SEO and Keyword research in the post-Penguin and post-Panda age
Ah, keyword research. This used to be the cornerstone, if not the very mortar, of a great SEO campaign. If you had keyword research done right, you were able to totally dominate your competition. You were able to build traffic using low competition, decent traffic, exact match terms. You only need to backlink to the pages you created around these longtail terms. Sadly, just with any great discovery involving online marketing, this was abused. The Internet quickly filled up with low quality thin content sites that existed solely to poach the traffic that searched particular longtail keywords. The thinking was right on-build a huge river of traffic by aggregating many small streams of traffic generated around longtail keywords. The problem is the end objective and the implementation. The end objective by these SEO abusers was to rack up a huge amount of cash in no time. They were willing to use crappy content to achieve those ends. Can you see where this was headed? The truth of the matter is that Google’s Penguin and Panda updates were attempts to clean up the content quality of the Internet due to the proliferation of bad websites. Sadly, keyword research was the cornerstone of this sorry episode and, as a result, classic keyword research techniques to get traffic is no longer as effective as before.
Finding competition levels
What makes keyword research difficult in the post-Penguin and post-Panda age is the fact that you just don’t know if you are getting the right information. Market Samurai and similar tools are still effective, after all they help you to have all information in one place. Look for keywords with low competition but about 3,000 monthly searches. Make also sure that your keyword includes a buying intention. For example, a word like “palm trees info” won’t make any money for you. A person searching for that keyword is more likely looking for information about palm trees. But when someone looks for “cheap blue jeans” he has a high intention to buy.
Focus on themes and connections not specific words
Another key trend that any would-be SEO maven should keep in mind is that, thanks to Latent Semantic Indexing, search engines are no longer slaves to fixed keywords. Instead, search engines like Google are looking for connections and relationships between keywords. Instead of using keyword research to focus on one keyword, you should focus on themes instead. The downside to this is that you don’t know how much these are worth. You can get a sense of overall or approximate value by cross referencing their buzz level on social media sites and their Adwords value.
Tools such as Market Samurai can be a tremendous help to make the right decisions when doing keyword research. However, they won’t give them to you on a silver plate. If you spend a good amount of time on keyword research, you are on your way to success. There is not much more important than choosing the right keyword before you set up your site.
About the Author (Author Profile)
I'm Monja, the owner of several websites, amongst others Digidesignresort.com and CMDacademy.de. I make my money online since 2011 and as a teacher I love to teach others how to do the same - personally. You can connect with me here and on Google +Subscribe
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Hey Monja. Thanks for another great write up. I have recently started using more LSI variations on my keywords and have had tremendous success with my search results. I’m currently using a great plugin on WordPress to help with the efforts. Cheers!
Exact competition is always the most important factor for me. I like sites and tools like Ubersuggest etc but only as a second line of attack – more for ideas. My main keyword tool must always have an ‘exact’ type competition feature. In some cases I don’t even check the search quota if the competition is low enough!!
Great article and well researched info,
Thanks, Chris.
Thanks for another kind of information.
For begginers post-Penguin and post-Panda are new.
So it is very helpful.
Currently using WP
It’s my first time to visit your blog site Monja and I am impressed about your knowledged about SEO and I actually love to try this seo secret you have shared. Thank you!
You are very welcome, Torch! But don’t forget – no secrets here, just plain hard work. Have a nice day!
I would make an exception to the 3,000/month search thing when the it’s truly a buyer keyword and highly targeted.
For example, you could be ranking a local dentist’s website that gets less than 100 searches per month but still drives a ton of revenue.
Of course, you could also do that on your own and then rent out the ranking page for a good amount of money as well :).
hi jonah, thanks for your comment. you are totally right about that. the point is to have highly targeted visitors or a LOT 😉 it depends sometimes but mostly i´d prefer highly targeted actually.
Special Thank’s to the Author Monja for this awesome Blog. i am fresher SEO and i dont know the funda of SEO. so this article is very useful for me because i had no idea about post-penguin and post-panda.
well keyword research is very important for SEO, a healthy keyword can give you thousands of searches monthly…. but the thing to consider is keyword density it should be maintained within the range of 2% to 4%…. my best calculation for keyword density is 2.5% to 3.5% stay in between for better ranking in Google.
hey Monja thank u so much for uploading this excellent post.This post is really really good and i get a lot of information from this post.I visit your website and found your website is also too good according to increase the knowledge.Great job and i inspired your website.thanks again for this excellent post.
Yes i agree that keyword research is the most important aspect of building a successfull website quicker, however even though i started that way i used to spend hours looking for the right phrases, come up with 9 and all of the phrases where already taken by other webmasters that use it for things like sedo revenue so i stopped and not i use a combination of instantdomainsearch and keyword planner by google to find the exact match domains.
It’s been tough figuring out what else to do during the post-panda/penguin update. It’s terrible that this has to happen every now and then. I even have questioned keyword research to the point that it really didnn’t matter what keyword I use. I didn’t care about keyword competition. So long as people are searching for a particular keyword, I write sensible and relevant topics regarding such key. That’s just how I grasped the idea of the updates. We all know the importance of good content. That’s what I focused my energy on. The tougher part is the off-page seo. One false move and you’re site is down. tsk.
hi Monja ,after long time i found this great information from google when i search for this topic i cant found exact information but when i read your article it helps me a lot and give more knowledge about seo and how to search keywords in post thanks a lot monja very helpful information for me i bookmark your website upload more information about this topic thanks……
Hey Monja, thanks a lot for such a great article, it is very informative. I am new to SEO and would like to follow your other works related to SEO.
Hey Monja,
Thank you for giving your time for writing such an valuable article for us
hey Monja thank u so much for uploading this excellent post.This post is really really good and i get a lot of information from this post
Thanks yes you are right in SEO keyword plays an important role so it is up to you that how you will use them. I agreed start your work with less competition keywords you will rank up better then picking high competition keywords. Cheers
Good post,truly agree and thats what we are dominating with. Just keywords and tiltle make lot of impact on ranking. Even ranking youtube, selling products.
This is a Great post for social media.Great SEO guide on social media and getting traffic.
Thanks for sharing this informative article.SEO is for the audience and not for search engines.
If we follow the basics, we can still outrank any website.
very nice information. i am also working on seo fro this site http://www.almadinaeshop.com
for keywords i selected this short description.
It is a Free Classified Web Site. where you Can Buy and Sale Everything, Especially construction Machines and Heavy Equipment. Contact with Buyer directly.And we also have Project solution in all kind of Machines.We provide a construction machine, a transporting machine sale and services Internet based businesses which makes it easy for anyone to buy or sell online anywhere in the world.Since its inception it has developed leading businesses in consumer e-commerce online payment business to business marketplaces and cloud computing reaching Internet users in more than 240 countries
Hi,
This is a Great post for social media.Great SEO guide on social media and getting traffic.
Thanks for sharing this informative article.SEO is for the audience and not for search engines.
If we follow the basics, we can still outrank any website
Hello there!
It is such a complete article of finding the keyword. I would like to thanks to the author for adding all important points. But I want to know from where I can find the targeting keywords of United States and Canada? I have tried it on Google Analytics, but it was not what I was looking for. Do you know about this?
Thanks in advance
Tanya
There is some priceless information here, Market Samurai is an essential tool in any SEOers arsenal, but great keyword research and properly structured content will always deliver results.
Well people think that the seo has been died now a days. But seo has not been died, It has just advanced for now. People here are just trying to be oversmart in seo. Thanks for your discussion 🙂
according to the modern SEO, the use of keywords are much less than in previous ages, The use of keywords for link building is also prohibited by Google.
Hey monja its my first time to visit your blog and i have learned more on seo.you have a good knowledge in that field and i have to try some of your ideas.
totally agree with Allen, now it is difficult to rank in any keyword on google. but we are trying hard , lets see what happened next 🙂
Great post,truly concur and that is the thing that we are commanding with. Just catchphrases and tiltle have part of effect on positioning.