A very simple 3-step approach for keyword research for small businesses.

1. Find Relevant Keywords: Do not think like a business, instead, think like your prospects. What’s in their mind when they are searching? Make a list. Get Google’s help and widen the list.
2. Adequate Search Volume: It is great to compile a list of relevant keywords but are those keywords being searched? What is the ideal keyword volume? In my opinion, for a local business anything above 1,000 in monthly search volume is a good keyword to target.
3. Keyword Competition: Now that you have a list of relevant keywords with adequate search volume, it is time to assess how easy or difficult it will be to rank on the first page for these keywords. Do an exact phrase search for your keywords along with “allintitle” and “allinanchor” searches and analyze the results on the first page to ascertain the competition. It sounds difficult but it is actually pretty easy in reality.

That’s it, do click on the links above to see details on keyword relevance, search volume and keyword difficulty. If you have any feedback or questions then please do leave a comment below.

After finding relevant keywords and deciding on an ideal monthly search volume now is the time to determine keyword difficulty. In other words, how competitive is the keyword. In this post, I’m going to share my formula of assessing keyword difficulty where I look at four factors.

1. Exact Phrase Search Results

Open up Google and type in exact search phrase by enclosing it within double quotes. Taking the Singapore plumbers example further, type in “Singapore plumbers” and take note of the number of results returned (highlighted in red).

Exact Phrase Search Results for Singapore plumbers

This gives a broad idea of the level of competition. In my experience, anything less than 5,000 competing websites is manageable competition. For our example, there are 601 competing websites which means there is a good chance of appearing on the first page of Google.

2. allintitle Phrase Search Results

Again, in Google type in allintitle:“Singapore plumbers” (highlighted in red). The number of results returned this time is the number of pages that have the keyword in their page title (highlighted in yellow). Then take note of the number of results returned.

AllInTitle Search Results

This gives a broad idea of the level of somewhat serious competition who know basic SEO. For our example, there are only 116 competing websites and pages so the level of competition is pretty low.

3. allinanchor Phrase Search Results

Open up Google and type in allinanchor:“Singapore plumbers” and take note of the number of results returned (highlighted in red).

AllInAnchor Search Results

The number of results returned this time is the one of all the pages which are linked to by backlinks with the keyword “Singapore plumbers” in their anchor text. This is serious competition but a number like 585 would not be too competitive.

4. Analyze The First Page Results

Apart from the numbers discussed above, we are most interested in getting our website or page on the first page of Google so examining the first page results for the keyword is important. Look for the following:

• Forums or Classifieds: If there are forum or classifieds pages high on the first page of the results then it is good news as it is relatively easy to outrank them.
• Authority Sites: Pages from authority sites like Wikipedia are hard to outrank.
• High Page Rank: Also sites or pages with page rank of 4 or more are difficult to outrank. Download the Google Toolbar to check page ranks.

There you have it, the four factors that determine keyword difficulty and competition. As always, leave a comment if you have questions or additional comments.