White Hat Blogging is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, in addition, I am an independent Jasper Affiliate, not an employee. I receive referral payments from Jasper and possibly other affiliates.
When you decide to start building niche websites you will find that you spend a large sum of time finding the optimal keywords to write about. To accelerate this process I have assembled what I feel and the 4 best niche keyword research tools for most marketers.
Since many niche marketers are starting from brand new websites the best tool to start with and help you find low competition keywords is hands down KeywordChef. Ben Adler built a keyword tool that provides you a simple list of easy to target keywords for bloggers.
What happens to many affiliate bloggers is that they start with excitement, but after choosing keywords that are actually hard to impossible to rank for with a new site they see no movement and they eventually give up believing the niche is “too filled” with competition.
What Is “Keyword Research?
For those who are new to blogging and affiliate marketing you may wonder what do you mean by keyword research?
With the invention of search engines the internet lifeblood of SEO and keyword research began, as the search engines use these keywords to find the content they believe is best for the keywords themselves. Finding the best keywords that you can rank for is VITAL to website ranking.
The way to become an elite niche site owner and blogger is to be able to find the right keywords that can allow you to rank within search engines and reach at least the first page.
If you, as a blogger, aren’t able to reach page one then you will fail to receive organic traffic from Google and other search engines which will leave you scrambling to find visitors.
Why Keyword Research Is Vitally Important to Success in SEO
Keyword research is very important when it comes to blogging and niche website building. Choosing the wrong keywords will lead you down a long path of wasted time, energy and money.
Another problem that can come from choosing the wrong keyword is that you may not be able to rank your site and eventually Google will remove you from their search engine index altogether.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the study and use of information like keywords to assist a web page to rank higher and receive more traffic from search engines like Google.
You might have heard it called SEO before, but that is only because people like me forget how SEO really stands for; Search Engine Optimization.
Keyword research is a vital aspect of the practice of SEO and is something you will need to learn in order to become an elite niche site builder.
How Do I Do Keyword Research?
For approximately my first 100 posts I focus on finding easy to rank for keywords, typically trying to locate 10-15 in each category I feel will be viable for my niche website.
While I write these I work category by category, I then use LinkWhisper to interlink these posts together so that they can show Google their relevancy to each other.
Once I finish the first 100 posts I can then look and see which is showing promise as to higher traffic, then I can dive deeper into that specific category and any sub-niches that may exist.
If I find sub-niches I then duplicate the above and try to write 10-15 posts in each sub-niche with the intention of finding if any one of them has a high yield of traffic so that I stay razer focused on the highest returns on effort.
As you then build up your topical relevancy you can build additional content that can be tougher keywords, shorter tailed versions, then link all the previous posts you have written on related parts to this newer post to give it a supporting structure.
You then continue this until you decide to sell the site or decide to start into a new niche, if you keep this site and move to a new niche you will want to continue to research keywords and write yourself or outsource at a minimum 4 posts a month, I try to hit at least one a week.
What Are the Steps to Perform Keyword Research?
What is outlined below is a basic rough layout of the process I use to build websites that rank and grow organically on Google and other search engines. I find this process to be easy to learn and it will help you to develop the skills to research keywords.
Identify Your Base Keywords
The first step in keyword research is to determine what you want your site to be about. This will usually be a smaller list of phrases that define what products, services, or pages you would most like to promote.
Then you want to brainstorm a list of keywords and phrases related to that topic to grow out some branches to research and find a deep place to begin with.
Expand the List
The next step is to take these phrases, products, services, and other details and expand your keyword list out. This can be done a couple ways, one is to simply see what other related words come up and add those into your lists as well.
I like to look up the base word on Google and in their search tools pull up the “related searches” which will give you even more ideas for keywords or phrases you may want to use.
The next thing you should do is to run them all through the Search Engines as once you have your list expanded, it is time to run them through the search engines to see what results you get when searching for each word or phrase in Google at a minimum as they have a hard grasp on almost all search traffic. This will help you determine which ones are more popular than others.
Prioritize Your List
Now you will want to take the list you have created and prioritize which keywords you will target first and foremost. For new bloggers these will typically involve choosing keywords that show forums and low competition on page one of the SERPs.
This process will typically be manual unless you purchase a tool that can speed this process along, the least consistently expensive is KeywordChef, I would suggest looking at it as the link will take you to their page and give you free credits on sign up to get some initial searches.
While working on this list don’t stop until you have found at least 100-200 post ideas to work from.
Refine Your Keywords
Sort the hardest keywords towards the end of the list, you don’t want to delete them as you may want to target them later in your sites life. Instead start by adding them into a spreadsheet that you can easily update and you can then put ideas for content in the column next to it.
Over time as you write and you see results you can then find what worked and then what you would want to do is look tangentially around that keyword for others that may pay off similarly, documentation is a key to getting results over time.
Popular Keyword Finders
There are hundreds of keyword finder tools out there that cost a little and that are free. You will find these keyword tools may vary in effectiveness but most of the time they can come up with decent keywords but may use a lot of time helping locate them.
The four below that I find super fast and effective are:
KeywordChef
Just released this year this is a tool built by an affiliate marketer to find those low competition keywords so many people have issues locating on their own, his tool, unlike most others is not a monthly cost but you purchase credits to do searches.
I have found this to be an incredibly simple and easy way to find keywords that are easy for new bloggers on fresh websites to write and get results, definitely a tool all should have in their toolbox.
KWFinder
This tool is very helpful to find keywords, the tool Miles Beckler uses in like 99% of his videos can help you find and target keywords. It also has the functionality to look at what keywords another site ranks for which can help you find unique keywords you may not have thought about.
SEMrush
The most expensive tool in this list but also has the most options available to use as a marketer, it can help you see and understanding links to domains, the keywords other sites rank for and much, much more.
Once you are making a decent monthly income, at least $500, I would say pass on this and focus on tools like KeywordChef that provide the keywords for you without advanced search setup being needed.
LongTailPro
The original software has continued to evolve and is still in use by many people today to locate viable keywords that can make them money. Spencer is no longer involved but the software hasn’t been abandoned and continues to improve.
