Finding The Golden Keyword

All of us are searching for the golden keyword, you know the one that has thousands of searches with no competition and a high priced affiliate product at the end.

Is this like searching for the golden fleece? Does it actually exist?

Like many affiliate marketers I was brought up on the dream of the golden keyword.Once upon a time it was easy to find the odd nugget but it is getting a little trickier now.

I see many affiliate marketers falling into the trap of spending so much time looking for the right keyword, the one that has X number of searches, competition under Y, that they don’t actually do anything but search. And they make no money.

For years we have been told to check keywords out by putting them in quotes and searching on Google to find out how much competition there is, this is OK up to a point but it really doesn’t tell you what you need to know.

The “quote” search only tells you how many pages are indexed with that exact phrase on the page, it is NOT an indication of competition. In any niche certain phrases will come up time and time again and they will be on a web page but that does not mean that the page is actually targeted for that phrase.

Example: Listen to any conversation about golf, how many times will terms such as ‘driver’ or ‘wedge’ come up? Yet the conversation may really be about The Masters, or ‘Golf Bags’ Related but unconnected and therefore not competition, the same applies to keywords and web pages.

The most reliable way to find the competition you are battling is to use these terms:

inurl:”keyword”  Will return pages with the exact phrase in their url.

inanchor:”keyword” Will return pages with backlinks containing the exact phrase.

intitle:”keyword” Will return pages with the exact keyword in the page title.

If a web page has these features then it is a fair bet that it has been optimised for that phrase. This does indicate proper competition.

If, after checking the keyword for these factors you find that there is a lot of competing pages does that mean the keyword is no good? Not necessarily, you then need to check how strong these pages are by examining the Page Rank, the age, the number of backlinks etc.

Using a tool like SEO for Firefox this is a fairly simple procedure although a little time consuming. You can find keywords with seemingly thousands of competing web pages but on investigation the top ten results might have no pages with any PR or backlinks, these will be easy to beat.

On the other hand another keyword may have only a handful of competing pages but they are all PR5/6 with thousands of backlinks, you will spend years trying to get above those and possibly never will.

Keyword research is something you love or hate but it is a fact that you will not make money online without it.

Is there a golden keyword? Of course but you may waste months or even years looking for it, lower your sights and take action, find keywords you can target using the method above and then commit.

If you have the budget there is a tool that will do all this for you and more, it’s called MicroNicheFinder, it’s the one I use every day and I couldn’t live without it. See for yourself here

Related posts:

1. Does Google Need Our Content?
2. More Keyword Research
3. Keyword Research & Page Rank
4. Finding The Most Searched Profitable Keywords
5. Finding Profitable Keywords | The Right Bait