchase the item or service being sought after. It is these “buyer keywords” that we need to target.
The Challenge for Internet Marketers Doing Keyword Research:
The challenge is that because of the enormity of the material available it is going to be difficult for the individual searching to find your web page unless you fully understand how to get good position in the SERPS (search engine results pages).
When you do a search in a search engine it will bring back results for the search. You may find only a few results listed or you may find millions of web pages returned in the results. It just depends on the popularity of the subject and the keywords used.
Because you will probably be competing with many other internet marketers for those searching for your niche being marketed it is increasingly important that you get good positioning on the result pages for that search engine query.
Let’s say for example that you have a relatively low competition keyword being used and you find 1,000 pages competing for your customer searching the net. Most have Google results set up for 10 results per page so you are looking at 100 pages of results for the searcher to look at in their search.
What are the chances of them clicking on your page to view your content? Many feel that if they get on page one or two of the search results they are in excellent shape. There were 1000 people searching for the keyword in this example so they feel they have hit a home run. Let’s see what it really means.
How SERPS Will Influence Your Site’s Traffic:
Here is what the estimates are for the click through rate for your site depending on where you show up in the search engine results for 1000 searches per month as estimated by Google:
* Page 01 Position 01: 42.40% (424 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 02: 11.80% (118 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 03: 08.40% (084 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 04: 06.20% (062 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 05: 04.90% (049 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 06: 04.10% (041 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 07: 03.40% (034 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 08: 03.10% (031 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 09: 02.70% (027 visitors per month)
* Page 01 Position 10: 02.90% (029 visitors per month)
* Page 02 Position 01: 00.70% (007 visitors per month)
* Page 02 Position 02: 00.60% (006 visitors per month)
* Page 02 Position 03: 00.50% (005 visitors per month)
* Page 03 Position 01: 00.30% (003 visitors per month)
* Page 04 Position 01: 00.10% (001 visitors per month)
* Page 05 Position 01: 00.05% (00.5 visitors per month)
So when using low competition keywords with limited traffic estimates per month it is imperative to gain number one page one of search engine results for your keyword(s). Now obviously, if you target keywords with higher traffic (and as a result in most cases higher com0petition) things change a bit and you could get excellent traffic with lower positions.
One must also remember you do not have to hit it out of the park on every keyword, You will be using multiple keywords for your campaign, each with their own competition/traffic estimates, each with their own SERPS results, and you will be looking at a cumulative effort.
Let’s say you have a 50 page site and you deep link the site (backlinking keywords found on all 50 pages). You may have hundreds of keywords working for you and even modest traffic on each of the 100+ keywords targeted will result in a cumulative traffic result that could make your overall domain traffic quite acceptable for success.
Now that we have a better understanding of the challenges of keyword research we will begin in the next free keyword research tutorial in this series to begin to learn what we need to do in regards to keyword research to make our campaigns successful.
