Esther C Kane

You’ve probably heard it a billion times, keyword research is important to search engine marketing.  If you’re going to market your website on the Internet, you need to have the right keywords in the right places on the websites.

But, what if you’re marketing your own website?  What if you’re a small business owner who can’t afford the price of professional keyword research?  What if you can’t afford the hundreds of dollars it takes to purchase professional keyword research tools?

Well, there are ways that you can get those keywords and I’m here to give you the best keyword research techniques for small businesses marketing their own sites.

Here’s how you can do it.

1) Go to Google Insights For Search and change the Filter to read either Worldwide or your own country and for the past 12 months.

2) Type in a main keyword in the Search Terms box.

3) Scroll to the bottom right of the results screen to the column of Rising Searches.

Note:  If there aren’t any phrases or very few phrases in that column, you should then look for another keyword to use because this indicates the popularity (or lack of) for this keyword phrase.

4) Go to Google and type in the search box – allintitle: keyword phrase – the results of this search will tell you how many other websites are also marketing this keyword phrase.  If the number of search results is higher than 1500 – you’ll want to try and find another form of the phrase.  This will help to ensure that you’ll get your page in the first set of results from Google.

5) So, to find another form of the phrase go back to Google and type the keyword phrase in the search box.  You’ll notice near the top left that the search results have 2 options.  One is “Web” and the other is “Show Options”.  Click on Show Options and you’ll see more choices on your left hand side.  One of these choices is “Related Searches” – click on that.

6) You’ll then be given a variety of keyword phrases that are related to your original keyword phrase.  Conduct an allintitle search on each of the keyword phrases that you like and you’ll find a phrase with an allintitle less than 1500!

7) Well, you’ve now got your keyword phrase!

Let’s do an example…

Let’s say I’m a divorce attorney in Alabama and I’m looking to get more business from people looking for help with child support issues.

1) So, I go to Google Insights For Search and type in “child support” (without the quotes).

2) I change the area to United States and I also choose Alabama (because as a divorce attorney I can’t practice outside of Alabama so no need to get info from other states).  I also changed the filter to 12 months to get the latest information.

3) In the bottom right column of Rising Searches, I see that the phrase “child support payments” has increased by 120% in the last year.

4) So, I go to Google and type into the search box – allintitle: child support payments.  I see that the search results are 17,200.  That’s a bit high so I need to see if I can find an alternative phrase.

5) So, I go to Google and type into the search box – child support payments.  I then click on the “Show Options” link near the top left of the screen.  Then I look at the left navigation menu and I click on Related searches -  and what do I see on top?  Four columns of keyword phrases.  Hmm – let me see which ones apply.

6) The phrase – child support payment calculator – seems like it may work.  I then go back to Google and type in – allintitle: child support payment calculator and the number of results is now 99.  That’s much better!

Now I know that I should create a page on my website aimed at the phrase “child support payment calculator”.

Of course, one page won’t bring in millions to your website!  My recommendation to my clients is always to create a section.  So, you’ll want to create several pages all related to child support issues.

Knowing the keyword phrases to use is just the first step to creating optimized pages for your website but if you’re marketing your website pages you probably already know how to optimize your website pages (at least I hope you do).

So, I hope this keyword research technique will help you and your small business!