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Finding the right organic keywords for your website is hard. You need to understand your target audience. You have to consider the intent of each keyword (research, transactional, or branded). You have to identify which pages should be optimized for which keywords.
And that’s just the beginning!
Adding to the complexity is the fact that Google gets 500 million never-before-seen queries per day (about 15% of their daily total). In other words, people will search in different ways to find the same information, making it more difficult to uncover the keywords that are most valuable to your bottom line.
Let’s imagine that you sell natural soap. You believe that you can increase sales if you get into the top 10 search results for the following keywords:
The problem is you can’t seem to pass your competition.
Instead of giving up, use Google’s Keyword Planner Tool to find diamonds in the rough.
Using the Keyword Planner Tool, you can see an estimate of how many searches each keyword gets per month, as well as a competition score (the closer to 1, the more difficult it will be to rank for the keyword).
I ran a report on the keywords above and found the following:
| Keyword | Average Monthly Searches | Competition Score |
|---|---|---|
| natural soap | 6,600 | .93 |
| organic soap | 4,400 | .99 |
| all natural soap | 1,000 | .98 |
Look at those high competition scores! However, using that same report, I found two potentially relevant keywords.
| Keyword | Average Monthly Searches | Competition Score |
|---|---|---|
| handmade soap | 9,900 | .72 |
| herbal soap | 880 | .56 |
Note that search volume does not correlate with the competition score.
If you can find terms with similar (or more) search volume, but a lower competitive score, you should have a better shot at ranking for them.
If you aren't already familiar with the Google Keyword Planner Tool, make sure to watch the video below.
Have you tried a keyword strategy like this? Did you use other tools? Let us know in the comments.
