Nick's Traffic Tricks » Keyword Research

Keyword Research With Wikipedia? (Sneaky method inside)

Nick — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:38:22 +0000

Yup, Wikipedia can help you with your keyword research.

Specifically, you can learn how much traffic you can reasonably expect to get if you rank in the top 10 in Google for your target keyword phrase.

This is possible because we can know exactly how many searches a given wikipedia page is receiving for a given keyword phrase and Wikipedia pages generally rank in the top 10 of Google.

This is best explained in a video

Links from video:

WikiPedia Daily Traffic

But Nick, why do I care about this?

Choosing the right keywords in the right niche, building a blog and content, and ranking high in Google take an immense amount of time.

And it would be a shame if you went through all this trouble only to find that no one is searching for your keyword phrase.

How Get Traffic From Google Without Building Backlinks

Nick — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:42:10 +0000

This is part of my Backlink Bible.

Building backlinks is a pain. Luckily there’s an easy way to get traffic from Google without worrying to much about backlinks.

The method involves using Google Suggest to tell you exactly which longtail keyword phrases to use.

Read How to Launch a New Blog With (Already) High Search Traffic

Afterwards take your keywords and check them for competition & profitability:

And get the full scoop on keyword research with Keyword Research 101

Keyword Research 101

Nick — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:09:58 +0000

Photo by Marcus Hansson

Before you can get traffic from search engines like Google you need to do a little keyword research.

What 5 keyword phrases would you like to rank #1 in Google for?

Search engine optimization begins with selecting the keywords that you would like to rank for. So what keywords best describe your website?

If you could rank #1 in Google for any keywords what would you pick?

Take a couple minutes and write down at least 5 keywords that you would like to rank for.

Beware of keywords that are vague or have a ton of competition i.e. computers, real estate, news, etc.
(Learn more about why these keywords should be avoided: 2 Reasons Your Keywords Suck (And How To Fix Them))

How to do keyword research

Once you know what keywords you would like to rank for you must do some keyword research to determine which keywords have the most searches and the least competition:

Need help generating keyword ideas?

Check out these resources:

Do you have the best domain?

Having your keywords in your domain is a huge component of successful search engine optimization.

Read Do You Have The Wrong Domain? 4 Tips For Choosing The Best Domain

Additional Resources

2 Reasons Your Keywords Suck (And How To Fix Them)

Nick — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:58:57 +0000

Photo by Demarcus Romero

Almost every day I get e-mails from people asking me how they can rank higher in search engines for a specific keyword or keyword phrase.

I’m happy to help people but I have noticed a common trend where people are trying to rank for keywords that really suck.

Keywords can suck in a couple different ways.

1. Your keyword has too much competition

Your mom told you that you can do anything but there are some keywords that are going to be out of your reach because there is too much competition.

Examples of these keywords are:

real estate
computers
money
credit

Keywords like these are hyper-competitive and even with my vast knowledge of traffic building I would not touch them with a 10 foot pole. Companies literally spend millions of dollars to build back links and rank high in the search engines.

I have no hope to rank in Google’s top 10 for any of these keywords. So I know not to waste my time. And neither should you.

But isn’t there some silver bullet or magic button that I could press to rank high for one of these super competitive keywords?

Sorry skippy, there is no magic button.

If there was a magic button word would spread really fast and everyone would start pushing it. There would be magic button pushing parties where we would all get together and drink red punch, where funny party hats, and practice pushing our magic buttons in unison.

And all of us would rejoice that we had a magic button to push to give us a #1 ranking in Google.

Eventually there would be 1000 people pushing their magic button to try to rank for the same keyword but there are only 10 spots available in Google’s top 10. If everyone pushed this magic button then it would lose all effectiveness.

But I want to believe that I am different, that somehow my website is special, and that the universe and Google will smile down upon me and give me a high-ranking.

You can believe whatever you want. You can wish upon a star. Just know that the rules apply to everyone and you are no exception.

What about longtail keywords?

Longtail keywords are fabulous and you can definitely rank for them. The keywords that are really out of your reach are the hyper-competitive ones like real estate, money, etc.

2. Your keyword is too general

Even if you could rank for keywords like real estate, computers, etc. it would be a mistake because these keywords are too general and you have no idea what the person is really looking for.

For example, if you have a website that specializes in computer repair in Toledo then 99.9% of people searching for computers are not going to be interested in your website. The term is too vague for you to have any idea what the person is looking for.

Take a look at Google’s “Related Searches” for the keyword: computers

Now let’s look at Google’s wonder wheel

You can see that when someone searches for computers they’re actually searching for 1 of 1000 different things. It could be PC laptops to purchase, Apple desktops, computer parts, computer pictures, history of computing, computer cameras, local computer stores, etc.

I could give you a lot more examples but I think you get the idea.

What if I want to choose one of these keywords (i.e. computers) and have my website cover every imaginable topic and sub-topic?

Good luck to you. I see 3 main problems with trying to do this:

With a few notable exceptions (i.e. WikiPedia) no website is able to cover every angle and provide in-depth information on a broad topic like computers.
Some people are looking to buy online and what they’re looking for is quite diverse. Are you going to have a storefront that has every possible make, model, and part that a person is looking for? And all at the right price? Amazon is trying to do this but you and I don’t have a chance.
Even if you could just solve the 2 problems above you still have the issue of trying to rank high in the search engines.

How to fix this

There’s a simple solution that will solve both of the aforementioned problems: choose long tail keywords.

When you select long tail keywords the competition plummets and you are targeting people with this specific set of problems or needs.

For example if I ran a computer repair shop in Toledo then I would want to target keywords like:

computer repair Toledo
computer repair shop Toledo

And you can do this for any niche or topic.

What if no one searches for my longtail keyword?

That is always a possibility and you really need to do some keyword research and determine how many people are searching for your longtail keyword before you start trying to rank for it.