How NOT to do keyword research in 2017

CFT said:

So Amazon category pages are a no go if they are in the top 10 what about Amazon product page is that the same thing?

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hacko said:

Ok, so I just had a pretty long day and decided to get a few beers and write some shit up. This is aimed mostly at newbies, but I assume more people could get some value out of it.

Not gonna lie, I used to be horrible in keyword research and always picked the wrong niche. At one point a couple years back I was using my CPA money to pay someone a salary while they were working for me and we targeted keywords like "best oregano oil" (low commission, high competition - I thought this was a good niche to target at the time) which make me wanna throw up when I think about the bottomless pit of costs that was.

I see so many mixed opinions on this it's pissing me off. I do sell keywords so I'm quite biased on this subject obviously and there's no way I'm revealing any part of my actual process anytime soon but I decided to give you all a couple tips on how NOT to do keyword research and what to avoid so you don't end up wasting time and money.

Anyway, some of these were probably posted by other members before and I'm not some guru inventing this shit here (continuously leaning more myself), but here they are:

1. Stop looking for high monthly searches
Let's say this is the gold rush. What's more likely, that you'll find one large stone, or a few way smaller ones? You most likely won't find a super easy high monthly searches you can rank for. This is especially true if you're starting a new site in a certain niche. See what your competitors are ranking for - find a SHITTY affiliate site and find what they're on page 1 for - you can likely outrank that so that's an example of a keyword you would target, even if it's 100 monthly searches. Get 10 of those and you got yourself the equivalent of 1000 monthly searches, with the only difference being that these 10 keywords you can actually rank for.

2. Stop targeting one keyword per page
This adds to the previous point and is crucial yet people keep messing it up. You can optimize for multiple keywords in Yoast without actually buying the premium version if you input them one by one. Group your keywords together - get your headings right and you can have a page ranking for a dozen 100ms keywords at a time.

3. Avoid competing with pages with high PAs
Trust me on this. If only Domain Authorities are high then it's likely you can outrank the top results. A YT video with 200 views and a FB page with 50 likes that are ranking on page 1 will both have high domain authorities. This doesn't mean shit really and results like that are usually easily outrankable.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that anything with low PA results on the first page is a good keyword to target. Page Authority is calculated by Moz and what they do is they crawl sites. As many of you already know, many affiliates block Moz/Majestic/Ahrefs crawlers on their PBN sites - which means that DA/PA (or whatever the fuck other made up metric it is you prefer) will be displayed as LOW, even though in reality Google does see these links even though the crawlers don't.

4. Stop looking at only the first page
You should only look at page 1 in order to filter out the keywords that are obviously hard. Truth is though, no matter how easy a keyword is you probably won't get to page 1 with no links, especially if you're just starting off. Take a look at what's ranking on pages 4 and 5 - if it's complete shit, you can likely (and hopefully) at least outrank that with just content.

5. Don't compete with big ecom category pages
If you see a category page from Ebay, Walmart or any other huge ecom story, stay away from that keyword. These will often have low PA and your favorite keyword research tool may tell you the keyword is low competition. It is probably not - these sites have huge authorities with thousands of pages indexed. You're not going to outrank their category pages, unless they're super specific and titled "gay intergalactic midget spinner".

6. Don't over-analyze each and every competitor's backlinks - look at their content instead
This is cheaper and easier to do than analyzing backlink profiles. Take a look at your competitors content. Are they ranking with 600 words of shit content? You can probably outrank them. This isn't to say you shouldn't be taking a quick look at their backlinks - there are obviously going to be pages with a shit ton of links and shitty content that you won't outrank easily.

7. Stop waiting for indexing
Learn how to use the fucking Search Console. Seriously.

8. Stop wasting money on SEO shit
Think that Majestic subscription you got will do you much good? How many times did you use it in the past month? Plenty of free shit out there - learn how to take advantage of it or the subscriptions will eat you alive. You're not some large marketing agency with dozens of clients and you probably don't need these expensive subscription. I've wasted thousands on shit like this when I started doing SEO and it only taught me not to waste money and not to rely on any of it.

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hacko said:

Ok, so I just had a pretty long day and decided to get a few beers and write some shit up. This is aimed mostly at newbies, but I assume more people could get some value out of it.

Not gonna lie, I used to be horrible in keyword research and always picked the wrong niche. At one point a couple years back I was using my CPA money to pay someone a salary while they were working for me and we targeted keywords like "best oregano oil" (low commission, high competition - I thought this was a good niche to target at the time) which make me wanna throw up when I think about the bottomless pit of costs that was.

I see so many mixed opinions on this it's pissing me off. I do sell keywords so I'm quite biased on this subject obviously and there's no way I'm revealing any part of my actual process anytime soon but I decided to give you all a couple tips on how NOT to do keyword research and what to avoid so you don't end up wasting time and money.

Anyway, some of these were probably posted by other members before and I'm not some guru inventing this shit here (continuously leaning more myself), but here they are:

1. Stop looking for high monthly searches
Let's say this is the gold rush. What's more likely, that you'll find one large stone, or a few way smaller ones? You most likely won't find a super easy high monthly searches you can rank for. This is especially true if you're starting a new site in a certain niche. See what your competitors are ranking for - find a SHITTY affiliate site and find what they're on page 1 for - you can likely outrank that so that's an example of a keyword you would target, even if it's 100 monthly searches. Get 10 of those and you got yourself the equivalent of 1000 monthly searches, with the only difference being that these 10 keywords you can actually rank for.

2. Stop targeting one keyword per page
This adds to the previous point and is crucial yet people keep messing it up. You can optimize for multiple keywords in Yoast without actually buying the premium version if you input them one by one. Group your keywords together - get your headings right and you can have a page ranking for a dozen 100ms keywords at a time.

3. Avoid competing with pages with high PAs
Trust me on this. If only Domain Authorities are high then it's likely you can outrank the top results. A YT video with 200 views and a FB page with 50 likes that are ranking on page 1 will both have high domain authorities. This doesn't mean shit really and results like that are usually easily outrankable.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that anything with low PA results on the first page is a good keyword to target. Page Authority is calculated by Moz and what they do is they crawl sites. As many of you already know, many affiliates block Moz/Majestic/Ahrefs crawlers on their PBN sites - which means that DA/PA (or whatever the fuck other made up metric it is you prefer) will be displayed as LOW, even though in reality Google does see these links even though the crawlers don't.

4. Stop looking at only the first page
You should only look at page 1 in order to filter out the keywords that are obviously hard. Truth is though, no matter how easy a keyword is you probably won't get to page 1 with no links, especially if you're just starting off. Take a look at what's ranking on pages 4 and 5 - if it's complete shit, you can likely (and hopefully) at least outrank that with just content.

5. Don't compete with big ecom category pages
If you see a category page from Ebay, Walmart or any other huge ecom story, stay away from that keyword. These will often have low PA and your favorite keyword research tool may tell you the keyword is low competition. It is probably not - these sites have huge authorities with thousands of pages indexed. You're not going to outrank their category pages, unless they're super specific and titled "gay intergalactic midget spinner".

6. Don't over-analyze each and every competitor's backlinks - look at their content instead
This is cheaper and easier to do than analyzing backlink profiles. Take a look at your competitors content. Are they ranking with 600 words of shit content? You can probably outrank them. This isn't to say you shouldn't be taking a quick look at their backlinks - there are obviously going to be pages with a shit ton of links and shitty content that you won't outrank easily.

7. Stop waiting for indexing
Learn how to use the fucking Search Console. Seriously.

8. Stop wasting money on SEO shit
Think that Majestic subscription you got will do you much good? How many times did you use it in the past month? Plenty of free shit out there - learn how to take advantage of it or the subscriptions will eat you alive. You're not some large marketing agency with dozens of clients and you probably don't need these expensive subscription. I've wasted thousands on shit like this when I started doing SEO and it only taught me not to waste money and not to rely on any of it.

Click to expand...

hacko said:

Stop wasting money on SEO shit
Think that Majestic subscription you got will do you much good? How many times did you use it in the past month? Plenty of free shit out there - learn how to take advantage of it or the subscriptions will eat you alive. You're not some large marketing agency with dozens of clients and you probably don't need these expensive subscription. I've wasted thousands on shit like this when I started doing SEO and it only taught me not to waste money and not to rely on any of it

Click to expand...

hacko said:

8. Stop wasting money on SEO shit
Think that Majestic subscription you got will do you much good? How many times did you use it in the past month? Plenty of free shit out there - learn how to take advantage of it or the subscriptions will eat you alive. You're not some large marketing agency with dozens of clients and you probably don't need these expensive subscription. I've wasted thousands on shit like this when I started doing SEO and it only taught me not to waste money and not to rely on any of it.

Click to expand...

SlickSocials said:

This is how people learn, you had your own bad experience with "bad seo services" probably white hat,
you though you were depended on them and you took a lesson from that, but i can't agree with you,
you were talking about the past experience how far away? a year ago? 5 years ago?, everything changes
we need to adapt, there are good seo services on the market for tons of $$$ / month that really proves them self
its all depends on what you tryin to sell, if its a toilet paper with funny cats on it , you'll fail.

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Premium Rocket said:

that's sound interesting, though we should always avoid something label with cheap price.

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hacko said:

8. Stop wasting money on SEO shit
Think that Majestic subscription you got will do you much good? How many times did you use it in the past month? Plenty of free shit out there - learn how to take advantage of it or the subscriptions will eat you alive. You're not some large marketing agency with dozens of clients and you probably don't need these expensive subscription. I've wasted thousands on shit like this when I started doing SEO and it only taught me not to waste money and not to rely on any of it.

Click to expand...