SEO Keyword advice please

Hi Guys,

I have been using Google Adwords Keyword tool to investigate keywords for SEO. I have found lots of keywords that fit the topic of my website. But I am having a hard time determining which ones to choose if they both relate to my content.

Scenario 1:
word1 80% competition 13,000 hits in July
word2 70% competition 8,000 hits in July

Which one would you choose and why?

Scenario 2:
word1 75% competition 4,500 hits in July
word2 0% competition 2,900 hits in July

Which one would you choose and why?

I really appreciate any help or guidance you could give me!

I am assuming the site is totally new.


2nd word, as the level of competition is low.
In the initial stage we should target semi competitive keywords.


Again the 2nd one, because there is no competition but as the number of searches are not bad that's mean people are looking for it.
Chances of getting ranking and reliability in the net is high.

This is what I feel.

In scenario 1, you may want to shoot for word2 to start off, though building towards both isn't a bad idea. But if you're new to this industry and the site is new, you may not know which of these 2 keywords brings better conversions. A good rule of thumb is that the more competitive the keyword is, the better it leads to conversions. Sometimes it's best to let your competition point out the best path when you're starting out. If they've been in it for a while, and there's money to be made, you can be certain that most of the angles have been played to sqeeze the most conversions out. Before you begin doing your own analysis, you'll need to feed off of what others have discovered.

In scenario 2, go for #2 at first. Keep in mind that around 40% of all searches goes to the #1 ranked keyword. Let's say you go for word1 and fight to get to the #2-#3 position. In doing this, you're going to maybe get as much traffic as you would have if you'd easily obtained #1 for word2. Anytime that there's no competition for a keyword that brings in good traffic, solidify your position at #1 (because the competiton is coming if not already there.)

Another thing: I roughly assume you're getting these results from the Google Adwords Keywords Tool. Am I right? If so, keep in mind that the competiton level is based on competition within Adwords, and this is not the same as competition within Organics. It's a decent indicator, but people that fight for #1 with PPC aren't always the same people fighting for #1 organically. You most likely have more than 0% competiton of word2.

I would choose the one with less competition for first round. After winning that, begin with harder round.

How old is your site? What is the overall strength of your site on other competitive keywords?

Thanks for the great feedback guys. My site is brand new and I am trying to setup SEO for the first time.

Like theberg mentioned I used Google Adwords Keyword Tool for my research which might not be the best tool. I am not looking to use Adwords initially, just want to try and research which keywords to use.

Sounds like initially I should shoot for a few low competition keywords that match my content and get searched for often.

I have heard you can choose up to 8 keywords. Should I limit this to 4 or so per page? And do phrases count as 1 keyword or multiple keywords?

Thanks again.

The Adwords Keyword Tool IS good for reading search traffic (especially now that they offer numbers.) I mentioned that it's not great for judging competition for Organics. I know a lot of people that don't know the first thing about organics, but spend a fortune with Adwords. Are they dumb for doing this? Not if their return is greater than the total PPC costs. But that's not the point. My point is that there are a lot of people using adwords that don't compete organically. The readings for competition shouldn't be seen with this tool as accurate for organics. Instead, look at the competition level as a decent gauge of what keywords advertisers feel convert the best.

After going over it on both sides, you'd be surprised how many keywords are barely touched in organic that are heavily advertised with PPC, and vice versa. Using Adwords to see what pages and what keywords help you convert can be helpful. You don't need to spend a fortune to do some testing with Adwords.

As far as your target number of keywords, you need to feel out how much time you can spend building them up. It may take a few days to get #1 for 1 keyword and the rest of your life for another. For a beginner with a small budget, I would concentrate on the immediate traffic you can build off of longtail and other noncompetitive keywords. Once you begin to get the traffic, you can play with the numbers and work on more challenging goals.

I go for 0% competition with 2,900 hits. Because we can easily rank with such type of keywords in search engines without extra efforts.

Keyword Effectiveness Index Analysis or KEI Analysis is a good way of determining how competetive a search term is and how difficult it will be to achieve rankings for it.

That is not the whole picture though. You need to apply a common sense factor to the final selection process as many research and academic based search terms give a great KEI score but will never convert to sales.

This is probably exactly what you are seeing in Scenario 2. The KEI would suggest that The second term would be the best by a clear mile but if there is no competition thats probably because its not a commercially targetable keyword.

Yes, u r right i am 100% agree with u that scenario 2. may not be a commercially target able keywords.

https://www.wordtracker.com/trial/

BTW - The post above was coppied from a post I made previously. Thanks for quoting me Prof.Stan!

Hey Guys,

I signed up for Wordtracker's 7 day trial. I have started plugging in my keywords that looked best from the Google Adwords Keyword tool. I have started to review their KEI and things just seem to get more and more confusing. Wordtracker says the highter the KEI the better which is a little different from the post above. So when I put in about 20 keywords, i will get about 3 that are between 5-100 and the rest will all be .1-.5 or so. Most of the best keywords I choose from Adwords Keytool do not have a very good KEI. (~.01)

Which tool would you lean toward to provide the best initial data for my keywords?

scenario 1 none choose

can you SEO the "SEO" ?

scenario 2 2nd

no reason