This is a guest post by Matt Geer.
If you want to guest post on this blog,check out the guest post guidelines here.
The keyword research techniques that are taught on the web are all pretty much the same:
- Open up a keyword tool such as Google, Market Samurai or Word Tracker.
- Find low competition, high volume keywords.
- Make sure they are “buying” or “money” keywords.
Depending on the blog you’re reading, you’ll either be told to go after the big keywords or longtails.
Either way though, all you’re doing is chasing the same keywords that everyone else in that niche is.
Don’t get me wrong, this approach certainly works. But I like to do things differently. Different doesn’t always work, but when it does, in the case of keywords you can find niches or angles that no one else has taken yet that can prove to be pretty profitable.
So with that in mind, I wanted to show you a couple of places that people aren’t looking for keywords (as well as content ideas). Well, they probably will after this, so I suggest taking these tips and running with them as quickly as you can.
Keyword Research — 3 Places People Aren’t Looking That You Should Be
Here are 3 different places that people aren’t using for their keyword research.
1. Adsense
Adsense ads are generated based on the pages on your site (amongst other things). This is a great way to get keyword ideas for your site, blog posts and articles.
For example, if you have a site about credit or credit cards, you might have a page on “bad credit credit cards.” Here are some actual Adsense results that you might see:
- Credit Card Debt Relief
- Bad Credit Unsecured Loan
- Apply Instant Credit Card
- Bad Credit Personal Loans
- Bad Credit Loans
Are you targeting these keywords on your site? You should be, because running PPC for credit related terms is expensive, so you can be sure that these keywords are being searched for if someone is paying for them.
But don’t take these keywords and use them as is. You want to turn them into page or post titles. Let’s take “credit card debt relief” for example. What titles could we generate with this phrase?
- What Are The Best Credit Card Debt Relief Programs?
- 5 Reasons to Avoid Credit Card Debt Relief Services
- What is Credit Card Debt Relief?
- 10 Scams Commonly Pulled by Credit Card Debt Relief Companies
You can generate so many topics using this phrase — 25, 50, maybe more!?! Thousands of keywords and topic ideas are at your fingertips.
Ok, so where do we find these ads? Well, there are lots of places:
- Your own website, if you’re using Adsense to monetize it.
- Your competitor’s websites.
- Web 2.0 sites such as HubPages, YouTube, IMDB and eHow
You can go anywhere that monetizes with Adsense. I would personally stick to sites or networks that cover your topic, or a variety of topics. My ideas above will keep you busy for a while, though.
Yahoo Answers
Yahoo Answers is another great place for keyword research because you’re getting keywords straight from the hors.. err.. people’s mouths.
What you need to do is look through all the questions being asked. I stuck with the credit theme and visited the credit questions within the business and financial section. Here are some of the gems I found:
- Are there legitimate credit repair companies?
- Can you buy a prepaid card with another prepaid card?
- What are some of the strategies that can help you use credit wisely?
I didn’t look to see if those keywords are actually being looked for online or not, but they’re the keywords I’d focus on when writing my content.
Note: I did check Google for total number of sites for “legitimate credit repair companies,” and there are only 70,000 competing results. And the Yahoo Answers question that I got the question from is on the first page. Hint: If the Yahoo question is on the first page, you can get past it.
Can you see the potential for keywords here? The content ideas you could generate?
Want to know a cool strategy? If you already have a blog or website dedicated to a certain niche, find these questions and write a blog post that answers them. Then answer the question on Yahoo Answers (semi-thoroughly), and then link to your site as your “source.” FYI: You can’t post hyperlinks until you’re a level 2 answerer, but that’s only 240 points, which isn’t hard to get. People will find this so helpful, and many of these longtail type questions / answers rank very well in search engines. So you’ll get traffic that way, too.
Just keep in mind that, if you choose to answer the question(s), that you want to be helpful. I wouldn’t just post a response that says — I answered this here, with a link to your site. That’s a quick way to get flagged. You also want to write the blog post and answer the question as quickly as possible, as questions are automatically closed after 4 days or so, or whenever the asker decides they got a good enough answer.
3. Forums
Forums are another great way for generating keyword and content ideas. Once again, this is worth your time to try because these are questions and/or problems that people are actually having. And I’m not sure about you, but usually when I use a forum to ask questions I’ve already done a search in Google and Bing. So there is search traffic to be had here.
Going through a couple forums for credit related questions, here are some keywords/phrases that I came up with:
- What is A Good Credit to Debt Ratio?
- Using Lex Law Firm to clean my credit?
- I want to fix my credit asap!
- Ok…ready to start repairing my credit
I can go on all day — there are 70+ pages in that particular section of the forum, and there are several sections overall. And that’s one forum of tens, if not hundreds updated regularly.
Something worth pointing out too — you don’t have to use these questions, answers or keywords as is. Add your own spin or angle to them. You could try different variations. For example, instead of bad credit, you might say poor credit. Or instead of credit score, you could use credit rating. You could even focus on the opposite of what is being asked. For example, instead of, “I want to fix my credit asap,” try, “how to screw your credit up asap.”
I think you get the idea.
Well, that’s it from me. I hope you see the potential here and take advantage of it right away. There are many keywords or phrases that these places can generate for you that will bring in people desperate for answers or solutions. More over, these people that are looking for answers are often willing to pay for them, provided you give them a quality solution.
So, what do you think? Are you going to take advantage of these keyword (and content) generating ideas?
About the author: This post was written by Matt, co-owner of Plug Things In. Plug Things In has written detailed internet guides that help you understand how internet service works, what your options are and how to “plug into” them.
Hi Matt, I am amazed by your way of doing the keyword research and the awesome fact is that this strategy is much more efficient for certain reasons! 1.)The Traditional Keyword research includes 99% suggestions from bots through the tools of Google Adwords and other media tools! whereas the yahoo answers and adsense ads are heavily structured by real community niche people!
Hey Adrian,
Exactly. Real people are going to buy your products (or products you recommend), so it only makes sense to solve their problems and write for them, right?!?
Thanks for the comment!
Matt
http://www.PlugThingsIn.com
You can use Odigger to find products related keywords. It also comes for posible affiliate program for these keywords
Hi Robert,
Odigger looks to be an affiliate network, kind of like CJ.com, Peerfly, etc.
I don’t doubt you can get ideas this way, but I would think that there are more efficient ways to get keyword/content ideas.
What do you think?
I think that Google and Yahoo adsense are efficient to use but using odigger could create a fresh flow of keywords to use for your article. Not really relying on it, but just using it to supplement your endeavors 🙂
Great idea’s Matt. You want answer you have to go to the right places and it sounds to me like a great idea to check out adsense, yahoo answers and the forums for these key words.
thanks Matt for some really great avenues to look at for those key words.
Blessings to you, and Andrew thanks for Matts guest post,
Debbie
Thank you for your comment Debbie. I’m glad you liked the post 🙂
Thanks Andrew Rondeau
It is always better to test on a live product. However if you don’t have your product out yet I would test the waters with a landing page.
Would this also serve as a method to test market potential/interest for your product, before actually building it?
I’m not a big fan of testing market potential. Whenever I do a ton of planning I always end up getting discouraged. If you have a good product you will get customers.
This keyword tutorial is to help you finesse your SEO. Target keywords you know will convert.
Hi Andrew,
I wasn’t even aware of this type of keyword search, although I did know about Market Samurai.
Anyway, great information for website owners that you put up here, looking forward to reading some more.
Mariella
Your given ideas of researching keywords are very important and useful. So, i want to follow this great post as my keyword research guide. Thanks for this helpful post.
Great Matt, I think getting keywords from adsense ads is a great way to get competition free keywords, I am going to try it today will let you know if I be successful.
Hi Matt,
Your technique is simple but very powerful.
I had been using GoogleKeyword Tool, but as we know, a lot of possibilities on offer. As a result I am getting lost.
It did not occur earlier if adsense can be used as a tool to search for keywords.
Thank you for your great tips
You can also use Google’s autocomplete search feature. Popular searches come to the top on a particular topic so you know how people are searching.
Google Adwords Keyword research tool is definetely the best, not only because the tool itself is amazing but also because Google holds most of the traffic for now.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing your methods, it’s always interesting to find new ways of doing keyword research. We’re in quite a competitive market so always looking for ways to improve and get ahead if at all possible. I see that Yahoo answers is viable source of traffic for us – not sure why I didn’t think of using this option, so thanks for the tip.
I am too busy with my business tours I couldn’t focus much on my site actually I just hired a freelance SEO to do this but it’s hard to find a good SEO freelancer to know real stuffs like this in your post. Especially on my field.
great help here, good techniques, with things becoming increasingly difficult in the world of internet marketing I think getting keywords from adsense ads is the way foreward to get a free keywords. cheers mate
Hey Matt,
I love using forums and Yahoo Answers to get keywords. The reason is because people ask specific questions and those same questions almost always make great blog post titles. They also tell you the information people are looking for RIGHT NOW and give you an idea of the type of info they are having a hard time finding.
I think most people probably search for answers first and only ask questions on these sites when they can’t find what they’re looking for.
Another great way to find keywords is to go to a local book store, find a book in your niche, and skim through chapter titles, headings, and stuff like that.
Forums are a great place to find traffic and keyword ideas. I know my brother has come up with several posts on one of his sights solely on one of the forums he’s on. And they’ve been really good posts, too.
I hadn’t thought of using Adsense as a source of keywords, but I might have to pay more attention to them now that you mention it.
Thanks for sharing these great ideas!
I like the adsense way to get keywords and then turn them into posts titles. Something we haven’t tried before and has got to be better than using the same keyword methods over an over. Thanks for this tip.
Hi Matt, This is an excellent way of finding keywords. Although I did know that getting past Yahoo answers page in search results is not difficult, I never figured that Yahoo answers could be a source of quality keywords. Thank you!
I never knew that Yahoo Answers could be a great source for quality keywords. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Very useful info. So far I use yahoo answer to increase traffic to my site. I also use yahoo answer as idea to make new article.
I really like your ideas very much especially on the third method of generating keywords from forum. I never really thought of that before. Thank you so much for sharing with us.
I’d had just been using Google really to learn of these options is great. I will use them. Hope it benefits my blog!
Thank you these are really great tips! There really are a lot of things that we should consider when we are looking for keywords to use for our site. It is not only the short keywords that we should target but also the long-tail keywords though, but we should not use it extensively. We should pair it up with a couple of short keywords to be more effective.
Hi Andrew,
Sanjib here. I really learnt a lot after reading this article because my knowledge on keywords research techniques is almost nil. I do it the way I feel without following any particular technique but you have emphasized how important and useful these techniques are.
Thanks a lot,
Sanjib
Sorry, but I can’t agree that forums are the best place to find keywords. People who chat there don’t even think about using any keywords. There are lots of slang and shortcuts. And the number of well-named topic isn’t as big as it could be. It may just become a waste of time. IMHO )
I usually used Google keyword tool in finding good keywords to be used for my site. I agree with Adsense helping to find what keywords have higher hit on your blog and work on it.
looking for keywords in adsense is a brilliant idea!
i never thought about it before
thank you 🙂
I am a employee of SEO field and i know very well about this..Thanks for this amazing and informative news.
Hi Matt,
To become a smart blogger, you need to make use of tools for keywords. The keyword tool from Google isn’t that bad, best of all it’s free. However, it does not provide enough information the same way Market Samurai does. The only problem is you need to pay for this tool and it doesn’t come cheap. Personally, I think saving money by being cheap is not always productive.