Ok, hands up. I confess I’ve been a bad person and not updated my experiment journal for a few days. As a result, there’s a load of stuff that I need to get out there today.
Before we get onto your free keyword of the week we need to cover some of the stuff that has been going on in the big, bad world of Google. It has only been a couple of weeks since I put up my first keyword of the week, but if you go back and check that keyword now, in the new version of the Google Keyword tool, you will find that the numbers have changed dramatically.
There has been a howl of dismay across a lot of Internet Marketing blogs in the last few days because Google is now reporting figures that are sometimes as little as a tenth of the ones you would have seen a week ago. In fact, if you check against the old tool (click at the top right of the new one) you will see that the old figures still show in there.
A lot of folk are saying that it’s great that we may now be seeing some more realistic numbers from Google but that doesn’t help you if you’ve invested a load of time in researching and building a site based on a hope of thousands of vistors, only to see a number one slot getting you dribbles of traffic instead of a flood. It may explain why you are seeing those results, but it doesn’t stop it smarting!
The only way forwards from here is to use the new Google tool for your research and since numbers are now so much smaller across the board, it might be a good idea to search for exact match keywords with good volume (if you aren’t already) and then seeing how you might expand those out with phrase and broad match search phrases letting you build a real authority site.
The biggest problem I can see with all of this is that the big keyword research tools all still use the old Google figures. That means that Market Samurai and Micro Niche Finder still show monster results for some keywords that are showing up in Google’s new tool as being pitiful for search volume. So, for the time being, be super careful with the results you see in them (do a quick comparison with the Google tool).
Still harder is the fact that Google themselves haven’t switched everything across to this new paradise. That means that tools like Google Insight are basically handing out duff information. For example, I found a keyword the other day that was just huge and Google Insight had the UK as pretty much the only place in the world where it was being used (something like 90% of all searches). That same keyword is down to a tenth of its earlier size and not only that, but it’s split almost 50/50 between the UK and the US…so a .co.uk domain name is now a giant waste of space!
Ok, now that’s out of the way, here are a couple of keywords for you as a bonus for being patient and waiting a day. Both of them are primarily UK based searches (even in the new regime) and both will let you set up your new clothing empire.
The first is “cardigans for women” – 1,300 exact searches in the UK, going up to 3,600 broad and the .net is available. Not so spectacular, but a good solid site if you know anything about womenswear.
The second is a bit bigger – “cheap designer clothes”. This one does 8,100 exact searches in the UK every month, rising to 12,100 broad match, but there are a lot of related phrase searches if you look in Google. Traffic Travis reckons this is “relatively easy” – all the top sites have higher than normal PR, but are all really young and there are no exact match domains.
So, as always, grab ’em and tell us when you succeed. All comments welcome as usual.
I’ll be posting a second report later today about the latest results of my experiment in money making but for now, have fun with the new Google Keyword tool.