subject: Affiliate Marketing - Simple Keyword Research [print this page] Affiliate Marketing - Simple Keyword Research
Keyword selection is a critical part of any online business. In order to attract qualified, targeted visitors to a website you should adopt a rigorous procedure to come up with a list of keywords. The best place to do this is using Google's free keyword tool.
The first thing to do is to brainstorm ideas of what search-term a typical internet buyer may key-in if he/she were looking for a product in your chosen niche. You should put yourself in their place and imagine what you would type-in.
If you enter this word, or phrase, Google will come up with a list of suggestions, including the one that you entered. The list includes monthly search volumes, both locally and globally, for each keyword. Instead of choosing a very broad keyword try those with more that one word for example, instead of 'dog training' look at 'training your labrador puppy'. These long-tailed keyword can still have good monthly search volumes but they can be more targeted and would certainly have less competition.
Once you have your list of keywords go to the Google search page and type them in one at a time. For each one, just below the search bar, you will see how many results there are. This means how many web-pages are using that keyword. Also you can see how many sponsored links there are. These are the paid advertisements that appear down the right-hand side of the page, and sometimes across the top of the page. This is an indication that people who search, using this keyword, also have money to spend. If you check again in a few days time and see that the same adverts are showing, it means that the owner of the advert is probably making money.
Even though there are many search-engines Google data can be used as a baseline since we know that Google has the biggest proportion of search-engine traffic. You should expect other traffic sources to have similar targeted visitors for the same keywords.
If you can get this keyword selection right then the opportunities for targeted traffic open up. Making money online, including in Affiliate Marketing, rely on good keyword research.
