1st Search Engine Rankings &#187; Keyword Research

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Market Research Sleuth – (Previously ‘Analyze Keyword Competition’ in V1)
I don’t really see a lot of difference in this feature except a bit more convenience in filtering functionality and the added Search Trends column which I have found handy for many niches. All you have to do now is click the little ‘filter’ image: and you can sort any column using this method (this is the case with any feature of Keyword Elite V2)… instead of the KE1 method of clicking “edit filters”… so not a new feature just more convenient and pretty. But as far as I am concerned convenience interprets into saved time and time is money… atleast for me it is. I get between $100-250 an hour for consultation so wasted time costs me.

Here is a quick screen shot of the Market Research Sleuth feature and the filtering option:

Market Research Sleuth Feature - Keyword Elite V2

The search trends addition is really the only new part of this feature that I noticed however it seems to be more efficient at getting the results then the old version was which is always a big plus.

I will write another post on each individual feature and how to use them later on, but at this point I am basically trying to give you a honest comparison of each of the features to the old version and give you an unbiased opinion of whether or not you should buy Keyword Elite V2. I hope to soon have video tutorials of the tool…

Adwords Time Machine
Actually a really useful and interesting feature of Keyword Elite V2 is the Adwords Time Machine which gives you 6 months history on the top Adwords campaigns for your specified keywords. Allowing you to quickly note if your competitors have changed their campaigns recently, what doorway pages/affiliate pages they are using to convert traffic and their exact ad copy. I did a quick test of this tool this morning and found the information quite useful.

There is a blue blob (please note screenshot) for each month that a specific advertiser was running a campaign for said keyword. A orange star lets me know quickly that the advertiser changed the ad copy for that specific month compared to previous months. For advertisers this information could prove useful because of how easily it can be obtained. I do comparatively little PPC advertising to Organic search engine optimization so I am not the best person to comment on this feature, but for the little I do, I am pleased with the simplicity of it and how useful it could prove to be.

Adwords Time Machine - Keyword Elite V2

Search Engine Dominator
This is probably the most useless feature of Keyword Elite V2, in fact I am surprised Brad made such a big deal over it in one of his clips on the tool. The information provided in this feature is largely outdated SE techniques, probably the most important of the data provided being that of the backlinks of each of the competing pages.

Basically what this feature does is provide information about the top 10 organic competitors for Bing, Google and Yahoo. It sounds good on paper but when it boils down to it, the information provided is largely useless and outdated. It provides keyword density information which we know most search engines don’t even factor in anymore… the truth is, if any of this information is used in the factoring of search engine ranking it is very minimal. (excluding of course backlinks)

Now I know saying this won’t earn me points with Brad but I am not promoting this tool for Brad, I am reviewing it for my readers… and so I am going to give you the lowdown on everything because you deserve to know what the tool really does… and what it doesn’t do.

HOWEVER if you buy Keyword Elite V2 you will (for a short time) get Seo Elite V4 absolutely free. Seo Elite has a feature which analyzes the top competing sites and is actually very useful. It provides good information on how many and what type of backlinks each of the top sites has. Not sure why Brad didn’t just integrate this right into KEV2. But as far as I am concerned SE Dominator is useless and don’t buy KE for this feature or you will be disappointed.

But if you only knew how much money and time i have saved by using Seo Elite’s Analze Competitors Backlinks feature you would buy Keyword Elite V2 just for that bonus. When in consultation I do a lot of manual work but my first action is a quick run of this feature in Seo Elite. So if your looking for something like Search Engine Dominator promises to be then you might buy it for the Seo Elite free bonus.

Search Engine Dominator - Keyword Elite V2

Adwords Competition Sniper
I don’t have a lot to say on this except that it allows you to monitor competitors campaigns yourself and discover keywords they are repeatedly running. The idea is that if they keep running a specific campaign then it must be effective and if they drop others then they, consequently are probably less effective. I have not had enough time to properly test this, so I can’t honestly rate this feature. I can however see where it could prove to be very useful, especially if used in conjunction with Adwords Time Machine data. I might try and run some video tutorials on this feature soon to give you a better idea of what it can do. For now just look at the screeshot or feel free to drop me a line with questions on it.

Adwords Competition Sniper - Keyword Elite V2

Advanced Google Site Targeting
This feature allows you to find niche sites that are using Adsense. That way you can use Google Adwords Site Targeting feature to advertise on these sites for more targeted advertising. This would primary be useful for Adwords advertisers however the data could also be used to request one-way links.

I can’t see myself using this feature too much unless it proves to be useful in finding potential sites to get one-way links from.

Advanced Google Site Targeting Feature - Keyword Elite V2

JV Diamond Miner
This feature is actually pretty cool and I have found it very useful although it isn’t perfect. The idea is that you enter a keyword and the tool looks for related sites that are ranking at the top of Google who send out mailing lists. You can then contact the owners and see if they might promote a product/tool or website for you in their mailing list.

It is a interesting feature and I have found it very useful in the last two days I have used it… you can go 200 deep into the Google results for your specified keyword however for most cases you will want sites that rank high so may not go that deep. I have used this feature already to contact potential partners and already have gotten a few favorable responses for the few I have done. So I can see myself using this feature quite often and of course reusing the reported data for years to come… so this could prove invaluable.

I am not sure this feature alone is worth the $200 that Keyword Elite costs for the average person but it definitely is to me and I am sure if you have any kind of marketing experience you can make your $200 back in no time, with this feature alone. Don’t underestimate the ability to use your competitors to promote YOUR agendas.

Below is a screenshot of a simple report I did for illustration purposes, results can (as usual) be sorted by Alexa, ranking, domain name, page PR(the actual PageRank of the page), and whois info can be found by clicking a link next to each url – definitely not as convenient as live but it is available. What I would really like to see is Brad integrate email reports and export options for this feature… it would make it much easier if I could just email myself a report for my archives and future reference…

JV Diamond Miner Feature - Keyword Elite V2

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CPA Magnet
Perhaps more than anything else this is a teaser for Brad’s Affiliate Elite program (which by the way is AWESOME) but it is, like the JV Diamond Miner feature, a really cool addition to the tool. If there is anything better then a good tool it is a couple of great tools all coupled together. And I guess that is what Keyword Elite is… If nothing else the CPA Magnet feature gives the user a VERY quick method of finding potential affiliates. As is the case with all of the features of this tool, you may sort the results by each column, for this feature the primary columns would be highest payout, lead and sales/percentage… providing you easily a great deal of data on which of the results will best suit your purposes as an Affiliate marketer.

I must say that if your serious about affiliate marketing this feature is but the tip of the iceberg, I would however recommend you spend the $4.95 and get Affiliate Elite because it is worth every penny you will pay.

And that wraps up the individual review of each of the features. My final opinion? Buy Keyword Elite V2, it is worth every penny you will pay and even if you already have Keyword Elite V1 you will find the new upgrade very profitable… within a few hours of purchasing while just testing the tool for review I made back my whole investment.

I have absolutely no doubt that someone who is serious about Keyword Research and SEO will find this tool worth every penny of the asking price. But if you should buy it and decide differently you have 8 weeks to get a full no-questions asked refund. So I recommend you make the purchase and see what Keyword Elite can do for you. If you have already purchased Keyword Elite V1, please email me at randy(at)1strankings[dot]com and ask for a coupon code that will save you a considerable amount on the purchase of V2.

Please watch for future articles featuring video tutorials of Keyword Elite and more in-depth tutorials on using each of the features of the tool. Please post your comments and experience in using the tool here, I would love to hear about your experience.

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Google reveals their search volume data… FINALLY!

visio — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:08:22 +0000

Seemingly out of thin air Google has decided to reveal their search volume data to the public. I don’t know about you but I am very excited about this. No more guessing or using highly inaccurate tools such as overture yahoo keyword tool. Over and over I hear common, everyday people say “Google it!” and I think this new revealing of google search data proves that is exactly what we do. Just for illustration purposes I want to show you just how radically different Googles actual search volume is compared to Yahoo or MSN and how this new data can help us be more accurate in how and where we compete in growingly competitive industry.
If you have ever wanted to know the search volume data for Google your prayers have been heard or atleast your getting your wish. You can now see the the actual search volume for any keywords in Google. I don’t know about you but this tool just went up to my number two keyword tool over night. I will explain later what tool is my number one keyword tool and exactly why.

Just for the sake of it I did a quick search on Overture for the keyword ’seo’ and here is what I got…

I am getting a search volume of about 18K queries. Keep in mind this is data gained over the past 12 months. Now take a look at the new Google released search volume data. Goto https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and enter the keyword seo… here is the results I got.

Notice the difference? Google gets 1.2 million search queries for a keyword Yahoo is only getting 20K for… that is absolutely amazing. I have seen this over and over in my rankings on Google and Yahoo… I can get 500 hits for one keyword on Google and Yahoo will send only a couple hits in a whole month.

Now that I have shown you the difference in the search volume between Google and Yahoo let me show you what this tool can really do. Okay lets start off by doing some keyword research for a laptop bag supplier which specializes in leather bags. So that appears to be our main keyword.
So lets enter that into the tool and get some suggestions.

Right away I find two additional keywords worth targeting…

leather computer bags and
leather laptop cases

In june the first keyword received 9,900 queries in Google and it averages 14,800. If you click the “Choose columns to display” dropdown menu and click “show search volume trends” it will show a graph depicting the trends… unfortunately and this is something I hope Google will rectify soon, but currently it only gives a graph bar for the trends when IMO mouseover should give a numeric value for each month depicted in the trends graph… but I can live without that for now.

What I do like about the current situation of the tool is it gives you the previous months search volume and the trend data and also the average data… this helps you to eliminate keywords which might have had a temporary spike in search volume in one month which you will likely not see again for some time. This is very important to me… another thing that I really like about this tool which really should be in ANY keyword tool is the ability to sort results by search volume or keyword in alphabetical order. But using this tool to find high traffic keywords and then comparing trend data will be highly useful to me in the coming months. I know I will be using this tool all the time!

Okay back to our results… I have compiled a list of part of the keyword suggestions google has provided, I did not bother to try and sort them or anything, I pretty much left them raw. And here it is…

One thing that is interesting to me is the vast difference in the singular and plural searches for certain keywords. I have heard some seo claim that they are the same but this can be easily disproved by the fact that searches for the different versions produce totally different results(not in all cases obviously but in the case of the leather briefcase/s keyword it is)

I have taken a small list out of what google has presented in suggestions… I am using this only as a representation and not as a keyword research project for laptop bags. Again if you notice the singular and plural forms listed separately note that this is not a mistake and you as an seo should always make sure you rank for both versions.

Of course being a adwords tool it the tool gives some invaluable info on advertiser competition… if your a totally organic man(or woman) than you may feel this does not pertain to you but this can be a good indicator of the organic competition as well… keywords with low ppc competition are likely to have little organic competition as well. So keep this in mind when using this tool.

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE GOOGLE SEARCH VOLUME TOOL!!!
Okay my suggestions would be…
1.) Ability to select keywords and export only those selected keywords to csv or text file instead of having to export the whole list.
2.) The ability to delete keywords from the list which you feel are not related to your target. This could prove invaluable when creating a list of kewords to target as manually deleting later could prove a time waster.
3.) Actual search volume data in the trend graph… this can be guessed at but I always like specific and accurate data.
4.) The ability to form groups of keywords and export them together would also be nice.

These suggestions are not necessarily for Google, they are for anyone who will make a tool which queries the Google Adwords Search Volume tool.

So my overall opinion of this tool is, this is a great step in understanding the search volume of Google and the differences between that data and other engines. This can prove very valuable to you in your keyword researching. Like I said previously, this tool has now become my #2 keyword research tool. Keyword Elite is still my #1 as it is the fastest way for me to build a list of targeted keywords… however I will probably use the two tools side-by-side as they will save me countless hours and tons of money.

If you have any comments on this tool please comment. Feel free to email questions or comments regarding Keyword Elite as well.

(CLICK FOR FULL SCREENSHOT)

How to find HIGH paying Adsense keywords and low cost Adwords

visio — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:19:28 +0000

First of all I must place all the blame for this article on you. I don’t believe in targeting keywords fully based on their adsense payout. I believe there are much higher factors that should be taken into consideration however for those of you who insist on finding those high paying adsense keywords here is how.

Just to give some useful information I am also going to show you how you can find low cost adwords keywords to target your campaigns at. This will help you greatly lower your adwords bill while targeting a larger audience. Many advertisers don’t realize that they are paying much more than they have to and recieving much less than they deserve. So if your interested in Adsense high paying keywords or Adwords low-cost campaign keywords then read on.

Lets start off by finding the Adsense goodies. How to find high paying adsense keywords:

I will admit this information can be gained by using totally free tools and I have done it however it is very tedious. So in this example I will be using Keyword Elite. I use it because it works, it is much faster than any other method I have found(please prove me wrong if you can) and very easy to use.

Okay lets open Keyword Elite. Select project #1 Create a Keyword List and enter a keyword or phrase.

I chose the keyword gardening randomly. I selected only a few results because it does take time to load the results.

I selected a bunch of the 50 keywords which immediantly came up and clicked the right side of the mouse and selected the ’send to project 2′ option. Here is a few of the results I got:

(CLICK HERE FOR LARGER SCREENSHOT)

If you clicked the link above to see the big image you will notice I selected a few keywords and sorted them by PPC price. The highest paying keyword is “fine gardening” and it is estimated at $6.27-7.84 per click. Not a bad keyword to try and target your adsense for.

On the other hand if your are looking for adwords keywords here are a few all under $1

(CLICK FOR LARGER SCREENSHOT)

If you noticed there are two keywords with only 1 campaign each. This means that you can pay nearly NOTHING and still rank #2 at the very least. Also just because there are CPC prices does not mean you must pay that. You can pay much lower and if your PPC description is good you will rise in position and still do very well.

I tryed the keyword “insurance and out of 50 keywords here is what I got:

(CLICK FOR LARGER SCREENSHOT)

Of course we all know the insurance industry is a very large and very wealthy industry.

I have found some very profitable Adwords using these methods and I believe you can too. Not only does Keyword Elite show me the PPC but also how many sites are competing and maybe even more importantly WHO is competing. It gives me the search data for the phrases and the average clicks per day for the adwords listings.

I know some use these methods to target low cost adwords and create pages of high paying adsense ads to take the people to. I don’t recommend this. First of all Google doesn’t like it and secondly searchers don’t like it.

You can also use Keyword Elite to find high traffic low competition keywords to target. This is my main use for it.

If you would like more information on Keyword Elite and what it can do for your click here
You can buy this tool based on my reputation. I don’t advertise garbage or affiliate with such, I do however affiliate with tools or services that actually work. Whether they be free or paid. I plan to do a tutorial on the HitTail tool as well which happens to be free. I will not recommend a tool unless I actually use it.

Copyright Â© 2007, 1st-rankings Co.
This article may NOT be redistributed in any way, shape or form. If you would like to link to the article we would appreciate it.

Keyword Elite – How to find low competition high traffic keywords

visio — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 03:29:53 +0000

Back when I wrote the Seo Elite reviews I had planned to also review the Keyword Elite tool but never got around to it. Since then I have gotten a huge request for it, so here it is. If you ever wanted to start a website and make alot of money in Google read on. I am not guaranteeing you will be the next millionaire however these methods could very well take you there. Also these methods are not the only way you can go about keyword research, there are actually many, this is just one of the many ways I go about it. I highly recommend the purchase of KeywordDiscovery and the use of HitTail(its free!) alongside Keyword Elite. I am writing this review based on what I use it for and what it has done for my sites.

Again if your serious about keyword researching buy KeywordDiscovery, install hittail, install google analytics and watch your webstats. All this info can be very helpful in making that first million. I honestly use all of these and COULD NOT do with out them. Okay I said i’d be honest, I could do with out them and could still do very well however these tools have taken me far beyond what I ever could have done with out them. Also you should be doing fairly well and know an average amount about seo before you go buying these tools and going into keyword researching. Why? Well because it takes seo to rank for the low competition phrases just as it takes seo to rank for the high competition phrases. Just because one is easier than the other does not mean it doesn’t take seo experience.

You will need a copy of keyword elite to follow along. I provide screenshots however so that you may kind of see what goes on before you buy. If you would like more info or more screenshots of the program just send me a note. It may take me a few days but I will get you some.Click for larger screenshot of the below image

Okay open up keyword elite and select project #1 ‘Create a keyword list’ – Select overture and keywordiscovery. If you don’t have accounts with these sites click the following links. Sign-up for KeywordDiscovery trial. You can sign-up for a free trial and check it out a little and see if you want to buy it, if not you have nothing into it.
I selected 200 results for this project, for low connection users I HIGHLY recommend you choose a low number such as 50-75 at a time. If you don’t, you may be waiting all day. For fast connection users do large lists, import them to txt pad or notepad and you can create pages on your site targeted to each.

Before I go on I should also clarify what I said above. I did NOT say create MFA sites, or adsense sites. You can put adsense on these pages but because of the bad name ‘adsense sites’ have gotten I try not to call them ‘adsense sites’. Write these pages with unique and quality information related to what the keyword is so that your has provides what the searcher wants. If at all possible provide info no one else has. If all you can do is copy your competitors I highly recommend finding an industry you have more experience in.

Okay back to our project…
I used the keyword ‘gold watches’ as the main keyword. Now click the OK button. Depending on your connection speed a list of keywords will start piling up quite fast. Keyword Elite will list the keyword that it found, the parent keyword that was used to find that specific keyword and what tool was used to find it. I always use Overture and KeywordDiscovery. Overtures data is outdated but it does provide a really great list of keywords to go by.

You should see something like this:
(click for larger image of the below screenshot)

Note in the above image that the keywords are blue highlighted. When Keyword Elite finds and downloads them they will be gray not blue. They are blue when selected.

When all the keywords are downloaded scroll up to the top of the screen. Select the first keyword by clicking on it. It will now have a blue highlight on it. Now scroll down to the bottom of the screen. Select the last keyword again by clicking on it. Now all the keywords should turn blue highlighted as shown in the above image.

Now click with the RIGHT-SIDE of the mouse and select ’send keyword(s) to project #2′ – Keyword elite now opens the project menu and automatically fills in a bunch of the data for you. For step #3 make sure Google is checked. On step #4 check KEI and leave the rest unchecked. On step #5 check “google broad match” and leave the rest unchecked. It should look something like the below image:(Click for larger screenshot of the below image)

Now keyword elite will bring up some useful data on these keywords. It provides you with the results, searches, R/S ratio(will explain that in a second), KEI and other data however we told KeywordElite not to load the rest of the data. Just the above.
Whats really cool with keyword elite is you can sort the data at anytime in any fashion by clicking on any of the lists. I can sort by alphabetical, by lowest competing pages, highest searches, lowest R/S ratio or highest KEI. This is really cool! What’s also nice is I can select a bunch of keywords click the RIGHT-SIDE of the mouse and copy them to notepad for future reference. Keyword elite also has a SAVE feature which allows me to save my project and return to it later for future reference. One reason I prefer Keyword Elite to some other tools.

Okay I will come back to that in a second. First let me explain some of this data. What is R/S ratio anyways? Well it is the ratio of competing pages to number of searches for that phrase. So the lower the R/S ratio is the higher the likely hood of that phrase being a great target. Keep in mind that this data is not fool-proof and you must use manual work as well to determine whether or not it is a really great phrase. Keyword Elite eliminates the manual work of locating a list of phrases, now all I have to do is go through the list and find good ones to target. This has eliminated a HUGE amount of work for me.

So click the R/S ratio title and sort the keywords by the lowest R/S ratio. Now you can find potential keyword to target. Here is what it should look something like:(Click here for larger image of the below screenshot)

You can also use the KEI column to give an indication as to whether a keyword is good or not. Unlike the R/S ratio it is the higher the KEI value the better. So a 5,000 KEI level and a 7. R/S ratio may be a keyword worth looking into. Use the searches and results columns to kind of guide you.

Right off I find a few good keywords. white gold diamond watch, for example seem to be good targets. Some of the higher R/S ratio keywords are also good targets just slightly more competitive. I will also target some of those. I purposely used a high competition industry “watches” to do this review. Why? Well because of a couple of reasons. Firs I don’t want to show you the industries I am in, second I wanted to show that even in a expensive industry such as gold watches there are some great low competition high trafficked phrases. I spend hours on keyword elite and then implement what it tells me and I have made tons of money from it. I am telling you allthis because I know once you try it and find it works for you, you will come back to my blog for other info and may even link to me.

This is basically how I do part of my keyword researching. As I said before I use KeywordDiscovery, Keyword Elite, HitTail, Google Analytics and webstats. All of which play a role in my keyword researching. If your serious about seo, keyword research and ranking high in Google I recommend you use them too. You won’t be disappointed!

New Keyword Research Tools

visio — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:40:44 +0000

Are you one of those stingy webmasters who just won’t go out and buy a keyword research program? If so you are probably getting sick of all the limitations and loops you have to jump through for the trials of these Keyword Tools. Well we have some good news. WordTracker and KeywordDiscovery recently released two new demo tools for your use. The great thing about these two new trials is that they require absolutely no registering and logging in and give you more data.

For those of you not familiar with the previous trials of either of these programs(BTW they are still around) just take my word for it that these new demo tools are much easier to use and get into. However they definately don’t compare to the full versions. I really like the data that KD has in their paid plan. The most extensive database I have seen so far in a keyword tool.

So lets discuss these tools briefly. First of all the new WordTracker tool. What are the pros and cons? Well the new free tool does not allow you to research a keyword add it to the basket and then research others and add them to the same basket. Instead with this tool you must do each keyword manually however the new one gives you a list of related keywords and their search volume right away. So that is nice.
Direct link to new WT tool: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/keyword-suggestion-tool.html
Old Trial: http://www.wordtracker.com/free-trial.html

On the new Keyword Discovery tool you do not need to register or login either although in ways I prefer the regular KD trial. However the new tool does allow 100 results while the other trial only allows 5.
There is one problem and that is that it has been showing a 503 error a couple of times. I assume they are working on this. But except for that it is a nice tool to use on the run.
Direct Link to new tool: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

As always I highly recommend the purchase of these tools for keyword researching. The KeywordDiscovery tool is as good as it sounds. Research hundreds of longtail keywords and use them in a PPC campaign or target them for organic listing as well. The tool really pays for itself pretty fast.

Longtail Keyword Research for Seo

visio — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:53:41 +0000

I have spent time on many different methods or variations of methods for achieving high Google ranking success. I still hold to the belief that anybody can achieve any ranking on Google if they are determined enough. However I also believe that some rankings aren’t the best to start off with. Could you handle 50,000 visitors a day right now? Most probably not. I know when I started, that much traffic in one day would have killed me. The best way to conquer Google is to gain territory one piece at a time. What I mean by that is start off small with low competition keywords and spread out gaining as many as you can as you work your way up the ladder. If you start out too big you may get disappointed in the wait and drop out however if you go longtail at first as you grow you will begin a steady stream of traffic which will only increase overtime. And that is what this article is about. Long tail traffic can be the most profitable keyword targeting in the business. And keeping them is generally very easy.

By now you should have a pretty good idea of what a Long Tail keyword is. But just in case let me explain it a little more. A Long-Tail keyword is a low competition keyword that has a low search volume. Microsofts Manager once explained it using stacks of pennies. You end up with a few big stacks which represent your high search volume and no-doubt HIGH competition key-phrases. With a trail of single pennies extending as far as the eye can see. If done right longtail traffic can bring in more visitors than a large main-line keyword and are much more targeted which means they convert much better. So no matter how you look at it the longtail of search is the best place to start out and is a investment which will keep giving for a long time to come.

Now I want to dispel a myth about longtail and competitive search phrases. A high number of results in Google for a phrase does not always mean it is high competition and does not mean it can’t be a longtail phrase. There are many key-phrases in Google which have more than 1 million results and are still long tail. In fact there are phrases which have 60 million or more results and are still longtail keywords. So the number of results in Google does not make it a longtail or not.

One pretty good method of telling if a key-phrase is longtail or not is to use Googles built in operators for example the allintitle: operator. So lets test it in this keyphrase which has 60,800,000 results in Google. A allintitle: search gives 9 results. This means only nine pages in Googles index contain these keywords in their title tag. This tells us that if we create a article with the title tag using these keywords we are likely to be able to get this ranking. Now for some keywords it will take more than just the title tag to gain a ranking and later on we will be discussing researching keywords for longtail.
The best thing about longtail is you can write a good resource article and Google will pick it up and rank you for a bunch of them.

We will do some research to find some long-tail phrases to target but keep in mind that there are thousands of keywords that won’t come up in most keyword research tools however still get that small amount of traffic. So you can’t get everything but if you got a blog or resource site the best thing you can do for longtail is write a lot of keyword rich articles that are likely to be helpful to your visitors. Also keep in mind that the shorter the article the less likely it will rank for any longtail phrases. And I cannot stress the point about being useful to your visitors. Writing useful articles has a two-fold harvest. First you will get repeat visits from those people who liked your articles and secondly you are likely to get links to those articles. And whatever you do don’t republish articles from other sites.

Okay lets do some research to find some good longtail key-phrases. We will be using trial versions of the following tools so that you may try these methods out and see what you think. However I totally recommend purchasing each of the tools we will be using. Whether your a large company or a hobby webmaster they will be very helpful to you. But don’t take my word for it. Try them out…

Lets start out doing a little Keyword Research with WordTracker. For this tutorial we will be using the trial version. To sign up you only need a valid email. It takes a few seconds to receive the email and you can begin your trial period. We are going to start off using the key-phrase ’search engine ranking’. So enter that into the little box and click PROCEED>>.
Because it is the trial the results are taken from Dogpile and MSN so will not be accurate for Google however the longtails are usually similiar. If you purchase the full version you will get to analyze Google.

Okay now some results have popped up. Click the first one which is of course ’search engine ranking’. Now to the right will appear a bunch of related keywords. Select a few that look like they would have less competition. If you can’t decide just select as many as you want upto 30(trial is 30 max) and then click next. In this tutorial we selected only 9 phrases.

See screenshot

The first phrase which is “search engine marketing ppc placement” has a KEI of 88.2. The KEI is the estimated effectiveness rating which takes into account both the popularity of the keyword and competition. This means the higher the KEI is the more it is searched and/or the easier it is to achieve a ranking for it. So according to WordTracker this is a really good keyword. WT says that on MSN there are 5 sites competing. Naturally on Google it will be much higher. Wordtracker says that there should be an average of 2 people searching for this key-phrase in 24 hours. For a more accurate figure lets go over to KeywordDiscovery. They offer a free trial as well which is really great for beginners to look around and see what they think of the tool before purchasing.

So we go over to Keyword Discovery and check to see what they come up with. KW predicts 117 daily. This is a much higher figure than Wordtracker but then the trial of WoT only databases MSN and MSN has a much smaller search volume than Google and is just 1 of the 3 search engines while Keyword Discovery estimates using all. Now this is probably not the easiest longtail phrase however it is a longtail keyword. There are some longtail phrases that are much easier and produce alot more traffic and these can be found by doing a little research. If your serious about this I highly suggest you buy either WordTracker or Keyword Discovery or both. My personal preference is Keyword Discovery.

When researching keywords use a variety of tools. Take the competing pages, KEI, Google results, Google operators and compare the data. This will help you find real longtail phrases.
I will not give you tutorials through all these tools at this time. Maybe in future articles… But I will give you some pointers in the right direction.

Use Overture Inventory to find lists of keywords to research. Then take them over to WordTracker or Keyword Discovery. Unfortunately the trials of both are limiting in how much can be done at one time.

Use these Keyword Difficulty tools to find longtail phrases. Keyword Difficulty Checker – This tool offers a graph with a numerical value between 1-100 for the competitiveness of the keyword. I saw many 50-60% competition keywords which were longtail and I also saw some 60% keywords that were very very competitive so it isn’t totally accurate at this time.
SeoMoz Keyword Difficulty Tool – This is a grand tool. It provides a lot of cool info. At this time it does not support import/export which I can’t wait for. It would be nice to research a bunch of keywords at once. It also takes a while to research each one but it does give some interesting data.

Keyword Discovery – This tool is very useful for researching keywords for Google. It has a good KEI and search volume index. It is the largest keyword database so far even though it is one of the newest. I use it all the time for keyword researching.

WordTracker – Wordtracker is also a good tool for researching. I like how you can digg keywords down to find the longtail key-phrases then research them all at once.
HitTail – This is a cool tool which analyzes your longtail traffic and gives suggestions to build it up. It requires you install piece of html code on all your pages.

I hope this article has helped you a little in learning what longtail is and how to begin researching it. I didn’t get in depth to much. I may write another sequel article for that. If you would like to see that let me know.