Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is the foundation of your content, if you don't research your keywords, how do you know if people are searching for what you're writing about? It's a simple process and it not time consuming if you consider how much more traffic you will have if you spend 20 minutes searching your keywords properly.

I'm no SEO pro, but I do understand that if you write about something that is searched for often, and you produce relative and interesting content that people are looking for, you will have far more traffic on that topic, compared to a topic that no one is looking for, does that make sense?

What prompted me to write this is because I just read an article on building traffic to your web 2.0 pages from someone who considered themselves to be an SEO pro. I wanted to comment on the article, but I didn't have the heart. I notice the traffic to their pages was very low compared to the years that had been at it. So instead of commenting there, I decided to write my own opinion, and what better place to do it, HubPages!

The problem is, if you're going to teach someone how to do something, it's best to teach by example, and that's what I'm going to do here. At this time (3/16/2012) I've been on HubPages for 27 month, as you can see by the snapshot on the right, I had written 3 hubs in 2010, that is when I had no clue about what I was doing.

In January, 2011, I wrote a hub on a problem I notice people were having with their cars, I did a little research on the Google Keyword tool, I noticed a lot of people searching for the answer to this problem, so I did a search on YouTube and Google to see how many people wrote about it or made a video about the problem.

I knew I could give the searcher better information than what I found, so I took the keywords from the Google Keyword tool and used it in my title and in the body of the article; I used the keywords exactly the way they were in the keyword tool, it didn't matter if it didn't sound right or if it sounded weird, that is the way thousands of people were searching for this problem, and the results were amazing.

Now if you look at the snapshot to the right, you'll see, I starting writing in 2011, the first year I was on HubPages was a flop, I was writing about things that were saturated, things I had no business writing about. I finally realized I had a lot of good information to share, but only after, I started using the Google Keyword tool. The information was right there in front of me the whole time, the keyword tool showed me what people are searching for, all I had to do is put pen to paper.

One thing you have to keep in mind, if you writing about something that is searched highly but the market is saturated with information, you will probably never rank even near the first few pages of Google. So you want to look for highly searched words with little or low competition.

Even then, it doesn't guarantee you will be ranked high in the search engines, if your content is not written well, or it's the same old rehashed information you can find anywhere, you probably won't rank well. It needs to be attractive, informative, interesting, and unique.

So here is how I write a hub that I want to drive traffic to:

1. I have an idea for a hub

2. Go to Google Keyword tool and check the amount searches for that idea, or look for other relevant keywords that have a high search volume with low competition, sometimes using 2 or 3 words as my keyword (it's called a long tail keyword)

3. Once I found that special keyword, I do a Google search and see if I can produce better content then some of the competition in my search results, don't kid yourself, you CAN compete, especially if you use your own original picture and videos. If the first page of your search results doesn't have a video on it, create a video on your subject and that will rank very high in the search results. (Use tags properly on your videos for better traffic results)

4. Now that I have my idea and my keywords, it's time to put it together in a hub. Use the exact keywords in your tags, title, subtitles, picture descriptions if possible, video descriptions, poll titles, map titles, summary, and body of the article, but do it naturally, make the content flow as if you were having a conversation, don't stuff the keywords in you hub so it doesn't read well, it will kill any chance of you ranking.

This is a short lesson on how I will look up a keyword or keywords in the Google Keyword tool. I do a search on my idea in the keyword tool and Google will give me the exact keywords I should use. I try to keep my global search under 100k but above 1k, the sweet spot is 10k to 60k with low competition, you want to use keywords people are searching for, so don't go under 1k, look at the screen shots below. (Some will disagree with the numbers, but this is my way that works well for me, you need to figure out what works for you.)

SEO is needed to rank well, but you don't need to be a pro, you need to deliver good content that is interesting and unique, while spreading your key words around in the article naturally. You can also use variations of your keywords like plurals, synonyms, and by adding suffixes and prefixes.

SEO is a lot more in depth than what is here, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but at least it will get you started and give you a direction to follow, and improve on over time. Like I said, I am no SEO pro, but I have proof of what works and what doesn't, and still it's not a guarantee, it's a lot of trial and error, so just keep trying and every so often, you will hit a great keyword.

There are some great hubs on SEO, but most people will not go through the trouble, because of the amount of work involved. Keyword Research is the foundation of your articles or hubs; it doesn't matter if it's for HubPages, Squidoo, Blogger or your own website, finding the right keywords is the most important step, that is how people search the internet, and if you use the right keywords, they will find you.

Well, I'm not a millionaire, but I make enough for a nice night out on the town or a small car payment and it keeps increasing each month as long as I keep writing.

If you think you might have something interesting to share with the world, why not join HubPages and start earning a few extra buck each month, I'm not going to lie, it does take some work but you can't expect to be paid something for nothing, that's like sitting in front of a fire and saying "give me heat, then I'll feed you wood" that's just silly, don't ya think?

I make a little money from each source, but HubPages is by far the best income stream. I have not made my first check form Google Adsense, but it coming very soon. Amazon is not too bad, it's better than Adsense. What's nice about Amazon is the fact that if you drive traffic from your hub to Amazon, and the customer ends up buying something not even relevant to you hub, you still make a commission. EBay is a little slow but I don't advertize for them too much yet, so the results I get can be expected.

Considering I only have 41 Hubs at this time, I think I do OK, income wise. I had my earnings posted on this page earlier, but remove them in fear I violated the Terms of Use, a big thanks to a friend and fellow hubber, Marcy Goodfleisch who gave me a heads up about my goof up, it's nice to have people watching out for you, and those are the type of people you meet here on HubPages :)

Keyword research is not hard but it is necessary, you could write till your fingers fall off and never gain any traffic if nobody is searching for what you're writing about. Also, when you do keyword research, you will find ideas you would have never thought of, it's called going deep into an idea.

You can start with one keyword and find some great long tailed keywords in the process. Instead of just writing about sewing patterns, like in the example below, you'll find long tailed keywords like vogue sewing patterns, underwear sewing patterns, and easy sewing patterns. This can also lead to more hub ideas for the future, if you build multiple hubs around one idea, you could kill it in the search engines, and possibly dominate page one of Google for your keywords.

I just wanted to give you something that was real, something you could actually see working, I'm sure there are a lot of hubbers that have far more traffic than me, but I'm not a writer by trade or by hobby, I'm a mechanic who wants to share some Ideas, but on the way, figured out how to increase my traffic without spending a dime on keyword research tools, if you have done any Internet marketing, you know what I'm talking about.

If you need some inspiration to keep pushing forward I recommend reading "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy, he teaches you the effects of compounding, it definitely applies to HubPages and also lot of everyday situations.

Oh, and the screen capture tool I use is Free to, I use JING, you can upgrade for more bells and whistles, but it work fine for what I use it for. I hope this hub helps; I probably left out some things, so if you have any comments or questions, I'll try to answer them the best I can.