This is lesson 3 of How to Earn Money Online With Keyword Research.  Last week we talked about the brain storming step and how to develop a list of “buying” keywords.

They say that teaching is the best way to learn and that’s why sometimes I tend to ramble about topics that are off-subject.  Sometimes I write so that I can get the thoughts out of my head in order to visualize my earn money online strategy. Here is my though for the day.

You need to look for a keyword that has a decent amount of daily searches, has a high cost per click, has a lot of advertisers, has low competition and is targeted towards a buying market.

Other factors are;  search engine competition and an abundance of long-tail keywords (that have traffic).

Your primary keyword should have the most amount of traffic and should be the keyword that you’re ultimately trying to get to the first page of Google.  You will need long-tail keywords to help drive your primary keyword to first place.  Long-tail keywords are variations of your primary keyword.

For example, if my primary keyword is “dog collars” my long-tail keywords would be “large dog collars” or “dog collars for small dogs”.  All long-tails should have your main keyword within the phrase.

Ranking your primary keyword is your ultimate goal as the primary keyword has the most traffic, the highest cost per click and the highest click through rate (one or all of these factors).  You should also focus on ranking high for all the long-tails as these will add on to the amount of targeted visitors that you receive in any given day.  Many people are stuck on trying to rank high for just one word, when they should be focusing on a variety of keywords.

So let’s start up where we left off from the last post.

I decided to focus on the organic niche and was looking for a specific keyword that had “buying potential”.  I wouldn’t would to target “organic” as my keyword since it really doesn’t relate to anything.  So I need to focus on a term that is related to products within the organic niche.  I will show you how to generate a string of long-tails the free way and then show you how to obtain a list of keywords with a software that I use.

If you’re like me, you might be confused on where to start when making a list of keywords.  I use Google’s Adword Keyword Tool when I need ideas for a profitable niche.  Google’s Adword Keyword Tool will show you a variety of keyword searches based off the original term.  Additional information includes:

1. Estimated Avg. Cost Per Click

2. Advertiser Competition

3. Local Search Volume Per Month (Previous Month)

4. Global Monthly Search

Here’s a print screen of what it looks like. Click on the image for a larger view.  You can export these keywords into an Excel file and start sorting it.  I usually delete keywords that do not relate to a buyer.  Some examples are the terms “organic valley” or “organic solutions”.  I’m looking for organic products that buyers are going to buy online (not accessible in regular markets).  Also, I’m searching for a decent amount of daily traffic and a decent cost per click and click through rate (amount of clicks per total impressions). You can get click through data from Google Adwords OR through the software that I use (Market Samurai)  After sorting out all of my data here are my results:

Organic Shampoo – 1,088  searches per day, $2.46 cost per click

Organic Skin Care – 2,433 searches per day, $2.18 cost per lick

Organic Baby – 6,608 searches per day, $1.48 cost per click

Organic Hair Care – 487 searches per day, $2.19

Google Adwords Keyword Tool shows you searches per month so you will have to divide by the number of days in a month to get the search per day amount.

From these keywords, you can perform another keyword search to get variations of the long-tails you choose.  This is called “drilling down”.

I narrowed down my “organic” niche category to “organic shampoo”.  I did this by looking at the competition for each of my keywords and the long-tails for each keyword.  Skin care tends to be a competitive keyword so I’ve decided to stay away from this for the purpose of this exercise.  Organic baby doesn’t really relate to a specific buying keyword so I will stay away from this.  A better keyword would be organic baby food or organic baby hair care…however when I looked deeper into this niche, I realized that it’s not that profitable.  For this example I will show you why I’ve chosen “organic shampoo” as my targeted niche.

First I looked at the potential profit I could receive from this niche.  My way is pretty crude but it gives me a general idea of the earning potential for this keyword.  I open up a spreadsheet with all my “organic shampoo” long-tail keywords (keywords obtained from the Google Adwords Tool).  I add up all the daily traffic and multiply it by .41*. I then multiply the search amount by the estimated click through rate (CTR)** and multiply that amount by 20%*** of the estimated cost per click.

*If you are ranked in the first position of Google, you will get about 41% of all searches for that keyword.

** Estimated CTR can be obtained from Google Adwords…you need to sign up for an account.

***20 % is about what you’ll receive per click from the advertiser’s cost per click for an optimized website.

After performing this analysis, I ended up with about $50 per day if my primary keyword and long-tails are in the #1 position of Google.  Like I said, it’s a very crude way of calculating earning potential, but it does give you an idea of what you could earn for each keyword.

That’s it for today…I will post a video later explaining all of this in detail.  The next post will explain how to look at keyword competition for the top 10 competitors in your niche.  I also will post a video about how to earn money online with keyword research after writing this whole series.