The two biggest factors for getting a good search engine ranking is having backlinks and having great SEO of your site. Getting the right keywords for SEO can be tricky but here are a few simple tips to help out beginners. 

This is a two part post. The first part of the post is about finding good keywords and the second part is finding out about competition.

Finding your Keywords

You should already have a good idea about your blog and what you are talking about before you start looking for keywords to target. Sometimes good topics to target are the ones that you have already had success in. Othertimes they are new topics, or if your blog is brand new you can start from scratch.

Tool Number 1

Adwords Keyword Tool

Type in your topic as the main keyword to search for. You can be as broad as you like here.

The once your results pop up click the Approx Avg Search Volume button to order them in terms of popularity. Then change the match type to ‘exact’ (the option next to Approx Avg Search Volume) for more accurate results. Now you want to be working a keyword that has at least 50,000 searches in the main topic (the keyword at the top of the list). If you scroll down you will find another list of words under Additional Keywords To Consider. Between these two lists you should be able to find a good amount of keywords wit enough traffic.

Tool Number 2

Word Tracker GTrends

This is a powerful tool to use in conjunction with the adwords tool. Take the keywords you have found and type them in one at a time into the Word Tracker site. You will see results in a 3 column layout. The search count on a daily basis is very useful, then there is the keyword and finally on the right is the ‘G’ column. This is what you want to focus on.  When you click on it there are three key parts

1) Google Competition

The number of other sites that come up if you type the term into google.

This important but it is good to check out how well the competition has done their SEO. GTrends could fail this keyword but if the competition has bad SEO it may still be relatively easy to get on the top page.

2)Actual Visitors From #1 In Google

If you get the number one ranking in google this is how many visitors you will get.

3) Keyword Trend

If this graph shows a significant decline then I would recommend not targeting the keyword as it is past its prime. You are better to target keywords that will last. That way your work will have a longer shelf life.

By now you should have a good idea of your top keywords.

Read Part 2

Resources (sponsored)

PPC Bully: Let Your Competitors Work For You!
Uncovers Your Competitors Winning Combinations Of Keywords, Ads And Landing Pages, And You Can Dominate The Pay Per Click Playground.

InstaCash Keywords – I recommend you at least watch the YouTube video near the bottom.
Membership Site That Delivers Niche Keyword Lists In A Daily Basis.