This is the first step that will look at Keyword Difficulty (or competitiveness). This will give us a basic idea of how hard it will be to rank for that keyword.

We already have the start of an answer. The third column in our spreadsheet, Advertiser Competition, tells us how competitive those keywords are among advertisers using Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) ad system. A rank of 1 is the most competitive. For our purposes, that indicates the keyword is relatively more difficult to rank for than, say, an advertiser competition of 0.5.

But remember a few salient points:

1. That information is derived from Google’s PPC data, and speaks of competition between advertisers, not websites. This figure provides guidance, not a bankable number.
2. Don’t take any of the raw numbers as absolute. They are useful only in comparing one keyword to another. A score of .6 or 60 (depending on the tool used) doesn’t mean it’s 60% difficult to rank for that keyword, and that’s that.
3. Finally, never let a single data point trump your common sense.

What Affects Keyword Difficulty?

The basic idea: you take a single keyword, and then you look at all the websites optimized for that keyword. They’re not all going to be equally optimized. If most of them are well-optimized, it’s going to be difficult to rank for that keyword. If almost all of them are almost perfectly optimized for that keyword, it will be next-to-impossible to rank.

Some factors that impact difficulty:

• The sheer number of sites optimized for that keyword.
• How well that sites are optimized, especially the top 10 or 20. If many or most of those sites are older with more inbound links, with high relevance for the keyword, and well-executed on-page optimization (meaning the content, headers, page title, URL structure, meta tags, etc. are all optimized); then keyword difficulty will be high.

Keyword Difficulty tools compile information like this to generalize the overall difficulty of ranking for a keyword.

Keyword Difficulty Tools

To get an additional metric for Keyword Difficulty, we’re going to use another keyword tool which will give us a broad overview.

You can find the Keyword Difficulty Check at www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-difficulty/, but I’ve also included it in this post below:

Keyword Difficulty Check Tool © SEO Chat™ Keyword Enter a keyword or keyword phrase Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

You can also find a couple of other keyword difficulty tools, if you prefer.

• Keyword Difficulty Check from SEOlogs.com: www.seologs.com/keyword-difficulty.html.
• Keyword Difficulty Tool from the always fantastic SEOMoz.org: http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty. (This one requires a paid membership to use.)

What if a keyword is too difficult?

Be wary of concluding solely from this data point that a keyword is too difficult to choose. Never forget there are many other considerations. Besides, sometimes it’s not a bad idea to choose keywords for which you may not rank well initially, but into which you will grow. Plus, sometimes you won’t have much choice: the most appropriate keyword may simply pose a greater challenge.

The great thing about the Internet: it’s dynamic, never static, always evolving, always changing. So too your site. Even if you never change the content, sheer longevity can positively affect its ranking. (Don’t think you’ll make the #1 spot if you just wait long enough, though; someone else who’s proactive about their SEO will always eclipse you.)

The point is, even if you choose to utilize a difficult keyword, if you dedicate effort to a comprehensive SEO campaign, you may yet penetrate the elusive Top 10 rankings.

Several online sites let you monitor that information. They’re all simple to use: sign up online, then input data through the web, through Twitter or through your mobile phone. Then you can generate reports, observe trends and even look at cost projections to help with budgeting.

MyMileMarker.com lets you use your PDA or smartphone to enter info through their mobile site. One of the hardest parts of using a service like this is remembering to actually use it. I don’t know about you, but despite my best intentions to record the info when I get back to the office from the gas station, by the time I actually arrive my brain has already moved on.

Mobile access means you can update the info every time you stop at a gas station, while you’re still thinking about it.

Other similar sites:

MPGTune.com. The site is kind of confusing, but MPGTune.com offers another nifty way to enter data in addition to mobile access: via text message.

FuelFrog.com. Like MyMileMarker.com, you can also input account info using Twitter.

TrackYourGasMileage.com. Though it has the most descriptive name, it’s not quite as powerful as the other sites.

AccuFuel. Not an online site, but a $.99 app for the iPhone which serves the same function.

AutoKeeper. A $3.95 program for Windows Mobile devices.

How targeted is the keyword in question? Is it going to capture the web traffic you want – visitors who want what your site offers, and are thus primed to convert (i.e., make that sale, leave a comment, request more information, whatever action you want them to take)?

First, think about the page you’re trying to optimize. In my post “Taking Stock,” I mentioned that we want to consider the intent behind keywords – whether the person is seeking information, shopping or actually buying. Your pages should be geared toward one of those. So whatever page you’re currently optimizing, which is it?

It’s an important question because you want the keyword intent to match the subject of the page.

This is doubly important for product or service pages where you actually make the sale because you want keywords that will convert. The best keywords to convert are those that are used with the intent to buy. Make sense?

We’re going to use the MSN for Detecting Online Commercial Intent tool. The truth is, though, this step is more about critical-thinking than raw data collection.

MSN Tool for Detecting Online Commercial Intent

To begin:

1. Create a new column on the spreadsheet entitled Intent.
2. Go to http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx.

This tool estimates how likely it is a person using a particular search phrase means to buy, versus just looking for information. High commercial value means conversion is more likely.

3. Select Query beneath the search box.
4. Enter the first term from your keyword list and click Go.
   

   MSN Commercial Intent Tool

5. Record the result in your spreadsheet. However, note that sometimes the tool returns Commercial Intention, and sometimes Non-Commercial Intention. It’s kind of annoying, but on the bright side, it forces us to stop and think, which is the main point of this step.
   

   Commercial Intention

   

   Non-Commercial Intention

6. Repeat for the other terms in your list.
7. That’s it. Pretty simple.

I don’t always agree with the result. But frankly, that’s the point. Because the human value of doing keyword research is to think about the keyword.

I don’t know the exact factors that go into MSN’s proprietary formula, but I like that the tool makes me question the words and phrases. Keyword research is not as simple as adding the value of different data points to select the best keyword. You must think critically about the keywords under scrutiny. This is why people rather than machines or programs choose keywords.

Ask yourself:

1. Why would someone use that particular keyword in a search?
2. What are they likely looking for?
3. What is their likely intent in using that keyword?
4. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Would you use that keyword to find a site like yours?

Assessing Keyword Intent Indirectly

Note: Doing this step at this point is optional. We’ll also look at it a couple of steps from now, close to the end of our research.

You can also assess keyword intent indirectly through a simple search engine search.

Remember, search engines are designed to lead people to their desired destination. The search engines do their best to look at the search phrase and deduce the kinds of sites the searcher wants to find. No search engine is perfect, but on the whole, they’re all pretty good at the job.

Search for the keyword phrase and look at the sites that come up. Think critically. Are the sites similar to yours, or qualitatively different?

Because the search engines are good at what they do, you can (mostly) assume that any given search phrase will return websites that match the original intent of the phrase.

Organizing the Keyword Research

1. In the new Intent column you can either record the MSN Tool’s score directly, and then make any appropriate comments in the Notes column.
2. Or you can enter a subjective score in the Intent column based on your personal conclusion, which considers:
   • The MSN tool score
   • Search engine results
   • Your own personal thoughts and impressions

So now we have an additional data point on our spreadsheet, and better yet – we’re actively thinking about the keywords. Yay!

But what now?

1. Leave the list as-is and go to the next research step.
2. Or take another pass to see if you can eliminate some more keywords. Use the same “pair comparison” methodology I described in the “Whittle the Keyword List Down” step.

If I’m optimizing for a sales page, I usually do look through the list and pay attention to the keywords whose commercial intent is low (around .5 or lower, give or take). I look at the keyword in question and ask myself, is this a really targeted keyword? If it’s not, and the commercial intent is low, I might go ahead and eliminate it. I might also consider combining it with another keyword to create a new keyword phrase. It just depends on the situation and your comfort level.

Next up: researching keyword difficulty.

We have enough information to start whittling our list down.

If you look through the list, you’ll notice pairs, trios or even larger groupings of keyword terms or phrases that present only minor variations of each other – plural versus singular, different tenses, etc.

In comparing keywords, we’re actually doing two things:

1. We judge between two or more similar keywords to determine which is best. This means comparing within a single grouping.
2. Then, we compare one keyword grouping to another to choose the best keyword ultimately.

We don’t have enough information to judge the second item yet, but we do have enough information to look at the first.

For example, between copy writer, copy writers, copy writing, copywriter, copywriters, and copywriting – which would be best? We’re looking for lower competitiveness / keyword difficulty balanced by higher search volume.

Organizing the Research

We’ve moved to a new step, and it’s time to change to a new tab in our spreadsheet. How exciting!

At this point, I recommend separating the keyword sets onto different worksheets, and then go through all the research steps for one keyword set at a time. It’s much easier to work with the lists that way.

Besides, remember, we can really only optimize for 2 to 3 keywords per page. If you have multiple keyword sets, that implies you either have — or need! — multiple pages.

1. Name the new tab “Step 3 – KW Set #1” (or you can use a more descriptive name, like “Step 3 – Dog KWs“).
2. Copy the appropriate keyword set (along with the column headers) into the spreadsheet. (For myself, I usually just copy the Step 2 worksheet wholesale, and then delete what I don’t want.

Eliminating Keywords

When eliminating keywords, you have two options. One is to just delete the whole row. You can always go back to the previous tab to retrieve keywords.

The other, which I prefer:

1. Select the whole row
2. Italicize it
3. Change the text color to light gray
4. Replace the “Common Term” with an x.
5. Add a quick note in a blank cell why you axed the term. “Anotherterm better – higher search volume, same competition.”
6. Then, when you’re done with the whittling process, you can sort according to the Common Term to get all the “deleted” keywords at the bottom of the list, while retaining easy access to their info.

The Whittling Process, Step-by-Step

1. Start at the top of the keyword list and identify the first grouping of closely related terms. (Be sure to look through the whole list. Keywords in a single groupings may not be all right next to each other.) For example, I might have a grouping like:
   copy writer
   copy writers
   copy writing
   copywriter
   copywriters
   copywriting

   The question is, out of this grouping, which is the strongest keyword?

2. I typically tackle this in pairs, and compare the data points from the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
   

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   copy writer	0.93	12,100	8,100
   copy writers	0.86	1,300	1,600

   Between these two, copy writer is better – it has slightly higher competition but boasts a ton more searches.

   Before we make that final call though, let’s think about targeting. Is one word more targeted than the other? In this case, no – we’re just talking about singular versus plural.

3. Delete the loser. (Remember, you can always go back and find deleted terms simply by clicking on the Step 2 spreadsheet).
4. Now I compare the next closest matching pair.
   

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   copy writer	0.93	12,100	8,100
   copywriter	1.0	135,000	110,000

   In this case, copywriter wins. Yes, it’s higher competition – but copy writer is still pretty darn competitive itself. Plus, the search volume is so much greater for copywriter that it far outweighs the small jump in competitiveness.

   Targeting – still not a concern. It’s basically the same word, just two spelling variations.

5. Move on to the next closest matching pair.
   

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   copy writing	1.0	14,800	14,800
   copywriting	1.0	74,000	74,000

   Here, copywriting is the clear victor. Advertiser Competition matches, so we don’t even look at it, while search volume is clearly better for one than the other.

   Now, we might have guessed this already, before doing this research. But we didn’t know. Now we have numbers to back up our conclusions.

   Why all this research?

   Sometimes you just can’t predict how variations of keywords will perform.

   Copywriter wins over copywriting (see below). But when I look at Freelance copywriter versus freelance copywriting I get the opposite results: the -ing form has double the search volume and is only slightly more competitive. If I hadn’t done the research and comparison, and had just tried to guess, I might have been way off.

6. On to the next pair:
   

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   copywriter	1.0	135,000	110,000
   copywriters	1.0	12,100	12,100

   Another easy one.

7. The next pair. (Yeah, I know this is getting really involved. I chose an example with several keywords to compare on purpose, to give you an example of the steady whittling process in action).
   

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   copywriter	1.0	135,000	110,000
   copywriters	1.0	12,100	12,100

   Easy.

8. Next pair.
   

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   copywriter	1.0	135,000	110,000
   copywriting	1.0	74,000	74,000

   One guess which word we’re going to choose!

   Here we get to a point where targeting is important, because these are two different terms.

   I would argue that copywriter is slightly more targeted. Copywriting is more generic: the searcher might want a copywriter, but s/he might also want to define copywriting, learn copywriting, etc. Someone who searches for copywriter might still want to become a copywriter rather than find a copywriter, but it’s less likely they’re trying to define the term. Not impossible, but less likely.

   Still, if the search volume were reversed, in this case, I’d still follow the volume. Targeting becomes much more important with multi-word phrases. In this case, I’d say copywriter is a little bit more targeted, but not enough to justify selecting a keyword with lower search volume.

   There’s a quick way to check (indirectly) how targeted a given keyword is: Google the term and look over the results. Are they similar to your website or web page? Does the search turn up sites selling a product or service like yours?

   Search engines aren’t perfect at delivering people to exactly the sites they want to find, but they’re pretty darn good. If a search of the term doesn’t turn up sites like yours, chances are people don’t use that search term to find sites like yours. That means, the term is probably less targeted.

   When targeting does matter

   Before we move on, let’s look at another example where targeting would play the deciding factor.

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   writing jobs	1.0	135,000	110,000
   writing services	1.0	33,100	27,100

   Writing jobs gets a ton more traffic – over three times as much. But put yourself in the mind of the searcher. Is someone who uses the search phrase writing jobs looking for someone to do a writing job? Maybe. But there’s a better chance they’re a job seeker looking for writing jobs. By contrast, someone searching for writing services is likely looking for a writer offering that service. In this case, I’d have no problem eliminating writing jobs from my keyword list. It’s so poorly targeted I don’t think it’d do my page any good.

   Once again, though, I could quickly double-check by performing a Google search.

   Let’s look at another example where I might draw a different conclusion:

   Keyword	Advertiser Competition	Last Month Search Volume	Average Search Volume
   business writers	0.80	12,100	8,100
   business writing	1.0	135,000	110,000

   In this case, I’d really have to think it through. I’d have to consider the contents of the web page, and what kind of visitor I’m trying to attract.

   At this stage, it very possible I’d keep both on my list. Right now both have advantages. More information culled over the next several research steps might help one stand out against the other.

   Business writers seems to be more targeted than business writing. But business writing gets so much more search volume. The question is, does the greater search volume outweigh (1) somewhat lower competition and (2) a slightly more targeted term? Right now, I don’t know. Further research is warranted.

   I hope you’re also starting to see why it’s important to build as large a list as possible before doing any research.

9. So out of initial grouping, we have a winner! Cool. Boldface the entire row on the spreadsheet to indicate you’ve already looked at it.
   

   Am I going to use only keywords on the web page?

   At this point you might legitimately be asking: so does this mean I’m only going to use the term copywriter and drop copywriting altogether from the web content?

   No. Emphatically, no. Keep this process in perspective: we’re not figuring out what to say in the content of your web page. We’re finding 2 or 3 keywords to emphasize in the page title, headings, meta tags, link text and to use maybe a little more often than other possible terms in the text. But that’s it. We’re just picking terms to optimize for, not terms for content writing. They’re two separate concerns.

10. As you go through this process, you might think of new keywords that aren’t on your list. Feel free to add them and do a quick search via the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. I frequently do this because I invariably miss some possible variations of different word stems (-s, -ed, -ing, etc.) and different word combinations or word ordering.
11. Now, wash, rinse and repeat for all the other keyword groupings in your list.

Hopefully by the end you will have at least cut the list in half.

Wow, this is a lot of work

A note about how much labor this process involves. I’ve said it before, and I’ll reiterate. You get out of keyword research what you put into it.

This step-by-step is not the most exhaustive process possible, but it’s pretty darn thorough. I’ll post some future articles about “Quick and Dirty KW Research,” but the labor involved is part of the reason why so many companies hire professional SEOs.

But I can also tell you, take comfort. The more you do this, the better you become. You’ll move faster, and you’ll develop good instincts. If you started out with a list of 100 keywords, once you’re practiced and experienced, you can do this step in half an hour or less.

Before we move further into the actual research, let’s take a moment to understand what we’re researching exactly. What is the information we’re trying to derive about these keywords, and why?

Qualities of a Keyword, Revisited

Since we’re a little deeper in the process, I’m going to expand a little on the introductory post about keywords.

Keyword Relevance

The keyword must be highly relevant to your site. In other words, you want the keywords you use to relate directly to your products, services or the information your site contains.

Moreover, it must be targeted: it must capture the customers who want to visit your site, who are looking for and interested in purchasing your product or service.

There is no online tool or data set that can tell you if the keyword is relevant; some methods can imply if the keyword is relevant. But at the end of the day, this is why people, and not machines, do keyword research. It’s a judgment call you have to make.

More About Keyword Targeting

• Is the keyword targeted for the customer you want?
• Is it targeted for someone who is (1) interested in and (2) wants to purchase the kind of product or service you’re selling (this applies even if you’re just offering information, and you want the visitor to consume your articles and maybe sign up for your RSS feed).
• Try to see through your customer’s eyes. People searching for “Copywriting” might want one of many things:
  • yes, they might want copywriting services, but they might want to become a copywriter themselves.
  • They might want to know about schools or educational programs.
  • They might want how-to guides or do-it-yourself information.
  • They may be looking do comparison shopping prior to actually engaging services.
  • They may have no idea what copywriting is exactly (I get asked all the time), and they’re trying to find a definition.

  Ultimately, it’s a poorly targeted keyword if I want visitors who are looking to hire me as a copywriter. It’s just too broad.

That’s the importance of identifying how targeted a keyword is. We’ll discuss indirect methods for assessing targeting over the next few posts.

Search Volume

High volume keywords will drive more traffic. They’re also harder to optimize (relatively) and less targeted. Don’t assume a higher volume keyword is going to be the best for your choice. Again, it must be targeted: your website can get all the traffic in the world, but if those visitors don’t convert into sales, the keyword has done you no good. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but it’s critical to choosing a keyword.

An Aside Re: Long-Tail Keywords

Here we return to the long-tail principle: Keywords that are longer (3 to 6 words or more), highly targeted, but demonstrate low search volume. These keywords in aggregate may drive quite a bit of traffic to your site. Plus, they typically convert better because they’re so highly targeted. The lesson is: we care about search volume, but don’t over-emphasize it in your research.

Search volume is something we’ve already assessed, thanks to Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool. We’ll look at it in-depth in the next step, and with each successive step.

Keyword Competitiveness

Also known as keyword difficulty, the question is: how hard it is to rank for a given keyword? How much competition will there be? Is the competition already optimized for that keyword? Can we compete against the quality of the competition’s SEO?

You can also think of keyword difficulty in terms of keyword “achievability.” Is it possible to rank for that keyword given your site’s other SEO attributes (age, structure, inbound links, authority on the subject matter, etc) compared to competitor sites? Factors that contribute to keyword difficulty include:

1. Search volume – how many people search for a particular keyword. Terms with more searches are harder to optimize , because there’s more keyword competition.
2. Search results – how many search results a particular keyword produces in a search engine. Kind of the inverse of the first item, but it leads us to the same result: a keyword that yields a ton of results will be harder to optimize, again because there’s more keyword competition.
3. Competitor SEO strength – if the top results for a keyword search are strong on the different dimensions of SEO, it will be harder to rank. On the bright side, if the others are poorly optimized, it doesn’t matter how many there are, you should still be able to compete.
4. PageRank – PageRank as a factor of SEO is diminishing; however, it is still useful as a data point to consider. A higher PageRank suggests that you can use more competitive keywords. Once again, you cannot take the pure PageRank number as intrinsically meaningful, but rather (1) use it as a means of comparison and (2) as only one piece of a comprehensive view

Keyword Difficulty is the main factor we’re going to be researching over the next several steps

Fill in the missing data

Finally, we have arrived at the research and analysis portion of our step-by-step keyword research!

For the first step, we’re going to stick with the Google AdWords Keyword Tool in order to fill out our existing spreadsheet.

Many lines of your spreadsheet will now have data from Google, including Advertiser Competition and a couple of columns of Search Volume figures, but you probably still have some keywords without that info.

So we’re going to fill it in.

Return to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

1. Select Descriptive words or phrases.
2. Enter the keyword(s) that we need data for. To be thorough, you can do all of them. However, if you need to prioritize for a time-crunch, skip the single-word keywords. I can pretty much tell you right off the bat single-word keywords will be nearly impossible to optimize for, and they’re the least effective at generating targeted traffic. So you can do this step only for keyword phrases composed of 2 or more words.
3. When you first do this, you’ll have to enter a series of random letters to ensure you’re a real person using the tool.
4. Hit the Get keyword ideas button.
5. For each keyword, enter the three data points into the spreadsheet.

You may notice that Advertiser Competition isn’t given as a number but as a green bar. When the tool exports the data, it converts that bar into a number between 0 and 1. So if you’re filling in information manually, just estimate.

Also, you may come across keyword ideas you hadn’t considered. Although we’ve officially entered the research (as opposed to list-building) phase, we can still add keywords to our list. I commonly add new keywords to the list right up until the final selection.

Some Tips To Remember

1. We’re ultimately looking for a 2 to 5 word keyword phrase.
2. Terms showing “Not enough data” are generally not going to make good keywords because they have too little search volume, but you may still want to record that in your spreadsheet.
3. Ultimately, the research is not about absolute numbers but about relativity. How does one keyword compare to another? For example, I want to optimize for my basic service – copywriting. But do I use the term copywriter, copy writing, copy writer, copywriting service, copywriting services, writing services, and so forth?
   • I’m accumulating data so that I can compare those terms to see which one gets the most traffic while being the least competitive.
   • Try to gather all this data in one sitting. Because the figures from Google can change over time, it’s less useful to compare data gathered at different times.

We’ve gone through an exhaustive process for building your keyword list, and by now you may already have a ton of terms. And we’re not even done yet!

But don’t despair – this is the last step in building the list. After this, we’ll begin the actual research that will enable us to transform an unwieldy spreadsheet of dozens, hundreds or thousands of keywords into a user-friendly handful.

In this step, we’re going to delve into a free online tool which will automatically generate keyword ideas for us: the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It’s geared toward generating ideas for a Google AdWords pay-per-click campaign, but it also works for raw SEO.

In truth, you’ll find tons of online tools, but I’m trying to keep this step-by-step series both easy and no-cost, so we’re going to stick with the simple, tried and true.

Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

Keywords Based On Website Content

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

1. Select Website content.
2. Enter your own company’s web address.
3. Click Get keyword ideas.

The tool analyzes the page entered. First, it shows the terms it picked up on your site. This gives you some insight into what Google may see as the current keywords for your site. Don’t take that information to the bank; I’m always amazed at the random words the tool picks up.



Below that, it will show keyword ideas grouped according to the terms from your web page. Ignore the other columns of information for a moment, and just focus on the keywords the tool is suggesting.



You will notice an option to Add each keyword, or to Add all #». Ignore those. That’s if you want to use those keywords in an pay-per-click ad campaign with Google. Right now, we’re just doing research.

4. Just scroll on down and click Download all keywords. I recommend the .csv format for Excel, if that’s the spreadsheet program you’re using. It may ask if you want to save the information or open automatically with Excel. It’s up to you, but I recommend opening with Excel. It will create a new workbook.
   

   Download all keywords

5. Parse the new spreadsheet. (Expand the columns first, so you can actually see what you’re doing).
   

   Google AdWords Keyword Tool Output

   Delete any grouping of keywords or individual keywords that don’t fit your website, product or service. Keep any keywords that are already on your list; we want those columns of extra data. Select whatever rows you’re going to delete, right click with the mouse, and choose Delete.

   

   Delete inappropriate keywords

Are you starting to see why I organized the spreadsheet the way I did?

6. But there’s an additional step. Your common term and Google’s need to match. It doesn’t matter which you change; just make sure when you copy the info from Google into the Step 2 worksheet, that all the appropriate keywords will be together under the same common term (I prefer the header “Keyword Set”). For my part, I usually update the Google spreadsheet to match my common terms.
7. Now paste the keywords from Google’s spreadsheet into the Step 2 worksheet, at the bottom of the list. Make sure you get all 5 columns of information.
   

   Paste keywords from Google into spreadsheet

Keywords Based On Descriptive Words Or Phrases

Next, we’ll go back to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and use the Descriptive words or phrases (back at the top of the screen) to generate new ideas based on keywords that the tool didn’t identify in your website.

Unfortunately, this tends to generate a lot of keywords that are unrelated or inappropriate, and also a lot of the results tend to have “Not enough data” in the information columns, which is unhelpful. You might try for a few, scan through the results, and manually enter the handful that seem relevant. Or you might skip this part altogether. Up to you.

The return-on-investment on time spent on Descriptive words or phrases is lower than for Website Content. So I do this part quick. I look up a few terms and scan the results for items that might be useful. I don’t export in bulk unless there are a quite a few terms that strike me as appropriate. Otherwise, I just manually enter the handful I want to keep. If it’s a keyword of interest, still record them even if Google shows “Not enough data.” Down the road you may wonder if you considered a particular keyword; make a record of it and just notate “insuff.data.”

When you’re trying to determine if a keyword might be a good fit, always keep the following question in mind: is that a term or phrase someone might use to find your site, your service or your product?

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

1. Select Descriptive words or phrases.
2. Enter the keyword(s) you want. You can enter multiple keywords at a time, each on a separate line, but I recommend only 3 or 4 at a time. Only do this step for the important keywords that Google didn’t identify from your website.
3. When you first do this, you’ll have to enter a series of random letters to ensure you’re a real person using the tool.
4. Hit the Get keyword ideas button.
5. Parse through the results. Export in bulk if it makes sense; otherwise, just enter the appropriate results onto your spreadsheet manually.

Clean Up

1. Select the entire spreadsheet and sort according to the common term first and keyword second.
2. Scan down the list for duplicates. Pay special attention to black lines (the new data from Google) scattered among colored text (what was already in the spreadsheet). If there is a duplicate, keep the line with the data from the Google tool.
   

   Delete duplicates

3. Once that’s done, change the text color of the new additions to match the appropriate grouping.

Conclusion

Alrighty!

Congratulations! Pat yourself on the back! We’ve just done a lot of work, and we’re well on our way to uncovering the best keywords for your website or web page.

Next up: start researching and analyzing those terms.

We’ve already touched on this step in Step 1, but now’s a good time to revisit the idea. At this point, we’re going to add to our list of keywords by “building” a phrase. We’re going to take some of the core terms or phrases you already have, and add important qualifiers to create a longer phrase.

All else being equal, the ideal keyword phrase will be 2 to 5 words long. Any shorter, and the competition will likely be too intense.

Source: Stoney deGeyter

You can also go longer. It’s true that you risk using a phrase for which no one searches, but this is where “long tail” keywords come in. What exactly that means exceeds the scope of the post; I’ll write another entry about long tail down the road.

For the moment, suffice it to say that any given long phrase might get few searches, but your site might get cumulatively more searches for all its long phrases than more basic keywords. It’s virtually impossible to optimize intentionally for long tail keyword searches; that’s part of the reason why it’s important to write keywords organically into your text rather than just inserting lists of potential keywords.

Geo-target

This simply means to specify your geographic location in your keyword. This won’t be useful for everyone, but for others it will be imperative. For this site, I might combine “Dallas” + “Freelance” + “Copywriter.” If I wanted to emphasize SEO, I might even create a phrase like “Dallas freelance SEO copywriter.”

Use intent words

People generally use search engines for one of three purposes:

1. Research and information-gathering
2. Shopping, comparing and searching for a desired service or product
3. Buying the desired service or product

In most cases (though not all), it’s wise to optimize your website for all three purposes, but you won’t optimize each individual page for all three.

To capture the first kind of search, your site might include high-level category pages and information articles, reviews, FAQs, advice, how-to guides, etc. You can use those pages to funnel traffic to other pages in your site. Intent words include research, information, best, how to. These keywords do not convert well, but they can bring traffic to your site for people who are interested generally in your product or service.

To capture the second kind of search, your site may have product or service category pages. People have buying interest, but they’re in the early phases. There’s overlap with the first kind of search, but it’s more narrowly focused: instead of looking for information generally, they’re looking for information with interest in possibly making a purchase. Words might be best, recommended, review or reviews.

Finally, to capture the key buying phrases, your site should have pages dedicated to each particular service or product. People using these phrases are ready to purchase; they’re looking for a product or service to buy, and buy now. Words include shop, buy, purchase, need, needed, want, wanted, find. These are the phrases with the best conversion ratios because they capture the traffic that is most primed to convert. Your strongest sales pitch should go on these pages.

You want to include intent words in your final keyword phrases, at least some of them. Otherwise, you will miss out on the most targeted traffic.

Descriptors

Descriptors, or qualifiers, describe your product or service in greater detail. They’re usually adjectives, and usually positive. Fast, quick, cheap, discount, quality, black, blue, red, durable, lightweight, easy, simple… The list could go on and on. What qualifiers apply to your product or service? Build phrases using any kind of qualifier that (1) applies to your business and (2) would be sufficiently meaningful to your customers that they might use it in their searches.

Stemming variations

Finally, go back through the list you’ve developed and add variations.

1. Word endings. This would include singular versus plural, -ed versus -ing, etc. At this point, we don’t know if writer gets more traffic than writers, or if writing gets more than either. Maybe written gets more traffic than any of the above. Who knows? We’ll figure that out in the next step. Right now, just capture variations on your keyword list.
2. Misspellings. People don’t always spell correctly when they’re doing a search, so you might want to include common misspellings on your page. There are some easy ways to do this without making it look like you made an error yourself. My name is correctly spelled “Goulde,” but it’s commonly misspelled “Gould.” I might add a comment at the bottom of my page: “My name is Richard Goulde. Were you looking for Richard Gould? Well, if you want copywriting, who cares how I spell my name – you’ve found an expert!”
3. Regional terminology. This depends on the geographic area in which you do business. If you’re purely local, it won’t matter. But if you do nationwide or international business, you need to take into account the fact that different regions using different words for the same thing. Soda versus pop, for example. Or elevator in the U.S., which is lift in the U.K.

Putting it all together

Ultimately, you may combine built phrases with new qualifiers or other built phrases for inclusion on the website. For our purposes, however, don’t worry about researching phrases longer than 4 words. The results will be predictable: much lower competition with extremely low search volume. Therefore, it’s not a wise investment of time to research long phrases in-depth.

We’ll come back to this exercise (again) after we’ve completed the research.

Recommended Reading: Stoney deGeyter’s “Comprehensive Guide to Keyword Research, Selection & Organization”

The “keyword ROI” image above is from deGeyter’s guide. My own guide to keyword research is a bit more action-oriented than his, and it also delves more deeply into interpreting the research. Nevertheless, his stellar article does a fantastic job of illuminating how the philosophy and process behind keyword research impacts its implementation.

In the last step, we used business competitors to brainstorm possible keywords. Now we’re going to look at keyword competitors. Remember the subtle difference:

• Business competition – you should know these companies or people already. They’re competitors for your customers.
• Keyword competition – websites using the same keywords you’re considering. You’re not competing for customers in this case, but for search engine ranking.

You may want to do this research step for every keyword on your list, or you may just pick out the top contenders. It depends on how thorough you want to be, and how much time you have.

1. Using the search engine(s) of your choice, search for the keyword term or phrase.
2. From here, it’s the same as the previous step, studying your business competition. Click on some of the top sites that come up and look through them.
3. Pay particular attention to words and phrases in titles, headers and bold text. See any keyword ideas?
4. Once again,we’re going to get a little more technical. We want to look up the source code for their website.
   

   • In Firefox, select View from the menu, then choose Page Source.
   • In Internet Explorer, select Page and then View Source.

   We want to find a piece of code that says meta name=”keywords” content=” as well as meta name=”description” content=”. The page may or may not have this code, so if you can’t find it, don’t spend too much time. What follows that last quotation mark is a list of keywords that website has chosen. Are there any that would work well for your site? Add them to the list. Do they inspire any other ideas or variations? Add them too!

Remember, these are the sites that are already successful with the keyword you entered (they’re at the top of the search engine results when you did the result), so they’re doing something right.

Keyword Relevancy

As you search for keyword terms you may notice something. Many times the results that come back have nothing to do with the service or product you offer, or are only peripherally related. Search engines are pretty good (far from perfect, but pretty good) at leading people to what they’re looking for, and many times people just want information about a subject.

If the results from a keyword search don’t yield companies like yours, that implies that keyword may not bring targeted traffic to your site. We haven’t really gotten to the point of analyzing keywords yet, but you might want to make note. I put “??” after a keyword if I think its value is questionable, based on the search results.

For example, I do SEO writing professionally. But when I search for “SEO Writing,” I get a lot of informational articles about the subject, rather than businesses offering the service. That implies people who search for the term “SEO Writing” are looking for information about how to do that kind of writing, rather than looking for someone to do it for them.

It’s premature to eliminate a keyword at this step, but I’ll note that the keyword is iffy with a couple of question marks. I often also create a brand new column in my spreadsheet entitled “Notes,” and I’ll enter a comment with more detailed information.

Keyword Competition

This step also presents an opportunity to begin research into the competitiveness (or difficulty) of a keyword. That means how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. Right now (Step 2), we’re focused on expanding our keyword list, and we haven’t started doing the actual research and analysis yet.

However, when we’re ready to look at keyword difficulty, we’ll be coming back to these sites. You have a couple of options. If you’re new to keyword research, don’t worry about it now. Just follow the steps in order as I’ve outlined them. Yes, it entails a little redundancy because you’ll be looking through the same sites twice. However, you don’t want to confuse or overwhelm yourself too early in the research process. Plus, the keywords you’re using may not be the same keywords you want to analyze for difficulty later.

That being said, for myself, I frequently integrate these two steps in order to avoid that redundancy factor. Like I said, if you’re new to this, just go through step-by-step. Once you’ve been through the process of a few times, and you have a better feel for it, you might want to do both aspects of keyword competition analysis at once. The second aspect is detailed in Step 3.

Summary

By now your list is probably growing longer, and we haven’t even hit the step of using an online tool to generate keywords. The list will explode at that point.

So you might be looking at your list and thinking, Wow, this is a lot of work. Yes, it is. That’s why so many companies hire professionals who specialize in SEO (like me. ahem.) to do this work for them.

My first response is, don’t worry. This step-by-step guide is designed to make the process as easy, efficient and painless as possible. I’ll be here holding your hand from beginning to end.

My second response is, that’s the point. On the surface, the difference between “Freelance writer” and “Freelance copywriting” is fairly subtle, but until we do the research, we don’t know if one gets significantly more traffic than the other, if one is substantially more difficult to optimize for, etc. The point of the research is to take words that are by definition similar, and find the best one to use to generate new traffic.

So please be patient. (If you’re in an awful crunch, I will be posting some “quick-and-dirty keyword research techniques” in a future post. You’re also welcome to contact me to help you out, of course!)

Next up: we’ll continue expanding our keyword list by “building” keywords.

An Aside Re: Directories

When you search for keywords, not all the sites that come up will be business competitors. Some will be information sites, like articles posted on the subject. Other will be directories, compendiums of businesses and/or information resources. I recommend you make note of those directory sites in a new file (or new sheet on your spreadsheet) entitled “Online Directories.” Then don’t worry about it; it’s a ways off before we’ll start to use these resources, but directories can be an important source of inbound links, which comprise an important part of a comprehensive search engine marketing program. I’ll talk more about cultivating inbound links in an upcoming series.

We need to differentiate between two kinds of competition, although there will be significant overlap.

• Business competition – you should know these companies or people already. They’re competitors for your customers.
• Keyword competition – websites using the same keywords you’re considering. You’re not competing for customers in this case, but for search engine ranking.

First, we’ll study business competition to get an idea of what they use for keywords, in case they have some you didn’t consider.

1. Look up the websites of your business competition.
2. Look through their websites, just like you did with your own. Pay particular attention to words and phrases in titles, headers and boldface. Does anything stand out? Seem particularly relevant? Repeated several times? Now ask if any of those potential keywords would work for you. If so, add them to your list.
3. Next we’re going to get a little more technical. We want to look up the source code for their website.
   

   • In Firefox, select View from the menu, then choose Page Source.
   • In Internet Explorer, select Page and then View Source.

   We want to find a piece of code that says meta name=”keywords” content=” as well as meta name=”description” content=”. The page may or may not have this code, so if you can’t find it, don’t spend too much time. What follows that last quotation mark is a list of keywords that website has chosen. Are there any that would work well for your site? Add them to the list. Do they inspire any other ideas or variations? Add them too!

Organizing Your Research

Just add any new keywords to your list, in the appropriate group. When you do jot down a keyword, I recommend notating the source website so you can refer back to it later. It may also be useful in future SEO campaign steps (such as cultivating inbound links).

Just notate the source website in parentheses in the same cell as the keyword. For example: sparkling dog collars (dogs.com). This is the easiest way to organize, plus the source is right there so you don’t have to go searching for it.

On the other hand, the spreadsheet won’t be quite as clean visually. Here are some other organization ideas you might consider:

1. Color-coding. Create a worksheet in your workbook entitled “Key.” Write the name of the website in one cell, and change the text color. Then, in the “Step 2″ worksheet, just change the text color of keywords culled from that site to the same color.
2. Source Column. Create a worksheet entitled “Master,” which will contain a copy of all keywords entered manually (this is in addition to the lists of keywords sorted into groups). The “Master” serves as a repository of all keywords considered during research. On the “Master” worksheet, create a second column named “Source.” Notate the website in that column next to the appropriate keywords.