Bill McRea

As an affiliate marketer, keyword research is a vital activity because through keyword research and analysis, you discover the best keywords to build niche websites that are fairly simple, yet full of the information that will interest those who are searching on your topic.

In this article we will look at some of the various ways that affiliate marketers use keyword research, and some of the tools that can help them to save time and get better results.

How to use keywords on your affiliate blog or website

Keywords are one of the most critical components for your affiliate Marketing website–or any website for that matter. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is made up of about 20-30% on-page factors such as:

• Title tags
• Meta tags
• Meta descriptions
• H1 tags
• Body text/copy
• Domain name
• Page names
• Anchor text

Keywords are the basic element in all of these items. Google ranks websites based on keywords, the density, and relevancy of the keywords on your site relative to other similar websites within your topic. Most importantly, keywords are used in the content of your website in the form of website copy, blog posts, navigation and inbound and outbound links.

Using Keyword Research tools to find ‘buyer keywords’

When someone is still in the initial discovery phase of making a purchase, they will use more general keywords such as, “sporting goods,” and then maybe, “bicycles.” As they learn more about exactly what they want, the keywords they use will become more specific or targeted such as, “Huffy,” or “Schwinn bicycles,” or “bicycle shop in <insert zip code>.”

Plugging your list of primary keywords into a keyword research tool will help you to find more, related keywords, long tail keywords, and those crucial buyer keywords.

If you are really serious about affiliate marketing, you should invest in a premium keyword research tool. The free, Google keyword tool is fine for when you are first getting started, but as your skills develop and you get more serious about affiliate marketing, you’ll want to investigate the most popular keyword research and analysis tools such as WordTracker, Market Samurai, MicroNiche Finder, and the new NicheFinder software by Brad Callan.

Keyword research is one of those critical tasks that online businesses people must do in order to keep their websites at the top of the search engines. It can be a confusing, challenging, time-consuming task if you don’t have access to the right tools for the job. The right premium keyword research tools will  make online keyword research faster, easier and more effective.

Your goal with affiliate marketing is to provide value added information on the topic of the products that you are pre-selling.  The right keywords will help you attract that targeted traffic that you need to keep your website at the top of the search engine results.

Now it’s time to discover how to do keyword research quickly and effectively with the world’s most powerful, new niche finding software. Visit, http://mcreasite.com/NicheFinder, to start uncovering those hidden niches with niche finder today.

When you are running an online business you know that visitors do not just fall out of the sky. They end up at your website because they entered certain keywords into their favorite search engine, or maybe they clicked on a keyword anchor text link on a related site. Keywords are a critical component to the success of your website, so keyword research is an activity that you will need to get really good at and quickly if you want to achieve success with your online business.

Of course there are countless mistakes that we all make every day when it comes to keyword research because it is partly science and partly an art to getting it just right. Here are 3 common mistakes and some ideas for how to overcome them.

Mistake # 1: Not knowing what your competition is doing

If you do not know what keywords competing websites are using to achieve higher search engine rankings, then you are at a considerable disadvantage.

Use sites such as spyfu.com and SEMrush.com, which are competitive intelligence web applications that will help you discover exactly which keywords your competitors are using, gain insight into their PPC campaigns and landing pages, and find out what their organic search engine ranking is.

Mistake #2 : Not using long tail keywords to attract targeted traffic

Not using long tail keyword phrases only makes sure that you are missing out on attracting the most targeted traffic  for your website.

Long tail keyword phrases have four or more words and helps you to identify where your visitors are in the buying cycle. For example, the keyword, “bird feeders,” is a very general primary keyword while the long tail keyword phrase, “bird feeder plans for kids,” is a very targeted keyword phrase which lets you know exactly what the visitor is looking for.

Mistake #3 : Relying on free keyword research tools

When you make the mistake of relying only on the use of free keyword tools, you lose out on many of the value added features that you get with a premium keyword tool.  You want a premium keyword tool that is simple and easy to use, one that will save you time and effort, and one that is able to uncover keywords and long tail keyword phrases that you might otherwise have overlooked.

Premium keyword research tools can also help you to find the right keyword rich domain name for your website. Having a keyword in the domain name will help you attract even more organic search engine traffic.

Keyword research is an essential activity for any online business. Using a premium keyword research tool can help cut down the time and energy that you spend on this task and make your research time yield more profitable results.

Are you ready for a power tool for keyword research? Check out, http://mcreasite.com/NicheFinder, to start discovering those hidden, untapped keywords with niche finder today.

There is a lot of information out there about online keyword research because it is such a critical task to having a successful website. If you want to narrow it down to the barest essentials, the goal of keyword them worth pursing, but not so much that you don’t have a shot at ranking for them, and you also need keywords that get a decent amount of traffic, which means that people are already searching for them.

Here are 5 basic tips to help you make the most of your keyword research:

1. 1. What keywords is your site ranking for now?

Take a look ‘under the hood,’ of your website so to speak, and look at your analytics software to see what keywords your current visitors are using to find your website. You should do this fairly often and you will most likely find a few surprises every time. Make a note of those keywords that you are already ranking for and try to find some related search terms to go with those.

If you don’t have an analytics program, you should remedy that right away. Try Google Analytics, which is free, quite robust and easy to use. After you install it, give it a day or two to start gathering some results.

1. 2. What are your top competitors ranking for?

Now you are going to be taking a peek under the hood of you competitor’s websites with the full knowledge that nothing is keeping them from doing the same thing on your site. In your browser you can view the HTML source of any website. Look for the following lines in the page’s source code:

<meta name=”description” content=”keywords are here” />

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords are here” />

This is where you will find that website’s primary keywords listed. Take a look at their keywords and see if you get any ideas for additional keywords that you could start using for your website.

Another way to scope out what your competitors are up to is to use SEMrush.com to find out what keywords they are ranking for along with other useful information.

1. 3. Develop a list of basic keywords to start with

Come up with a basic list of what is often referred to as a ‘seed’ list of keywords. These are the most obvious keywords that you can think of that your visitors might use to find what you have to offer.

1. 4. Use a keyword tool to expand this list

Your next step is to plug that initial seed list into a keyword tool to expand the list. A good keyword tool will be easy to use, it will offer you just the information you need without a lot of additional data that you don’t know what to do with. A good keyword tool also saves you time by helping you to uncover those long tail keywords that you might not have found otherwise.

1. 5. Come up with a final list of primary keywords

Remember, your objective is to come up with a list of about 5 or so profitable keywords that get a good amount of traffic, but do not have so much competition that it’s not worth your effort trying to rank for them.  You will use these keywords in the titles and headlines of your content, as well as within the body of your website’s copy and blog posts. You will also use your primary keywords as anchor text for you linking structure both within the site and inbound and outbound links.

Keywords are constantly changing due to several factors including the seasons, time of the year, trends, etc. You’ll want to keep updating your keyword list to keep up with those changes as much as possible.

Find out how you can quickly and easily uncover hidden, untapped niches. Check out, http://mcreasite.com/NicheFinder, to start discovering those power keywords with niche finder today.

In online keyword research the goal is to find the best keywords to structure your website’s content around.  That is a given, but with long tail keywords, you can begin to get some insight into the mind of your visitors to figure out what their intentions are when they visit your website.

Wikipedia defines long tail keyword phrases in this way: “The long tail in keyword research is basically an expansion of a core, generic, high volume keyword phrase to include numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases.” In plain English, they are trying to say that long tail keywords, which is a keyword phrase of four or more words, expands on the primary keyword to reveal the specific intentions and desires of the searcher.

Here’s an example of a primary keyword, “racing car.” A long tail keyword for the topic of racing cars might be, “Vintage racing cars for sale.”

Long tail keywords reveal where the visitor falls in the buying cycle

As you can see in our example, when a visitor is searching on the keyword, ‘racing cars,’ it is difficult to determine exactly what it is that he might be interested in, but in the long tail keyword example of, ‘vintage racing cars for sale,’ you can clearly see that this visitor knows that he wants to find vintage racing cars that are available for sale. The visitors intention can be narrowed down further when he types in the keywords, “1961 Maserati Tipo for sale.” Now you know that this buyer knows  precisely what he is searching for.

Using  online keyword research tools to find long tail keywords

Finding these long tail keywords is almost like digging for gold. You start with a pile of primary keywords and then you type them in to a keyword research tool and you look to find those keyword phrases of four or more words that precisely narrow down the visitor’s intent and pinpoints their place in the buying cycle. There is a lot less traffic at the narrow end of the long tail, but the traffic that these keywords bring is targeted traffic that knows exactly what they want. If you can bring it to them, then you will be successful.

Why use a premium keyword tool when there are so many free ones around?

Yes, there are plenty of free keyword research tools around, with Google’s Keyword Tool being chief among them. If you are just starting out and learning about keyword research, this is a good place to start, but when you are ready to get serious about your online business, and when you are ready to get the best results possible in less time, and find those lucrative, long tail keywords, then it’s time to get a premium keyword research tool.

Would you like to discover how competitive any keyword is, and how easy or difficult it might be to rank for that keyword? Visit, http://mcreasite.com/NicheFinder , to start uncovering those hidden niches with niche finder today

The basic goal of keyword research is to find the best keywords that will attract visitors who are searching for what you have to offer. Search engines whether you are talking about Google or the others all work based on keywords. Your goal is to learn just enough about SEO to optimize your site to provide the best resource for the searchers who are looking for your primary keywords.
Google ranks websites based on their keywords, so you create your blog or website’s content with a focus on those primary keywords that will attract the users that will be interested in what you have to offer.

The goal of keyword research
Your goal is to find keywords that get a sufficient enough amount of traffic, but do not have so much competition that you can’t get a foothold in that niche. Sounds simple enough, right? When you take into consideration the fact that all of this is constantly changing based on the time of year, season, holidays, fads and fashion you begin to see how complex all of this can become. Next we will take a look at keyword research tools, which can help you make sense of all of this data that is constantly shifting and changing.

Keyword research tools
When it comes to keyword research tools, you will find both free tools and premium tools. Some of the premium tools are very powerful and can give you a dizzying array of data about your keyword lists, but they can also be very complex, difficult to learn and so you don’t get the results you are looking for.

With free tools, you get what you pay for. Free keyword research tools can give you one part of the picture, but to get the best results you want to find a good, premium keyword research tool that will help you to uncover those keywords and niches that you might not have otherwise found, and help you to find those powerful, long tail keywords that help you sort out your traffic to attract the most targeted visitors.

Choosing a domain name
Competitive keyword research is also useful in finding the right domain name for your websites. A domain name should contain the primary keyword that you are trying to rank for with your website, but it should also be as short as possible, be easy to say, and spell. Clarity always trumps cleverness when it comes to domain names because search engines really don’t get puns or plays on words in the same way that the human brain does.
If you are going to get serious about your online business, then keyword research is something that you are going to need to get really good at. Having a good keyword research tool at your disposal is the first step in getting the most accurate and timely data available so that your sites can have the best SEO, attract the most targeted traffic and have the best conversions.

Are you ready to discover how to do keyword research quickly and effectively with the world’s most powerful, new niche finding software? Visit, http://mcreasite.com/NicheFinder, to start uncovering those hidden niches today.