How To Research The Market Value Of Any Keyword
by Herman Drost
Most internet marketers will tell you to ONLY carry out keyword research to find a
niche or develop a product. If you follow this advice you could spend lots of time and
money developing your niche only to realize months later it was not profitable. Even if
your keyword receives a high number of searches each month there is no guarantee it has
commercial value.
Example
Some time ago I created a Google AdWords campaign centered on "italian recipes" because
the average cost per click (CPC) was very low and there were several clickbank products
available to sell as an affiliate. At the time the CPC was around 10 cents so I only had
to spend $10 for 100 clicks. I ran the campaign for several weeks trying the different
keywords I'd researched. I achieved a 2 percent click through rate but didn't make one sale.
Why didn't I generate any sales?
A search for "italian recipes" generates 1000s of free italian recipes. Why pay for an
italian recipe cookbook when you can get the information for free from the Net? The
keyword phrase "italian recipes" receives 1000s of searches each month but has little or
no commercial value.
Irrelevant keywords Waste Your Time and Effort
• 90 percent of all keywords receive no traffic therefore you should only
target keywords that get significant traffic.
• Many keywords that receive a lot of traffic have no commerical value
therefore you should only target profitable keywords.
• 90 percent of most keywords are too competitive to get top search engine
rankings. You should only target keywords that receive a high number of monthly searches
and small number of competing sites.
How to research the market value of any keyword
1. Google keyword research tool
Enter your keyword into the Google search box and see how many ads are listed down the
right side of the results pages. If there are eight ads you know advertisers are paying
for each click on their ad. To determine the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword
enter it into Google's keyword research tool. Keep in mind this value is a rough estimate.
Usually the cost is lower when you actually set up your campaign. This method is not full
proof because even though advertisers are spending money on a pay-per-click campaign you
don' t know if they are generating any profit. They could be losing money.
2. Market research
Find out where your target market visits on the Internet. Locations may include forums,
blogs, twitter, facebook, yahoo answers. etc. Engage in conversations by asking lots of
questions. Interacting with your target audience will give you insights into what people
are thinking.
3. Surveys
Survey your email list by asking what products and services they would be interested in
and how much they would be willing to pay. If you don't have an email list build one from
scratch by creating a squeeze containing a free report in exchange for an email address.
Drive traffic to your landing page using pay-per-click, article marketing and⁄or
video marketing. Survey your list once you've got 200-500 subscribers. If you receive many
positive responses you have winner.
4. Market Samurai
This a very powerful keyword research tool which determines the commercial value of
your keywords. It creates a list of 800 related keywords to target, analyzes your
competition and provides the number and quality of backlinks needed to achieve top
rankings. It also determines:
• What markets are worth targeting
• What markets are worth avoiding
• Which keywords you should focus on for fast results
• Which keywords should be avoided
• Which markets have weak competition
• Which markets show impossible levels of competition
• What are the chances of achieving front-page rankings for a keyword
• What topics you should write articles on for your website
• Where to find quality backlinks
• How many backlinks you need
• What quality backlinks you need
• How to determine the quality of a page for a backlink
The amount of time and effort you invest up front using the methods above is
proportional to the future success of your niche or product.
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of
www.iSiteBuild.com
Download his SECRET WEAPON for niche market research and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION at:
Market Samurai
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