There are many aspects of internet marketing that I enjoy doing on a daily basis but there is one thing that has always been a thorn in my side.
You can be the best writer in the world and be putting up amazing content online for people to consume but if you aren’t able to drive traffic to your content, you’re not going to get very far.
It would be like having a coffee shop that serves the finest coffee ever known to mankind but it’s down a backcountry lane where nobody ever goes.
You’re not going to sell much coffee. Perhaps the odd cup to someone who got lost on a hike and fancies an Americano but certainly not enough to expand your business.
So what is the thorn in my side? This element of internet marketing that I loathe?
Keyword research.
Yes, I have found excellent keyword research tools that make the job much easier and have figured out over the years how to effectively research profitable keywords but the fact remains, I don’t enjoy doing it.
I find it tedious – and very time consuming.
Sometimes when I want to get on with writing some content for one of my niches but don’t want to break the flow, I have a little trick that I find very effective.
I pop on over to Google and take advantage of their “Suggest” feature that is built right into the search box.
Let’s say I’m writing an article on cat behaviour and I need ideas. I want to find keywords that people are actually typing into Google. I don’t care about search volume but I might take a glance at competing pages.
I start by typing how to stop a cat…
This presents me with a few ideas of what people are looking online to stop their cat doing.
Hmm, how to stop a cat from peeing. Now that sounds like a desperate problem.
Here’s more longtail keywords that I should have no problem ranking for.
“How to stop a cat from peeing on the carpet” is something I would target as there isn’t really any competition optimizing for that search phrase.
Again, I’m not worried about search volume when I use this technique. I’m purely focused on what Google Suggest is telling me that people are searching for and using those terms as fuel for my content.
I will typically integrate whatever phrase I find into my article title and try to drop it a couple of times in my article. There’s been a lot of fuss lately about Google’s plans to penalize “over SEO’d” sites so I’m now more reluctant than ever to get too hung up on keyword density and all that nonsense.
This technique does not replace a thorough keyword research strategy. It is simply a quick and dirty way to identify some longtail keywords that are actually being searched for on Google.
It takes a few minutes and allows me to stay in “writing mode” instead of having to switch over to “research” mode and sometimes this can mean the difference between getting some content online or getting stuck in analysis paralysis weeding through thousands of potential keywords.
Sometimes it’s the brain-dead simple strategies that can have the most impact in online business. If you haven’t tried this, give it a shot and see if works for you.
What about you? Do you have any keyword research strategies that you like to use? Let us know in the comment box below.
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