As promised, today we are going to look at a no-cost way to perform an effective keywords ranking analysis.
The main goal of conducting a keywords ranking analysis is to evaluate how the “supply” of web pages containing your term (your competition) compares to the “demand” for it (how many searches are performed).
In other words, this type of analysis will help you decide if 1.) you have a good chance of ranking for a particular search phrase and 2.) if it is worth the effort to do so!
One of the Best Free Keyword Brainstorming Tools
Without question, Wordtracker offers one of the most popular free keyword research tools.
To get started, simply type in a seed keyword related to your niche or topic. For example, let’s say you type in “winter boots” into its search feature. Once you hit ‘enter,’ Wordtracker will return a list of the 100 most popular Internet searches related to that phrase.
For this example, the top 5 keyword phrases returned are winter boots (857 daily searches), women’s winter boots (213), men’s winter boots (148), sorel winter boots (129), and totes winter boots (111). As you can see, each term is searched in excess of 100 times per day – which tells us there is pretty good demand for these keyword phrases.
This is great information to have and is a fast way to brainstorm ideas and identify potentially profitable niches. However, this is basically where Wordtracker’s free keyword research tool stops. From there, you will need to perform a little manual legwork to complete the rest of your keywords ranking analysis. Don’t worry, though – it is not at all difficult to do!
Note: Up until very recently, this was one of the main methods I used to conduct keyword research. However, I am currently trying out Wordtracker’s 7 day free trial – and although I found it a little overwhelming at first, I am loving how fast it does the analysis for me and how easy it makes it to find related phrases. It is a lot faster than the free method described below, but it does involve a monthly subscription or a yearly premium payment. So, there is a trade off between time and money in this case. My free trial ends in 2 days and I will continue with the paid subscription.
Performing the Keywords Ranking Analysis
To start your analysis, select a keyword phrase and enter it into Google’s search tool (use Google, because your main goal is to get on Page 1 in their results). If you enter in “women’s winter boots” – you’ll see there are 686,000 total results returned (as of today).
But you don’t care how big that number is because you are really only competing with the results found on page 1 – especially the top 3.
Next, you’ll want to look at the number and quality of backlinks pointing into each of those Top 3 results on Page 1 to see if you can outrank them with a little link-building elbow grease. If the exact page (NOT the entire site! – search engines return individual pages, not entire web sites in their results) you are analyzing has a small enough number of high-quality incoming backlinks, that particular keyword phrase may be worth targeting. (See the 2nd link below for very detailed instructions on how to conduct this analysis).
Here are two great posts by Lynn Terry that really pull this whole process together:
I recommend bookmarking these links – there is A LOT of great information contained in them and I have referred to them repeatedly since they were first published.
That’s all I have for today. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about keyword modifiers and how to use them to get faster search engine rankings. If you’ve signed up for the 90-Day Content Marketing Challenge, you’ll also receive a bonus link-building lesson from the Link-Building Queen, Susanne Myers and your Week 2 Action Plan/Worksheet.
Til Next Time,
PS Don’t forget, you can take the 90-Day Content Marketing Challenge at any time. When you join, you will receive a series of weekly action plans and worksheets to help you develop a successful content marketing strategy for your business. Start with Week 1 today! (Sign up below)
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{ 2 comments }
Great stuff, as always! I’m interested in knowing what you think of the paid tool. It seems like it could be very helpful for someone who’s doing many searches like this (building lots of niche websites) but maybe the seven-day trial is sufficient for someone who’s just doing one!
My question is finding the long-tail keywords. I entered my main keyword but came up with many phrases that aren’t long-tail. How do I dig down deeper to get those four- or five-word phrases?
Also, what is “a small enough number of high-quality incoming backlinks?” And what makes a high-quality backlink vs. a low-quality one?
Thanks!
Lain
Thank you, Lain!
Great questions – let me clarify what I meant by “a small enough number of high-quality incoming backlinks”:
small enough number – whatever the number of backlinks you find pointing into those Top 3 ranked pages, are you willing to create more? It doesn’t matter if a particular page has 20 or 200 backlinks – IF you are willing to put in the effort of building more. (Although it can be difficult-to-impossible to catch up if the other side has too big of a head start).
high-quality incoming backlinks – refers to the authority of the site linking in, along with several other factors – i.e. an anchor text link from the content area of an established, well-respected authority site in your niche has higher quality than one in the sidebar of a lower-ranking, less-established site in an unrelated niche.
Keyword modifiers are a great way to develop longer-tail keywords. We’ll cover modifiers in more detail tomorrow. However, I am finding plenty of longer-tail phrases in the paid version of Wordtracker. Their paid keyword tool will return up to 1,000 terms at once (vs. 100 with the free tool) -and it allows you to do a ‘lateral’ search of related terms (that don’t necessarily contain your ‘seed’ term.
I’ll do a full review of the paid version later in the challenge – I’ve got a couple case studies going on within this case study!
I am tracking each keyword I am targeting in a spreadsheet, so I can see what page I need to link to with which term when I am ready to work on backlinks! (Otherwise, I waste too much time going… “hmm… what was that keyword again? What was the exact url I am building backlinks for… oh, better go look it up again…”) 
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