Monday, 20 August 2012

What to Do When You Run Out of Keywords to Target in your Keyword Research


When you were first starting your website, you most likely picked a relatively modest keyword to target. You mastered that keyword, got ranked for it, then targeted higher traffic and more difficult keywords. You also probably went lateral and targeted similar keywords, synonyms and keywords that mean the same things but have different root words.

At some point, you’re going to hit a wall. You’ll have targeted every keyword you can think of in your industry. You might not be ranked for all of them yet; some of them might take time, some of them may be impossible to rank for and some of them you’re already at the top of. But you will hit a wall where it just seems like there’s no more room to expand.

There is to expand beyond this wall, you need to go beyond the basic research tactics. You need to really dig deep and use unconventional tactics to find new keywords to target.

Here are a few different ways you can go above and beyond to find new profitable keywords. As you’re browsing these different methods, keep in mind that the goal is to find keywords that are both relevant to your site and can generate substantial traffic.

Look Through Your Analytics


In your analytics data will be a section dedicated to telling you what keywords people typed in to access your site.

Many of these keywords will come from SERPs that you deliberately targeted and know you rank for.

However, a handful of people will have arrived at your site from keywords you’ve never heard of. Look into these keywords. There might be a whole host of related keywords you could target to get people to your site.

Look at Your Competitors’ Sites

Look at what your competitors are doing. What kinds of keywords are they targeting? Are they going into any peripheral markets?

Open up a few pages on their site and look through the source code. What keywords are they putting in their meta tags?

Put their site through the Google Keyword Tool. What keywords does Google think their site is relevant for?

Jump Through Wikipedia


Head on ovusing wikipedia for keyword ideaser to Wikipedia and lookup a few keywords related to your industry. For example, if you’re in the chemical business, head over to Wikipedia and look up a few of the chemicals you sell.

Look for other keywords that you might be able to target. For example, in this case you might look for specific chemical processes, precursor chemicals or special uses of the chemicals that you might be able to try to rank for.

Use Google’s Related Search Tool

One fast and simple way to brainstorm new ideas is to type your keywords into Google, one at a time. Scroll to the very bottom. Google will give you a list of keywords that they think are related to your search term.

Repeat this process with each and every one of your keywords. If you find any that you think might be good ideas to go after, write them down. Plug those new keywords back into the Google search tool and keep looking for innovative new keyword branches.

Come Up With Completely Different Ideas

A radical approach you could take is to take on a completely new direction or a completely new idea. The idea must be strongly linked to your site’s main idea right now.out of the box keyword research tips

For example, let’s say you sell chemicals that are used in manufacturing plastics. You’re ranked strongly for all the chemical names that you’re selling and many of the chemical processes. You’re looking for more keywords to target, but can’t seem to find any keywords in the chemical industry or the plastics industry.

If you hit a wall like that, why not try taking on an entirely new idea? In this case, you might try taking on green plastics and green manufacturing. If you sell chemicals that can be used making green plastics, try to rank for those processes and those chemicals. Try to build your brand in this entirely different yet strongly connected market.

Using these ideas, you’ll be able to take your basic keyword list and vastly expand it. You won’t run out of keywords to target for quite some time.

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