Your goal should be to get ranks in Google, because ultimately you’re going to get same ranks or better in MSN and probably even Yahoo.
So you want to use Google to check for competitors number. To do this visit Google International homepage, not your Google country domain because most of your visitors are going to come from Google main site not using your country domain. Assuming you’re not targeting only visitors from your country. But that’s rarely the case.
So competition number may vary in different country domain search engine. And you should also use an updated keyword research tool, that’s very important. Take keyword research very seriously, because it’s your destiny, either you’re going to rank for keyword that convert traffic into your desired action – either you’re going to get keyword that get decent amount of traffic or not.
Sometimes focusing on just one to three keywords is not enough, since remember you’re not going to get all the traffic the keyword research tools tells you. Since it’s not just the number one ranked website that gets traffic. All sites including the pay per click listing get some of that traffic.
Opting for paid keyword tools will help you find keyword with low competition and high traffic volume. Most free tools either display just a hundred keywords or worse they display inaccurate search volume data.
Google’s own keyword research tool is one of the best free keyword research tools. One good idea is to use a paid tool that is specifically designed to find you different types of keywords, keyword variations and so on. To really find keywords that your competitors are not using, and then checking the traffic stats using the Google tool.
One of the popular keyword tools out there is like a dictionary and thesaurus of keywords, you can extract so big of a list that you’ll be sure to find keywords that have very little competition and high traffic. Those are gems.
But for traffic volume I won’t even rely on the paid tool, Google’s tool is the one I rely on, it comes directly from Google. For competition number you’ll have to find that out manually. Google’s tool also displays synonyms for keywords, but it’s also limited next to some of the most popular paid tools.
So to recap, check competition using Google International domain, using Google tool to find the actual and accurate keyword traffic stats and use a paid tool to find keywords that have low competition.
Tags: Keyword Research, SEO Gossip
