Doing proper keyword research is essential to your success online. Spending a little bit of time understanding what is involved and how to get it right will pay off hundredfold later on.
In this first article in a series on keyword research and analysis, I will introduce you to some free keyword research tools, such as Google.
Getting Started With Free Keyword Research
To get ready start a txt file in which you can cut and paste the keywords you collect. Start with a keyword that is central to your business. Let’s use the term “life coaching” as an example.
A lot of people use word documents to store their keywords but I would advise against this, as word automatically corrects the spelling and sometimes we want to have keywords that are deliberately mis-spelled.
Finding relevant keywords
Enter this keywords into Google and take note of the suggestions that Google gives you. These suggestions will come up automatically when you enter a keyword into Google and wait a few seconds without hitting enter. Note these keywords in your txt file.
Doing free keyword research with Google.
Now press enter and do Google search for this keyword. At the bottom of the search results you will see related search terms. Also note these in your txt file.
How to do lateral keyword research with Google
Try Some Lateral Keyword Research
Keywords aren’t always just variations of one term, finding some lateral keywords can really help you to get more traffic.
A good tool is the Google wonder wheel. You can access it by going to the search results page and then clicking ‘Show Options’ right underneath the search box. You will now see a menu of options on the left hand side. Under the header Standard Review, click ‘Wonder wheel’. Add those keywords that aren’t on your list yet, to your list.
Lateral keyword research with Google Wonder Wheel
Go through the list and delete any keywords that are not relevant to your project.
You should now have a list of at least 10-15 keywords to start with. In the next post I’ll be describing how to analyse your list of keywords to find the best ones. In the meantime, please leave a comment below.
Hi Janna.
I like this article. I’m in a process to find best keywords and this is very simple and quick way how to at least get some idea. I would appreciate if you could add second part “how to analyze keywords and pick up the best one.
Thank you
Lubo
Hello Jana,
Informative post for people new to Internet Marketing. Keyword research is essential to online success. My friend Brittany Lynch used to work for Google in the AdWords department looking after the top 10 of the fortune 500 companies on their AdWord campaigns. Brittany has developed an awesome piece of software for creating Keyword rich landing pages for WordPress you can learn more about it here.
http://bit.ly/LandingPages4WP
It is amazing and can reduce AdWord costs by improving your Google AdWords Score – this is a science in itself. It was Brittany who told be all about Google AdWord score, I had no idea the words were given a rating and the rating heavily influenced the price per click paid on Google PPC advertising. I was so impressed I wrote and article about Brittany’s software on my site. Pop over for a read if you have time.
Hi Lubo,
Thank you for your feedback I am glad you liked the article. The second part will follow shortly!
Janna
Hi Sadie,
Thanks for the tip, will pop over and have a look! I am a member of the superfastresults forum, which also has propriety tools for building landing pages that increase the quality score for adwords campaigns and also have amazing SEO capabilities built-in. It’s great that so many advanced internet marketers make their tools available to their communities now.
Hi Jana Cool post. The wonder wheel is an excellent tool for keyword research. I find a lot of business that use ppc are bidding on keywords with no commercial intent.
Education and implementation is all they need to save money and start capitalising on local search results.
is a step by step guide that shows you how to find those keywords and key phrases to help you get your page ranked high on Google. defines keywords as ..An index term subject term subject heading or descriptor in information retrieval is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document.