Hacko's 2018 Keyword Research Manifesto

hacko said:

Another [VERY] simple trick you can use to come up with more keyword ideas is simply scrolling to the bottom of the Google search results and copying their “related” searches terms.

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MatthewGraham said:

Another good/easy idea is to have some text file or notepad open while you work. Every once in a while when you start searching for something you'll see something good show up in the autocomplete. Write these down as they come up and then next time you work on planning out keywords/content, go through your list and you'll usually find some gems that you've stumbled over time.

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BlackBDO said:

This is an amazing guide man!

Often I come across customers who need to understand KW research better. In past I had people who wanted to rank for KWs as hard as (the next ones will be similar to theirs, not their KWs, for privacy): "Best tablets".
I remember I told them KW is hard, chances are near 0 for anyone with a new website to rank for this, and the reply I got back was: "But I am willing to work day an night"/

This remembered me of an old friend who always told me: "work smart, not hard". Best advice ever.

In my honest opinion KW research is the basis of a website. If you got bad KWs, then you are on a bad path and you are going to waste a lot of money. If you have the right KWs, then you will save a lot on the off-page, mostly because the less competition it is, the easier it is to rank, so, the cheaper it is.


After you have good KWs, you need good on-page optimization, without that you are just going to spend a shit ton on links just to make google understand what your page is about. Thing that you could do with proper on-page and no off-page.

Only after the above are met (good KWs, good on-page) then you can think about off-page.
And always start with pillow links, NOT with PBNs. And please trust me on this, I am a PBN links seller, and I advise you never to start directly with PBNs as you will waste $$, my advice should be worth something if you keep in mind that selling PBN links is my job and you would think I want to push people to buy. Don't send those to a newly built site with 0 Backlinks, you will just waste your money (not because they have no effect but because the rapport $$/effect is low + high risk, as it looks unnatural".

PBNs imo are not to push a KW from N/A --> 30. that's the pillow links and on-page job. Use PBNs to push 30-->5 or 8-->1.

I will finish with a similar but different advice than my old friend's: "Invest smart, not hard". First thing you have to do on a website is: put your time into KW research, on-page, build diversity links, wait.

That's all I had to add
Have a good one guys!
Cheers !

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hacko said:

With that being said, I would stay away from keywords where page 1 is filled with category pages of the large ecommerce sites – these are almost never even medium competitiveness, let alone easy.

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wwa2b said:

Sorry to ask again one the most annoying questions, but are you saying this in regard to any KW? (so basically, if you're into jewelry or the like, you're saying that you can forget about SEO?)
And by product name, do you mean brand names, like "Sorel boots"? or generic product names, like "coin necklace"?
I face a dilemma, since in my niche the top spots are trusted by Pinterest, Etsy or Amazon. I don't want to product a mountain of content only to discover it was impossible to rank from the get go...

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hacko said:

Jewelry keywords like "white necklace", "rose gold rings", "heart shape earrings" etc will likely have category pages of Tiffany, Ebay etc which will be impossible to outrank.

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kontentguy said:

I used to think this as well, but lately i've seen evidence that big site category pages can be outranked (and im not even talking about using massive pbn link building). Perhaps it depends on the keyword (jewerly is obviously a tough niche), but there are low competition keywords which have category pages from amazon, ebay, wayfair, etsy, even pinterest, and all of these can be outranked with a 3k word optimized homepage, healthy amount of interlinking from inner landing pages, and just a few links external links.

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