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Keyword Research: Cornerstone of Blogging Success

In Blogging in Action, I stress just how important proper keyword selection is; in fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the single most important thing you can do optimize your blog for the search engines and readers.

Try this experiment: e-mail the top 10 bloggers in your industry. These are the bloggers who are attracting traffic and earning good revenue. Ask them if they use a keyword research tool. I'd wager that you'll get at least a 70 percent affirmative response. All of the most successful bloggers I know use keyword research.

But if you're smart about it, you can use keyword tools to do much, much more. These "hidden" uses are far from obvious, and you should be happy about that. They might require a little time to learn, but you can feel fairly comfortable that your competition doesn't know the full potential of keywords.

The Many Powerful Uses of Keyword Research Tools

In short, you use keywords to:

• Make more money with highly relevant posts
• Attract more traffic by using your keyword crystal ball to assess demand
• Write better posts by giving readers what they want
• Save tons of money by avoiding deadbeat phrases
• Save time researching your market

But creative users will find many more uses for keyword discovery tools, some simple, some obscure. I find myself using keyword tools over and over again to help me in the following situations:

• Target the most profitable niches. I can determine number of searches, number of results, advertiser competition, and cost-per-click data of keywords. This helps me laser-target my blog's content around only the most profitable keywords!
• Guarantee myself maximum search traffic. I can determine keyword trends that I can use to craft compelling blog posts and post titles that are guaranteed to provide the most search traffic. This is one of those hidden gems, so don't share it with anyone! Whenever I write an anchor post, I use keyword trends to target the post to get maximum traffic. Sneaky? Nah, I'm just giving readers what they want.
• Optimize my AdWords campaigns. I wouldn't even dream of using AdWords without first doing extensive keyword research. AdWords can suck you dry, but keyword tools will let you hit the ground running.
• Determine content for my auto-pilot niche sites. I don't auto-pilot many sites, but I will spend an hour every few weeks to target a new niche. It doesn't make me rich, but it pays a mortgage payment here and there for almost no effort.
• Perform market research. I love to be busy and I love to learn; two characteristics that leave me with a product idea list literally 10 pages long. I use keyword tools to discover which products to focus on and to gauge consumer desire.

There are many other uses, but that's how I personally use keyword tools.

Case Study: Make $4,515.21 Using Keyword Arbitrage

Michael Plante made $4,515.21 using the Google arbitrage method. If you're not familiar with keyword arbitrage, it's the strategy of attracting traffic to your blog at a lower cost than you can monetize with contextual advertising programs. Obviously, keyword selection is critical for this to work. By the way, have you ever seen the "Get millions of dollars in Google Ads for free" advertisements? That's keyword arbitrage, plain and simple. I just saved you $100!

Personally, I don't use keyword arbitrage. There are too many other innovative ways to redirect traffic. Nevertheless, the case study is valuable because it shows you how powerful keyword research can be, and most of the tips can be generalized to apply to simple keyword research.

Keyword Discovery and Google AdWords

If you've ever sold anything online, you've probably tried using Google AdWords. It is a fantastic source of qualified traffic, because most of the search traffic you get (as opposed to content traffic) is comprised of people who are actively looking for what you provide. If you target your keywords properly, that is. If not, you'll end up funding the Googler's breakfast tomorrow.

For intermediate-level bloggers, I frequently recommend starting a low-cost keyword campaign. Not for the traffic it creates, but because running a proper campaign allows you to easily put your fingers on the pulse of your niche. It's incredibly easy to test titles and copy, gauge sentiment, or construct favorable offers that can then be used to optimize the profitability of your blog.