Is This Keyword Worth Pursuing??

[JasperEliot]

Okay, 30DC experts (or just those who fancy themselves to be!):

I have a challenge for which your opinion would be greatly appreciated. I have used Market Samurai to find a keyword containing 2 words, and according to what I've learned in this challenge, the stats look exceptionally strong...maybe too strong:

Searches: 8088
SEOT: 3396
And yet an SEOC of only 5190!!
AWT: 153
AWCPC: $2.16
AWCTR: 1.89%
OCI: 51%
AWV: $324
SEOV: $7200

There's something about these numbers that don't feel right to me. The competing pages seem too low for the number of searches on the top page. Well, maybe I just found an amazing keyword, right? Then, let me throw this caveat into the mix: The keywords (which I'm obviously not going to mention here) are attractive for a business niche that is largely overcrowded with shlocky, tacky sites. So that you catch my drift, imagine that my keyword was 'budget travel' Now, you can imagine that there are thousands of tacky websites on budget travel, all having tons of adsense ads and blinking banner ads, etc, etc. That's kind of like the space that my keyword falls into (though obviously not those keywords). Since my blog would simply be a low-key information site, it's hard to imagine that it would fit in among the mass of junky commercial sites, let alone being able to rise to the top of the Google index on page 1. However, Market Samurai seems to think there's only 5190 sites targeted towards my keyword.

Any thoughts on whether this is worth putting in the time and effort? If you were in my shoes and already had a couple of 30DC blogs (both of which is showing potential but not yet shining through), would you add this one to your plate? Looking forward to your thoughts.

[lisahartwell]

First of all you need to look at what Market Samurai shows in regards to the top web pages for this keyword phrase. How well are they optimised for it?

These may be competitive keywords in your opinion but based on these results it would suggest that not many sites are targeting this exact phrase. If you do target the phrase you have the opportunity to rise above the dross sites (again, as long as the competition anaysis isn't too fierce).

If you are doubting MArket Samurai, run a completely fresh analysis on these keywords in MS and/or check it with the Google external keyword tool.

Lisa

[JasperEliot]

Originally Posted by lisahartwell

First of all you need to look at what Market Samurai shows in regards to the top web pages for this keyword phrase. How well are they optimised for it?

These may be competitive keywords in your opinion but based on these results it would suggest that not many sites are targeting this exact phrase. If you do target the phrase you have the opportunity to rise above the dross sites (again, as long as the competition anaysis isn't too fierce).

If you are doubting MArket Samurai, run a completely fresh analysis on these keywords in MS and/or check it with the Google external keyword tool.

Lisa

Thanks, Lisa. Point well taken, and I should have mentioned the SEO Competition from MS as well. Interestingly, the SEO comps from MS are quite different from the list you get when running the broadmatch keywords into Google (not sure why that would be). Anyway, MS shows the following for to top 10 sites for Page Rank:

2 sites at 6
1 site at 5
4 sites at 4
3 sites at 3

Only one of the sites list is a well-recognized name brand that everyone knows. The rest are all industry-known, but not recognizable if you don't work in the industry.

Regarding the keywords themselves, I wouldn't doubt that the top sites are not well optimized for it because they are in reverse order of how you would say it (for example, 'checkout easy' instead of 'easy checkout') Anyway, that's it. Depending on whether I can find the time, I might work it and see if it pulls any traffic. It all depends on whether i feel I have a chance of getting anywhere near Google's first page.

[Isha]

Jasper, did you take Lisa's tip and check it using the Google Adwords Free Keyword Tool? https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Using the "phrase match" option you might find that in fact it's the reverse of your keyword that's getting the searches (you probably know that MS gives broad match results for the searches)?

[JasperEliot]

Originally Posted by Isha

Jasper, did you take Lisa's tip and check it using the Google Adwords Free Keyword Tool? https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Using the "phrase match" option you might find that in fact it's the reverse of your keyword that's getting the searches (you probably know that MS gives broad match results for the searches)?

Isha, Thank You for your thoughtful reply. I hadn't checked Google's Free Keyword Tool so your email helped reinforce that I should. Having done that, I can say that I'm now more confused than ever as I'm not entirely sure what the data is telling me:

As you can see, the broad search shows significant traffic:



However, the "phrase match" shows the following:



Is this a confirmation of your suspicion that this low "phrase match" makes it a less-impressive key phrase choice after all? Very interested in your thoughts.

[Isha]

Originally Posted by JasperEliot

As you can see, the broad search shows significant traffic:



However, the "phrase match" shows the following:



Is this a confirmation of your suspicion that this low "phrase match" makes it a less-impressive key phrase choice after all? Very interested in your thoughts.

I'm afraid so Jasper :-(

We've probably all been caught out by this one.

It means that the actual search numbers for your keyword are 720/30= 24 searches a day.

And the reverse of your keyword phrase is probably what most of the searchers are inputting into their Google searches.

You can check this out by reversing the keyword order of the two words in your keyword, and putting that into the Keyword Tool. The figure you get back for phrase-matched search numbers might not be anywhere as large as Market Samurai gives, because some of the people in the broad match search results would have searched with additional words. For example, instead of searching

budget travel

they might be searching
cheap budget travel
or
budget travel new york
or any number of similar words combos.

Congratulations for trusting that feeling that something wasn't quite right and for asking about it on this forum.

Now you can dust yourself off, and think about how much you have learnt from this experience.

You might find these links interesting to read:

Are Results based on Broad Match or Phrase Match data? - Powered By Kayako SupportSuite

Trying to Figure Out Word Order, But All Traffic Disappears « Noble Samurai

[JasperEliot]

Originally Posted by Isha

I'm afraid so Jasper :-(

We've probably all been caught out by this one.

It means that the actual search numbers for your keyword are 720/30= 24 searches a day.

And the reverse of your keyword phrase is probably what most of the searchers are inputting into their Google searches.

You can check this out by reversing the keyword order of the two words in your keyword, and putting that into the Keyword Tool. The figure you get back for phrase-matched search numbers might not be anywhere as large as Market Samurai gives, because some of the people in the broad match search results would have searched with additional words. For example, instead of searching

budget travel

they might be searching
cheap budget travel
or
budget travel new york
or any number of similar words combos.

Congratulations for trusting that feeling that something wasn't quite right and for asking about it on this forum.

Now you can dust yourself off, and think about how much you have learnt from this experience.

You might find these links interesting to read:

Are Results based on Broad Match or Phrase Match data? - Powered By Kayako SupportSuite

Trying to Figure Out Word Order, But All Traffic Disappears « Noble Samurai

Isha, I learned a heck of a lot from your awesome advice and experience. In fact, now I'll know how to cross-check any future keywords I might be interested in. The time and effort I might have wasted in pursuing "bad" key words can now be used for finding better keywords or working on successful niche sites. Also, any newbies who reads these postings will learn A LOT and save a lot of aggravation. Again, thanks so much for your help. I really appreciate it!