Video Series: Keyword Research and Competition Analysis of The Top 10

Now it’s time for the fun stuff. Back in my first video I looked at affiliate networks then I had a quick look at Importing.

Now it’s time for keyword research and analyzing the competition. Since this is a video series I like to keep the articles brief. I recommend watching the video for more detail.

By the way, I got a new microphone… The one on my Mac was horrible.

The first thing I wanted to do before I get into the research and find a product.

I headed over to Clickbank and made the decision to go with an ebook about piano lessons.

This is what I’m going to be promoting. It’s also a good idea to choose products with a vendor spotlight.

So you can get banners and all that good stuff.

Throughout this video series, I’ll actually be making this a real site so I show you exactly what I do. I won’t be ranking it as I don’t have time but feel free to copy this and do what you like with it.

As you can see the product has an average sale price of $30. That’s the lowest I usually go, I want to make good money.

Once I’ve found a product I’ll check out the landing page, if I’m happy with it I’ll continue on with my research.

Keyword Research

Right now, I’m only doing keywords for the home page. I plan to make this a small site. Maybe 3 pages max.

I use Long Tail Pro for most of my research because I can check the competition quickly.

Don’t use Google Keyword Planner for Competition.

I explain why in my article about how you shouldn’t be checking keyword competition.

I’m going to simply open up Long Tail Pro and throw some words in.

I’ve used

• Piano lessons
• learn how
• how to
• Playing piano

I would recommend trying different variations and doing more than one search.

I’ve added 200 minimum local searches and a minimum of 4 words. I then scroll to the bottom and hit “Generate”

Let’s Look At The Results

I’ve found the keyword “piano lessons for kids” I like to go with keyword competition below 28 so 19 is perfect for me.

Take the competition metric as a guideline only. I do my real analysis manually.

Next I take a look at the top 10 in Long Tail Pro.

Wait!, It now says 32 KC?

This is why I say use it with a grain of salt…. I only use it as a guide. I’m still going with 19 to make me feel better haha.

In this picture all, I really worry about is the titles and the Page links in the red section.

Those titles are average, I can do better. I’ve marked the ones in blue that use our keyword.. the rest don’t.

Time To Check Out The Competition

This is where the real work begins. I would check out the video to see what I do.

You want to make sure you have Moz Bar, It’s a browser extension.

Put the keyword in google and analyze the top 10. I’m going to do two for this article.

Look at this!

These are in 5th and 6th position and they aren’t optimized at all, number 5 doesn’t even have the keywords in the title or URL.

Notice the word “children”? You could also add this into your article to help you rank for other terms.

Now look at what I’m up against, Both sites look like this…. Basic and simple. Very easy to outrank, google will show you the love if you can do better.

His main keyword looks like “piano lessons for children” yet Google is showing it in “piano lessons for kids”. Below is all he has on his page, dead simple to outrank.

So that’s what you need to look for when checking out the top 10, weak websites.

Please keep in mind that you should change your IP when searching. If you want to rank in google USA then you should be using a USA IP when checking out the top 10. I use Hide My Ass.

Why is this important?

Well, Google tries to personalize the search. When someone does a search Google finds the best results based on the person’s country and search terms.

If you live in the UK and you want to rank in the US but check your top 10 with a UK IP you will get UK results… you want to be checking the USA competition, not UK.

This will not affect how people search for your site in the future, this is just for checking out the competition. You will still show up worldwide if you rank, depends on the person’s search term of course.

Checking Out Those Backlinks

It’s not over just yet, now we should be checking the backlinks of our competition.

I always check the backlinks to every site I want to out rank.

I use SEO SpyGlass. The free version works fine.

When you start it up put in the URL when asked then click finish. Things might look over whelming, but you can filter them out in the top bar.

I’m looking for spam, anything Chinese, Russian or similar. This indicates to me that they might have had some poor SEO done.

Now, there is one thing I love about SEO SpyGass. It makes replicating backlinks easy.

Notice how I’ve clicked on “Backlinks from blogs and forums”

All I need to do is scroll down and check out all the backlinks, they can be simple blog comments or a forum post. All I need to do is replicate that backlink.

If there is a blog comment on a blog about “piano lesson” all I would need to do is leave a blog comment on the same blog. Even if it was a no follow link, diversity is always good.

So, while I’m checking the competition I look for backlink opportunities at the same time. This is very time-consuming, but it could make or break your affiliate site.

What I Sent To My Writer

I decided to go with 3 keywords for the homepage

• Piano lessons for kids – 2400
• Piano lessons for toddlers – 210
• Best online piano lessons – 390

Total of 3000 searches a month.

What I sent to my article writer. (you can find one on elance, I pay $4 per 500 words.)

Hey, bud can I get a 1000 word article?

Title: best online piano lessons for kids

Keywords:

• (main) Piano lessons for kids
• Best online
• Toddlers

Use the keyword piano lessons for kids 5-6 times and the rest 3-4.

Cheers

The reason I don’t tell my writer to use the full keywords on the second and third one is because I don’t need to. Google is smart enough If I optimize it right. More on that in the next video.

Final Words

Although this was supposed to be brief it turned out a bit longer than I thought haha. When using keyword research tools, I highly suggest not to use the keyword competition metric as your final decision. Be sure to always check the top 10 manually connected to an IP for that country.

Research can make or break an affiliate site do definitely spend some time at the keyword research part. You don’t want to waste money and time on a website if it’s not going to rank for what you want it to rank for.