Are you spending too much time trying to get on the first page of Google for the “big words”?
There are more words out there than the ever-coveted “top tier” terms. If you aren’t researching keywords that are a little less competitive and possibly a lot easier to rank your website with, maybe you should consider it.
There are a ton of great tools out there to help you figure out what those keywords are.
Google Insights for Search
For starters, Google has great tools that are built just so you can see what’s going on out there in web world – specifically, what people are out there looking for. Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.
http://trends.google.com and http://www.google.com/insights/search allow you to type in certain keywords, and find out different keyword trends that vary by city, and by date.
You unfortunately won’t get exact numbers – for instance, you would be able to see that 1,431,000 people worldwide searched for a particular keyword in May of 2006. If that is the type of specific information you’re looking for, you might want to look elsewhere.
Google will, however, give you an idea based on a linear of scale of how the search volume of a particular keyword has changed over time. You will also get city and country information for top searches, and can narrow your search by region.
Google Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google’s Keyword tool is also an incredible asset, as it lets you examine the competition you’ll find for each keyword. Take a look at the competition meter next to the keyword you type in within your results. It’s a very handy tool to determine which words have little competition.
Keyword Spy
There are plenty of other keyword tools out there that are subscription-based. Keyword Spy, Spyfu, and other popular tools can help you figure out what keywords your competitors are using. This could be valuable information to determining the lowest competition keywords out there for you.
I’ve Got My Keywords – Now What?
After you’ve made a creative list of low competition keywords, start local. Target a few local markets in major cities of your choosing, and make sure tracking is in place to see how your SEO efforts are going. When you get good rankings in those local markets, then you can move on to more and more cities. Make sure to keep track of your national or global rankings, if applicable, throughout the process.
There are plenty of ways to do effective SEO. Make sure that you continually improve your on page factors and continue to hunt for effective backlinks throughout building your SEO campaigns. And remember … if you don’t have tracking software in place, you really shouldn’t start any campaigns. If you don’t have any idea how far you’ve come, you won’t be able to measure tangible goals, and develop a plan to get there.
