Keyword research is a vital part of any SEO plan. Keywords are the foundation of search engines. Search engines account for most of the traffic online, so finding great keywords can drive a lot of visitors to your site.

What should you look for in a keyword? What makes a keyword worth targeting?

Here are the 3 basic things I consider before targeting a specific keyword.

Search Volume

Search volume simply means how many people search for the keyword. You can hit the top 10 of Google for the search term, my favorite cat fifi. It won’t do you any good though, because no one is searching for that keyword.

Make sure internet users are actually searching for your keyword. This is where keyword tools can help. I personally like using Google Adwords keyword tool because it’s based on Google’s database.

Don’t fully rely on keyword tools. Keyword tools don’t predict the future search volume. For example, more people will search for a movie or a gadget after it’s been released. In this case, keyword tools will not be very accurate, because they don’t take account future events.

Competition

Just because a phrase has high search volume doesn’t mean you should target it. If you have a new travel site, you shouldn’t target travel. This keyword is super competitive. There’s over 700 million results for that term. Each of the top 10 sites have a PR7 or higher. You may never rank for this term in your lifetime!

Some people determine competition by the number of search results for the keyword. However, I think that method doesn’t give an accurate portrayal of the competition.

Here are 2 tips for being more accurate in determining the competitiveness of a search term.

Research the top 10 sites. The tool, SEO for Firefox, helps greatly in this. The most important things to look for are PR, Yahoo links for the domain, and Yahoo links for the page.

Use the allinanchor and allintitle command and search with quotes. This shows you how many pages are optimized for the keyword. For example, if you want to know the competitiveness of the keyword cheap real estate, enter these two searches in Google:

  • allinanchor:”cheap real estate”
  • allintitle:”cheap real estate”

The allinanchor command tells you how many pages have the anchor text cheap real estate. The allintitle command tells you how many pages have cheap real estate in their title tags.

Value

Here are three methods to find out the value of a keyword.

Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to figure out the estimated cost per click for a specific keyword. To use this keyword tool, follow these steps.

  1. Enter a keyword in the text box.
  2. In the field “choose data to display”, find the text box that says “Cost and Ad Position Estimates.”
  3. A new text box will appear for dollar amounts. Enter “100.00″ in text box and click on “recalculate.”
  4. After Google crunches the data, a bunch of keywords with their click values will show up.
  5. If you don’t see your keyword, hit Ctrl+F and use the find command to locate it.

Do a Google search on your keyword. Count how many ads show up on the SERPs. The more ads, the better.

Look for affiliate offers that relate closely to your keyword. If there are affiliate offers with a high commission and a high conversion rate, you have a valuable keyword.

Conclusion

Let’s wrap this up. When dealing with keywords, keep these 3 simple things in mind:

  • The higher the search volume, the better.
  • The lower the competition, the better.
  • The higher the value, the better.

Most keywords will not have all 3 characteristics. But at least target keywords with 2 of the qualities. If a keyword does not have a high search volume, make sure it has high value and low competition. Don’t target a competitive keyword unless it has high search volume and high value. And go ahead and target a low value keyword if it has high search volume and low competition.

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