5 Minute Guide to Keyword Research for Your Hubs

The most important element of a hub, from a SEO perspective, is its title. Creating titles that incite action, or help in ranking higher on the search engines is an art that can, nevertheless, be measured, experimented and perfected, like science.

And your titles. of course, depend on your main hub keyword.

In this quick & dirty guide to keyword research, I'll teach you how to narrow down on the best keyword for your hub using the Google Keywords Tool.

The most important part of the hub title is the target keyword.

Ideally, your hub should target 'long-tail keywords'. That is, keywords with more than 3 words that have few competing pages in Google. 'auto insurance in houston', or 'cheap hotels in hono lulu' are examples of long-tail keywords. These keywords are far easier to rank for because they have little competition, and can still drive a lot of traffic to your hubs.

Picking Keywords

A lot of marketers would prescribe expensive tools like Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder for keyword research. While these tools do have their place, for now, all you need is the Google Keywords Tool.

Head over to Google Keywords tool and type in a sample keyword. Let's pick 'car insurance' for the purpose of this example. Make sure to select only 'Phrase' and 'Exact' under 'Match Type' in the left menu (see pic). And since we want long-tail, infrequently searched keywords, keep the number of local searches per month below 50,000 (pic below)

After clicking 'Search', sort by the number of 'Local Monthly Searches' (Global searches are largely irrelevant). It's also a good idea at this point to include 'Local Search Trends' from the columns menu in the top right corner (see pic). This will tell you if a keyword is evergreen or sees only seasonal traffic.

Exact searches are shown within brackets [Like This], while phrase searches are between inverted commas, "Like This". For the purpose of research, Exact searches are more important.

I like to narrow down to keywords that are at least 3 words long and receive around 3000 Exact searches per month. I also want keywords that are easier to write hubs for than other. From this list, therefore, I would pick out 'cheap car insurance in Florida' and 'best auto insurance companies'.

Not only do these three keywords get adequate searches every month, they are also very high paying and are easy to write for.

Once you master this process, it'll take you less than 10 minutes to come up with keyword ideas for dozens of articles. Make a Google spreadsheet and note down all these keyword ideas, along with essential data (number of local searches, CPC, etc.).

Caveat: I chose 'car insurance' only for the purpose of this example. I personally wouldn't pick a base keyword like 'car insurance' because it is ridiculously competitive, even for long tail keywords. Niches like travel, gaming, technology, etc. are far less competitive and even easier to writer for. Unless you really know what you are doing, I would advise you to strictly stay away from keywords related to insurance, loans, etc.

Further Reading:

1. How to build backlinks through guest blogging.

2. The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO