Uncovering High Traffic Niches with Google’s Keyword Tool

Andrew Youderian • June 4, 2012

Google’s keyword tool is a powerful resource for discovering great niche eCommerce markets IF you know how to use it properly!  In this video, I discuss:

• Common mistakes that result in misleading traffic figures
• How to estimate traffic for a #1 listing in Google
• The treasure trove of keywords that will generate 90% of your traffic

Check out the video below or, if you’re reading this via email, jump to the video online.

Have questions about this video? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Video Transcription

Hey, guys! Andrew here from eCommerceFuel, and in this video I want to talk
about some common mistakes that are made when using the Google keyword tool
for niche research. I also want to talk about what kind of traffic you can
expect to get for a number one ranking in Google. Also, where you really
should be looking for the majority of your traffic. It’s probably not where
you think.

As you can see here, I’ve got the keyword tool page open. We’re going to go
ahead and use coffee mugs for this demo. Before you do run any queries, I
suggest clicking this only show ideas closely related to my search terms
box. It will give you much better results out of the gates. I like to
search by local monthly search volume to begin with. Real briefly, we’ve
got all the keywords here, obviously. The competition in the Google ad
network lets you know how many people are bidding for this keyword. The
global monthly searches and the local monthly searches, if you’re doing
this for e-commerce, you want to focus on the local monthly searches. Those
will be a lot more applicable.

The most important thing to understand, and probably the biggest mistake
people make when using the keyword tool is not understanding how the
different match types work. As you can see, there are three different types
of matches: broad, exact and phrase. The keyword tool defaults to broad.
Broad match, like the name implies, is going to include pretty much
anything related to your search term. For coffee mugs, if somebody typed in
what type of coffee should I put into my mugs? That would pop up. Ignoring
the fact it’s a ridiculous search to begin with. The two words don’t have
to be next to each other. The order isn’t as important. I think it might
even if mugs was first and coffee was there, that might show up as well.
It’s really going to give you a huge variety of different searches.

Broad isn’t real accurate. Phrase is much better. Phrase is going to only
return search queries that use the phrase coffee mugs, in that order. It
will still return some extra things, and some extra queries. For example,
if someone typed in “Where can I buy coffee mugs?” or “I hate coffee mugs”,
or “My wife keeps hitting me with coffee mugs”. Any of those would pop up
under phrase match, but it is a little more accurate.

The best of all of these is going to be exact match. In exact match, like
the name implies, is only going to show search queries or report search
volume for the exact search, coffee mugs. This is going to be usually what
I use and what I recommend using when you’re doing research because it’s
going to filter out a lot of that extraneous information. We can see down
here now, coffee mugs, we’ve got 12,000 local monthly searches, which is
great. You might be thinking, oh hey, 12,000 monthly searches. If I’m
number one for Google, I’m going to get almost all of those. As wonderful
as that would be, that’s just not the case. The reason is because Google’s
gotten more aggressive recently with their advertising. Here, I’ve got the
Google listings for coffee mugs. You can see Zazzle is the number one
organic listing or the number one non-paid listing that Google displays.

Above them, they’ve got three ads here. You’ve also got this big sidebar on
the right, with a bunch of pictures and paid advertisements. There’s a lot
of stuff competing for that number one spot that’s paid advertisement. I
can tell you based on, a number of keywords that my business has ranked
number one for, that based on the results Google will show you in the
keyword tool, you probably can plan on getting about 30% of the volume if
you have a number one ranking. That’s a little squishy, it can range
anywhere from 30 to 50%, but 30% tends to be much more accurate in my
experience.

Out of 12,000 local monthly searches, if you have the number one ranking,
that Zazzle site, it’s probably only seeing 4,000 people a month for this.
Maybe, just a few over 120, 130 people a day which can be a little
depressing. The good news is you’re not going to get the majority of your
traffic from this, number one money term, is what I refer to it as, kind of
your root term. Where you’re going to get probably 80 to 90% of your
traffic, is in the long tail variations of that term.

For example, we’ve got coffee mugs here. Listed below that, the second
highest volume query is personalized coffee mugs with 3600, custom coffee
mugs, travel coffee mugs, funny coffee mugs, and these are what I refer to
as long tail variations or long tail keywords. They’re just the root
keyword obviously with some additional modifiers on there. The thing that’s
great about these long tail keywords is one, they’re easier to rank for
because not as many people are going after them. Two, they usually convert
at a much higher rate than your primary keyword. Because they’re more
specific, and if you serve up a page that’s optimized for that term,
whether it’s travel coffee mug or personalized coffee mug, you’ll be able
to get a much higher conversion rate on there.

This is where you’re going to get 80 to 90% of your traffic. When you’re
researching a niche, be looking for lots of these variations. In this
coffee mug example, we’ve got almost a dozen here with more than 500 search
terms, maybe more than that. Look for lots of variations in the long tail.
Also look for the search fund. You want to make sure that, you’re always
going to have a drop-off. You’re never going to have, or very infrequently
are you going to have long tail variations have as much volume as your
money or root keyword. You want to see once you do get into those long tail
variations, they don’t drop off too significantly. Here, for coffee mugs,
it’s pretty decent. You’ve got 3,600, 2,900; you’ve got about six or seven
in the thousand range. We’ve got another dozen probably in the 400 to 1000
range, which is what I would call a deep niche. That’s a really encouraging
sign.

Let’s look at a different example, fish finders. I’ll sort these by local
monthly search volume. Again, we’re on exact match here. You can see fish
finders has about 2,400 exact searches per month. We’ve got a few
variations. We’ve got Eagle fish finders, Lowrance fish finders,
Hummingbird fish finders, but really only a couple. There’s three there in
the thousand range. Then, we drop way off to 300 and 200, and by the time
we’re a dozen down, we’re in the 100s or even ten down we’re in the 100s.

This isn’t to say this market would be awful, but I would be a little leery
of the fact that it’s not a deep market. There are not a lot of long tail
variations. Instead of maybe getting 80 to 90% of your keyword traffic from
long tail variations, this might be something where maybe, it’s more like
65 to 75%. Again, these are ball park numbers, but you do want to look for
those long tail variations. They’re indicative of good markets to get into
and indicative of the possibility of a lot of your traffic coming from
those long tail variations.

Three key takeaways for this video. The first is make sure you’re using
phrase or even better exact match to get more precise results when you use
the keyword tool. Secondly, just remember that when you are looking at
those money term volumes that you’re only going to get a fraction of those,
and that’s even if you’ve got a number one listing in Google. Don’t
overestimate how much traffic you’ll get from those.

Finally, make sure you’re looking at how deep a niche is. Looking for those
long tail keywords because the more you have of those and the less the
volume drops off with those long tail keywords, the better chance you have
of getting a lot of traffic in that niche. It’s also a great strategy to
pursue those long tail keywords in terms of SEO and marketing because
you’re going to be able rank for those more easily. There’ll be less
competition for them and they’ll convert better.

If you have any questions about this video, or about using the keyword tool
in general, I’d love to answer them. I’ll do my best to. Just please leave
them in the comments section below. If you did enjoy this video, and are
interested in learning more about niche evaluation, market research, e-
commerce, and how to start your own business. How to do research and how to
improve your existing eCommerce business, you want to check out my e-book,
“Profitable eCommerce”. It’s a 55 page, really, in-depth guide to picking
an e-commerce niche and starting an e-commerce business. You can get that
for free at my website, ecommercefuel.com.

Thanks for watching, and I hope to see your questions in the comments
below.

Post by Andrew Youderian

Andrew is the founder of eCommerceFuel and has been building eCommerce businesses ever since gleefully leaving the corporate world in 2008.  Join him and 1,000+ vetted 7- and 8-figure store owners inside the eCommerceFuel Community.