30DC – Day 2 – Keyword Research

Day 2 of the thirty day challenge was all about researching your selected keywords and picking out keyw ord categories (which are just sub categories related to your keywords).   It’s fine and all to pick out a keyword, but if that keyword is HIGHLY competitive and/or not searched for by enough people then you should move on.

The research you do on a keyword should be based on the following criteria…

1. Number of competing websites using a broad match (I’ll explain what this is in a sec).  Obviously the fewer competitors for a keyword the better.  The course recommends less then 30,000, but since we are concentrating on a much smaller market (Entire USA vs Morris County, NJ) we will definitely not have a problem here.
2. Number of searches for each keyword per month.  This can be found using the Google keywords tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).   The target search number is roughly 2400 searches per month or 80 a day.
3. Another criteria for picking out good keywords is Phrase to Broad ratio.  A ratio of at least 15% ensures that it’s the type of term that people are actually searching for in the Search Engines.

For those who aren’t sure, let me explain the difference between a Phrase match and a broad match.

Phrase Match: This is when you are searching for an EXACT match of the keyword phrase.  For example if I was searching for Foreclosures in New Jersey I would get webpages that contain the exact phrase Foreclosures in New Jersey.  To search for a phrase match you simple have to put double quotes (“) around the phrase like so…”Foreclosures in New Jersey”.

Broad Match: When search for a broad match, what you are searching for are websites that contain all the keywords in the phrase but not necessarily in order.  So if you searched for foreclosures in new jersey you would get webpages that might have the mentioned..”foreclosuers in most states across the country are at an all time high.  These states include New Jersey, New York,etc…”

The reason why you would want to search both ways is simple.  Phrase searches give you all your direct competitors in the field for those keywords. While a broad search will give you every site that remotely relates to your keywords, which is good to know as well.

My keywords…

After doing my research on the term New Jersey Probates I found that it was not getting the traffic that the training was suggesting (80 searches per day), but because my market is much smaller then what they are going after it should work out pretty good.

They suggest having 4 keyword categories pertaining to your keywords so I came up with

1. New Jersey Probate Lawyers
2. New Jersey Probate Process
3. New Jersey Probate Attorney
4. New Jersey Probate Court

Just another note before I move on to other matters.  If you ever read about long tail keywords, it refers to keyword phrases like “New Jersey Probates” or “Probate Court Attorneys”.   A normal keyword would be “Probate”.

Other Things

I emailed the Real Estate broker that I met last June about hanging my soon to get license.  I haven’t heard back yet, but if I don’t in a week or two I will contact my realtor and see if he can talk to the broker.  My Realtor is a member of that brokerage and would stand to get a referral if I were to sign up so there is incentive there

This is the last week for learning for my pre-licensing class.  After this the next couple weeks will be taking practice test and reviewing.  So I’ve made it to the final stretch!!  does anyone know of a good practice exam I could take that is specific to New Jersey?

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Day 1
2. House Research and Seller Questions