Let's talk about Keyword Research!

[alwayspaws]

I just read that "you don’t have to run an active campaign to use the Google Keyword Planner, but you’ll need to fully set up an Adwords account".

Does anyone here use the Google Keyword Planner who does not run Google adword campaigns?

Reference: http://backlinko.com/keyword-research which I got from this article from my subscription to Website Magazine:

https://www.websitemagazine.com/channels/mastering-search

Thanks!

[Guest]

You need to have a big budget spend if you want anything meaningful out of the keyword planner other than ranges like 100 to 1k, I manage an account with a spend of about £90 a month, which I know is tiny but it's only showing ranges of values.

TBH you're better off using the daily free goes on SemRush against your closest 10 competitors. If you use the 'checking 5 only' then you pretty much get indefinite goes. I spend 15mins a day just checking SemRush. Also as you can pay monthly on it you can pay for a 1 month sub just to hit a ton of competitor sites and get their main 100 keywords.

I'd also suggest getting Screaming Frog (about £150 a year), I know it's old school but it's good for getting some nice content from competitors. The free version only does 500 links so can only be used against small competitor sites.

The other tool I use is www.answerthepublic.com. Just bung in a keyword then it'll give you tons of longtail searches, click them to do a Google search and see what comes up. It's handy for finding peoples sites you want to have content for on yours and lets you see how they do it - again use screaming frog them sites.

I know my methods are probably low down the list compared to the tools available but the free options are nice and it's quick and simple :)

[alwayspaws]

No budget so everything must be free until I get off the ground. (I'm really underground, but let's not talk about that. lol) I looked at all three and saved the links to these tools. Thank you very much @DavidP

[Guest]

@alwayspaws well given the lack of budget (I know how you feel lol, my marketing budget is pretty much my wages!) I'd also recommend the Twitter tool hashtagify.me because with no backlinks for a new website you need to get seen still and I find that very handy for getting my products seen by other companies. I know it's off topic but it's damn handy getting your new product seen instantly by new people :)

In case you don't know it, it's a keyword research tool for Twitter to give you an idea of what people are looking for / posting. Whilst I personally don't find it that good in the B2C it's very good for B2B. I'd suggest using that in conjunction with HootSuite to monitor your main Twitter keywords. Again both tools have free limited use.

[alwayspaws]

It is not off topic in my book! I love Twitter. Thanks again for this! I stayed away from hootsuite bc I don't think they have a free version any more, but will check it out again. We'll be successful now that we're at #thirtybees

[alwayspaws]

@DavidP I checked out hashtagify.me and am in love! lol. I wasn't aware of this and I'm on Twitter a lot.

[vincentdenkspel]

@DavidP thank you for your suggestions. Very informative.

[alwayspaws]

@DavidP said in Let's talk about Keyword Research!:

@alwayspaws I'd also recommend the Twitter tool hashtagify.me because with no backlinks for a new website you need to get seen still and I find that very handy for getting my products seen by other companies.

In case you don't know it, it's a keyword research tool for Twitter to give you an idea of what people are looking for / posting. Whilst I personally don't find it that good in the B2C it's very good for B2B. I'd suggest using that in conjunction with HootSuite to monitor your main Twitter keywords. Again both tools have free limited use.

I signed up for the free hootsuite app and don't need more than that right now, anyway. I only have one account each of the social apps.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction, David

[lisa7878]

Hi

Well, there are so many online tools which are used for a keyword research like KW finder Google Keyword planner which is free Ahrefs Keyword Explorer tool SpyFu

I am using KW finder and keyword planner.

You can visit various online sources to make your search fine for an example:

http://backlinko.com/keyword-research http://www.friscowebsoft.com

[alwayspaws]

@lisa7878 Thank you for these great suggestions. I'm glad you joined our team and provided so much good information. My comments below are not to "shoot down" your suggestions. They are to continue the discussion for new sites with no budget or a low budget.

I have no budget right now so:

Brian Dean's http://backlinko.com/ looks the best for me. He has a huge wealth of info that he shares. I followed him on Twitter. Thank you Lisa! Google Keyword planner makes you sign up for Google Adwords even if you don't use ads, which I can't atm. I didn't sign up because they want to "give me" free $50.00 for ads, which probably means I have to give them my credit card. I dropped it there but may look into it again to see if a CC is required.

Can't afford:

Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/pricing

KW finder - Free Trial then $12/month

Spyfu - https://www.spyfu.com/mainpurchase/?page=default

I appreciate the effort you put into this post!

[robbie]

Brian Dean is a really good reference when you are just starting to learn SEO. He has tons of high quality posts and very actionable.

I personally use Ahrefs for everything SEO related actually: KW research, competitor analysis, content research, ... They have improved their tools the last 2 years a lot. Best on the market right now imo, but yeah kinda pricy. Altough if you are really serious with your business you need something like this: you have to be able to do a competitor analysis, have a good mapping of your KW, start generating some content, ...

I know there were some sites were you could share ahrefs accounts (this is against TOS of course), but not sure if they still exist.

[alwayspaws]

@robbie - Thanks! I can tell. Brian's articles are very detailed and helpful. My business and I are serious. My budget is a laughing matter. :)

[dprophitjr]

@alwayspaws https://trends.google.com/trends/?hl=en When you add keywords, see if there is a known entity suggestion instead. Like inputting the word 'shop' might also return a known entity for 'retail'. The more known entities you have in your product title, product short and long as well as meta title / description, the best google AI will understand what your product or service is about. This also include feature sets and feature attributes.

[alwayspaws]

@dprophitjr Hi, Denver! Thank you for all of these suggestions. I just tried out your link and it's very helpful.

Here's one of my URL's:

https://www.alwayspaws.com/dog-clothes/dog-dress-patriotic-usa-happy-birthday-america-1776-red-white-and-blue-american-flag

May be a bit over the top but it will work. :) (Past experience that I'll talk about some day).

[dprophitjr]

@alwayspaws https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=18&date=today%203-m&geo=US&q=pet%20costume,dog%20dress,%2Fm%2F068hy,dog%20costume dog costume seems to get more searches while the topic "pet" has an entity. Mix dog costume and pet. Maybe like Pet Dog Costume Pink with description of patriotic spirit of 1776 somewhere in there.

[alwayspaws]

@dprophitjr Thank you, Denver, but these are dog dresses. Imagine if you told a woman to describe her dress as a costume! LOL! I could put the keyword phrase "dog costume" in the meta descriptions of all my clothing products but some shoppers may get irritated. (I would!).

"pet" doesn't work well although I use it here and there. My short description for this patriotic dress is: "Dog Dress Patriotic USA Happy Birthday America 1776 Red White And Blue American Flag". Since it comes in eleven colors, each image has an alt tag that includes the specific color and a description.

This is one type of dog clothing that I sell - 32 different dresses and growing:

https://www.alwayspaws.com/dog-clothes/dog-dresses?id_category=47&n=32

Dog specific costumes are getting wilder all the time and I haven't decided whether or not to sell them, mostly because they are a one-use purchase. The same could be said about birthday dresses and dog tee shirts but that's a different story. :)

These are mind boggling dog costumes: I like Zoltar the Fortune Teller:

https://www.mnn.com/family/pets/blogs/10-clever-halloween-dog-costumes

Once I get my regular dog wardrobe online, I'll put other items up, but soon I have to add the cool and cold weather hoodies, coats, raincoats, etc.

[alwayspaws]

That was long. I'm just chilling after adding 12 more dresses. I'm going to add fuller descriptions after I get enough products online and once I know the best place for them.

@dprophitjr Would it be a good idea to extend the amount of characters for the short description? What would be the acceptable maximum number of characters in the short description?

[dprophitjr]

https://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description so around two pithy short sentences emphasising ANY known entity that should also be in product title along with the first few higher ranking keywords that are written naturally in a sentence.

[alwayspaws]

Denver, that's a great source that I read and saved a couple of years ago, but the product title (name) is confined to 128 characters which I've been doing all along. You can tell from my website.