The Best Free Keyword Research

When you start trying to earn money from your website you need to use the free tools that are available.

I recommend that you start using Firefox rather than Internet Explorer. Almost all your competitors use this browser because it is faster and cleaner than IE. There are also many add-ons for Firefox that are not available for Internet Explorer.

Download and install the free toolbar from SEObook.com. There are a few hoops to jump through, but it is worth it because it is free. This tells you the Google Page Rank of any page you are on, along with other important data.

Download the free Alexa Toolbar from

Logo Button 125x40

This will allow you to check out your competition’s Alexa rank. Install it as a Status Bar rather than as a toolbar if your screen space is already too small.

If you have not already done so, apply for a Google Adsense account.This account comes with many free tooks.

Go to your Adsense account and cick on the Reports Tab.

Click on Keyword Tool.

Play around with that. Enter a keyword, Order the results in terms of Number of clicks globally (just click on the Global Clicks heading). Check out any you like the look of by clicking on the keyword. You will see the Google search results for that key word. Click on the bottom results, check Google Page Rank of your competitors, if you find any with zero Page Rank, then you stand a chance.

You will probably find that you have to go to page 2 or 3 of the Adsense results before you find a longer, less popular keyword that you could get onto the first page of results for. This might pay less (Competition bar) but you stand a chance of a page 1 result, which is essential to get a decent number of readers.

The best keyword research involves many things, keyword popularity, keyword competitiveness and whether you can monetize that keyword.

The Best Keyword

Ideally your key word would have 10 million searches a day, no other websites with that key word and a hundred different Adsense ads paying $200 a click.

There’s no such animal.

Any key word that is popular and pays well is snapped up by thousands of large websites immediately.

The Best Keyword For a New Website To Target

Best means the one that will earn you the most money.

How much any particular search term will earn for you depends on a range of factors:

  1. How popular that search keyword is (Number of Searches)
  2. How much Adsense advertisers are willing to pay (Click Value)
  3. How high your site can rank for that search term
  4. The proportion of searchers who will click on the top search results
  5. How many of the searchers are likely to click on an Adsense Ad
  6. Whether you can use Amazon to target your keyword
  7. Whether you can use any other monetization programs with your keyword

This article will deal with the first three of these factors using free software tools.

How much a particular keyword earns from Adsense can be calculated by this formula:

number of searches  X   Adsense click value

You can earn just as much from a low paying search term if it is something that lots of people click on.

Researching Keyword Popularity and Adsense Competition

Adsense Competition

Adsense competition is a measure that Google uses to show how many advertisers want a particular search term to bring up their ads. The more competing advertisers want a given search string to show their ads, the more they will have to pay.

Advertizers will pay more to have their ads to show if the ad is for a high profit margin service or product. Lawyers pay highly to show their ads on any page to do with injury or with legal implications because they can potentially make a massive profit from a given click. If only one lawyer wants his ad to show for a particular keyword then he  will not pay much, it is only because hundreds of lawyers are competing to show their ads that the price goes up.

Keyword Popularity

There are many free tools available to you to find out how many people search for a particular term. Start with Google’s own tool for Adsense.

Log into your Adsense account, Click on the Reporting Tab, Click Keyword Tool

Click Advanced Options, Scroll up to All Countries

Now enter a search term, scroll down the page slightly and click Search.

Enter Fireplaces as your Search term (key word)

The results are listed in order of relevance to your keyword.

They show 550,000 people searched for fireplaces and the bar under Competition is nearly all the way across. This shows that any site that can feature in search results for fireplaces will do well.

  1. Click on the blue fireplaces link in the left column. A new window will open up. The exact search results that show in this window will vary depending on where you live and how particular websites are promoting themselves, but your new site cannot compete with any of these sites. Forget fireplaces as a key word.
  2. Go back to your results page and click Global Monthly Searches to reorder the results in order of decreasing number of searches.
  3. Scroll down the results until you reach Amish Fireplaces, you may need to go onto page 2. The competition bar for Amish fireplaces shows it is a high paying key word, yet there are still around 10,000 global searches every month. Click the blue Amish fireplaces link. Scroll down to the bottom of the search results. https://www.amish-furniture-home.com/browse-by-category/fireplaces shows up, this is a Google PR=0 page, so you have a chance.
  4. Go back, check the couple of results above the bottom https://www.discoverfireplacedesigns.com/ and https://ezinearticles.com/?Amish-Fireplaces—5-Tips-For-Buying-the-Right-Amish-Fireplace&id=1211527v are the next two results, both also have a zero Google page rank
  5. Amish Fireplaces looks like an excellent keyword. Don’t try for it though, because hundreds of people are reading this and if 10 people go for it the results could change dramatically.

This is the process using the free Google Adsense keyword tool. You also need to have a browser plugin that shows you the Google Page Rank of any page you are on. I use the SEObook.com toolbar for Firefox, a free download. The whole process takes you about 30 minutes.

Written by Phil Turner, an ex-teacher from Ireland. Phil believes that to succeed in anything you have to help others and share your own knowledge. He makes a living mostly by writing on his own sites, which include HowToMakeExtraMoneyWriting.com and 21CWoman.com.

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