In this section I will go over in detail about the Market Samurai Keyword Research Module.

The Keyword Research module is the main function of Market Samurai.  The foundation of this function is based upon the 4 Golen Rules of Keyword Research. 

As briefly explained earlier the 4 Golden Rules are:

  • Relevancy
  • Traffic
  • Competition
  • Commerciality

Understanding each of these 4 golden rules is critical to find profitable and attainable niches.  Lets break down each of the 4 golden rules in more detail.

Golden Rule #1: Relevancy

It is important to find keywords that are relevant to the topic your site will be about.  When doing your keyword research you will find that the results of your search will show not only relevant keywords, but keywords that have nothing to do with your site topic. 

The problem is gathering all of the relevant keywords to the search while eliminating all the unrelated keywords.  Doing this manually can be very time consuming, however if you use Market Samurai’s keyword filtering system you can find all of the relevant keywords for your search while eliminating the unrelated keywords in seconds.

How you can use Market Samurai to find relevant keywords:

  • Add Additional Keywords – do multiple keyword researches at once
  • Google Synonym Tool & Google Keyword Search – Adds more keywords that are related to the one you searched
  • Add Permutations – Add your keywords in different word orders
  • Delete Keywords Manually – Just click on the ‘X’
  • Add Negative Keywords – Deletes all keywords that have these words
  • Add Positive Keywords - Only keep keywords with these words
  • Filter Phrase Length – Delete keywords that have less than ‘X’ number of words (ex. Delete Keywords with less than 3 words)
  • Phrase to Broad Ratio – Delete phrases in the wrong phrase order

By using the above tools you can quickly and easily find a list of relevant keywords for your site. 

For more information on Golden Rule #1: Relevancy, watch the video below.

Once you have a list of relevant keywords you can start to filter down further into the other 3 golden rules of keyword research.

Golden Rule #2: Traffic

Obviously Traffic is going to be a huge factor in finding a profitable keyword.  Without traffic, you have no customers, without customers you have no sales/clicks, and without sales/clicks you make no money.  It’s as simple as that.

Once you have found relevant keywords by using the methods above you can use those same list of keywords to find which one produces an acceptable amount of traffic.

With Market Samurai finding keywords with acceptable amount of traffic is quite simple.

All you have to do is hit the "Analyze Keywords" button and it will fetch all the traffic information for the list of keywords that you selected.  The results page will display a numerous amount of information including the number of searches for each keyword per day.

An acceptable amount of traffic for a main keyword would be greater that 80 searches per day.  This equates to around 2400 searches per month.

While the number of searches for a particular keyword is great, Market Samurai has a results column called SEO Traffic (SEOT).  This value tells you the maximum number of search results you will receive if you land a #1 position in Google.

Using SEOT, you will be able to get a more accurate estimate of how many searches you can actually achieve by landing in the #1 position for that particular keyword. 

If you would like to filter out all keyword phases that get less than 80 visitors a day all you have to do is set the SEOT filter to a minimum value of 80.  This will give you relevant keywords with a traffic of amount of 80 visitors a day if you reach the #1 position in Google.

For more information on Golden Rule #2: Traffic, watch the video below.

 

Golden Rule #3: Competition

Golden Rule #3 is the strength of competition.  While relevancy and traffic are very important, so is competition.  If a keyword for a niche is too competitive it will be difficult to rank on the first page of Google.  Traffic potential means nothing if you are unable to receive the traffic. 

It’s important to note that If the competition for a keyword phrase is too competitive you will never get the amount of traffic you want even if the keyword has a lot of searches per day. 

With Market Samurai you can avoid highly competitive keyword phrases by analyzing the 2 main aspects of competition:

  1. Amount of Competition
  2. Strength of Competition

The amount of competition is key because the higher the amount of competition you have, the more sites you have to beat to get to the first page of Google.  With Market Samurai finding the amount of competition for each of your keywords is provided as part of the keyword analysis. 

Once you analyze your keywords there are 3 competition columns called SEOC (SEO Competition), SEOTC (SEO Title Competition), and SEOTCR (SEO Title Competition Ratio). 

SEOC represents the total number of websites globally that mention a specific keyword term in the same phrase word order in the Google index.  This basically is the total number of websites that you will be competing with for a particular keyword phrase. 

This does not mean that all of these pages are optimized for those keywords it just means they have been mentioned on that page.  Therefore most of the sites should be easy to beat with proper SEO.  However do not ignore the fact that the higher the SEOC the more competition you will have to beat.

SEOTC represents the total number of websites globally that mention all of the keywords in the title page.  Since SEOTC represents sites that mention your keyword phrases in the actual title of the page, this number shows more of indication of sites that are targeting those keyword phrases.

SEOTCR represents the ratio of SEOTC to SEOTC (SEOTC/SEOC).  Basically it indicates the amount of pages targeting the keywords vs. the number of sites that just mention the keyword. A low SEOTCR percentage indicates a weaker competition.

In Market Samurai you can sort by each of these columns to show you which keyword terms are most and least competitive.  Additionally to sorting each column you can also filter each of these columns. 

If you would like to like to filter out keyword phrases that are too competitive you can put a value of SEOC to a maximum of 100,000 (or even less for less competitive keywords) and a maximum SEOCR of 60%. 

Of course the filter values are arbitrary to what your marketing strategy is.  In any case by utilizing these 3 competition values for each of your keywords you will have a much better understanding of the amount of competition each keyword has.

The amount of competition is important to know about, but the strength of competition is just as important. 

The amount of competition will tell you how many competitors you have, while the strength of competition will tell you how tough your competition is.

Strength of competition is dependent on many factors.  Market Samurai takes all of the most important factors for the top 10 sites for a specific keyword and displays them into an easy to read matrix. 

The following strength of competition factors are displayed in the SEO Competition Module:

  • DA – Domain Age (how many years the domain has been around)
  • PR - Page Rank (Google ranking for the authority of the site)
  • IC – Index Count (number of pages indexed in Google)
  • BLP - Backlinks to specific page
  • BLD - Backlinks to domain
  • BLEG - Backlinks from .edu and .gov sites
  • DMOZ – Determines if listed in DMOZ directory
  • YAH - Determines if listed in Yahoo! directory
  • Title - Determines if the keywords are on the title of the page
  • URL - Determines if the keywords are in the URL
  • DESC - Determines if the keywords are in the page description
  • HEAD - Determines if the keywords are in H1, H2, or H3 tags
  • CA - Determines the last time the Google bot spidered the site

Market Samurai takes each of these factors and displays them into an easy to read matrix.  The matrix is color coded with green, orange, and red.  Green indicates weak competition, orange indicates substantial competition, and red indicates a high competition.  Therefore, in general you want to see more of a green to orange colored matrix for an indication of weak competition.

If you run into a keyword phrase that has primarily high PR, high DA, high BLP, and optimized for the Title, URL, DESC, and HEAD, you may want to find an alternative keyword phrase.  While no competition is impossible, there is no reason to waste the time and money ranking for keywords that you will never reach page 1 of Google.

If however, you do see some sites that have low PR, low DA, low BLP sneaking into the top 10 results then this could be an indication that a new site can squeeze in as well. 

As you can see this is a powerful tool to evaluate the strength of competition for your keywords.

I will go into more detail about the SEO Competition Module in a separate post.

For more information on Golden Rule #3: Competition, watch the video below.

Golden Rule #4: Commerciality

In this section I will go over what commerciality is and why it is important.

Commerciality is the value of a specific keyword phrase.  Each keyword has a commercial value based on advertisers demand.  The more advertisers are willing to pay for a particular keyword the more commercial value the keyword phrase is worth.  By studying Google Adwords Cost Per Click (CPC) value for a specific keyword phrase you can determine if a certain keyword phrase will have a substantial commercial value.

Market Samurai displays various commercial values to help determine how much a particular keyword is worth.

  • Trends - Google Monthly Trends Information
  • AWC - Adwords Competition
  • AWCPC - Adwords Cost Per Click
  • SEOV - SEO Value

The trends field gives a monthly indication of the commercial value of a particular keyword phrase.  This can be a very useful tool to spot seasonal keyword niches.  For example, if you were to search for the keyword "Christmas Ornaments", you will notice that the commercial value is high in November and December and low in all other months.

By looking at the trends information you can not only spot seasonal niche markets, but you can also verify if your particular keyword phrase has a acceptable commerciality throughout the whole year.

 

 

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