subject: Find Good Keywords - Secret Good Search Results Theory [print this page] Find Good Keywords - Secret Good Search Results Theory
Most articles focus on the monthly search volume on Google when explaining how to find good keywords for article marketing. Sure that matters! But without good search results for a given keyword, you might just be wasting your time. I'm about to reveal to you a secret theory about how to find good keywords based on a different way to analyse the results. Ok, it's not really a secret... but you just won't read about it very often.
Think differently, forget the numbers (a bit).
Ok, so what you'll read everywhere is that to find good keywords, you need to make sure that they have a good monthly search volume (500 and beyond to keep it short) and look for exact match search results that are less than 5,000 (type your keyword in quotes). Those are supposed to be good search results and, yes, they are! It's a "safe" number indeed. But here's what I want to say (I'm warning you, it's shocking!):
"The nature of your competitors matters more than how many they are!"
That's it!
All right, all right...
Let me explain why the nature of the websites you're competing against defines good search results better than the results number, to me at least (I'm just trying to convert people to this theory right now...). If you try to get your article ranked for a keyword, you benefit from the page rank and authority of the directory you are submitting your article to. But, if a website has your keyword in his domain name, Google will fell in love with that guy (you're suddenly way less attractive). What I'm trying to say here is that, to find good keywords equals analyzing the search results, your real competitors! Good search results are basically results that:
do NOT have the keyword in the domain name
are articles like yours, that are submitted to directories such as Squidoo, EzineArticles, ArticlesBase (and others)
that do not target the keyword well enough (low keyword density)
You don't need to analyze each website in an extremely thorough way, don't worry. But the 3 points above are pretty important, they can help you see the difference between good search results and...scary ones. By analyzing the results, you'll be able to find good keywords you can compete for that have a larger number of search results than 5,000. Indeed, some keywords have a pretty large number of search results but have competitors that can very easily be beaten. If one of the 5 first results is an article, go for it!
Who are the scary competitors?
Good search results imply NO authority websites. So basically, stay away from high PR websites,.org websites and websites that make you ashamed of your lil' article... just kidding here. You can compete for keywords with higher competition if you analyse your top 5 competitors. That's a fact. I have (among others) an article ranked 1st out of 4,800,00 search results! But don't get too excited about it, don't do risky things either but try this technique and see how it works for you!
