Tutorial – Finding Relevant and High-Value Keywords

As many of you have probably read all over the internet on general keyword research, I am here to show you great methods to analyze and cut your huge list of keywords to a shorter list of targeted, high-value keywords to work on. I will be covering different aspects of keyword data in this tutorial and will show you how to juggle with the numbers to extract the keywords with good commercial value.

Keyword research is very similar to mining, you start with a very big amount of dirt, rocks and whatnot (keywords) and narrow it down to specific valuable minerals (targeted keywords with great commercial value).

These steps are extremely important in order to get the best return on investment from your search engine optimization campaign.

Probably the most popular keyword research tool to use is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. It is the tool I use in this tutorial if you want to follow along for your own keywords.

I will be using the Web Hosting industry with a niche market for Dedicated Servers as an example.
Let’s open up the keyword tool to generate a list of keywords:

Dedicated Servers Industry - Keyword Research (Sample Data)

Now that we have our initial list of keywords, we need to dive deeper in order to find out if those keywords are targeted and of high-value.

From the initial research, it looks like dedicated server, server hosting, online dedicated server, dedicated hosting … are all high traffic keywords. I will choose 4 main keywords of the above results to demonstrate how to analyze the data. You can use it on a larger amount of keywords if you wish.
Let’s not forget that this tool provides you by default the numbers for a Broad search of the keywords. This means it is the collective number for all keyword variations, synonyms, plural/singular forms and other variants specific to that keyword.

Diving Deeper

Have you ever noticed the [Exact] and “Phrase” match on the left side? It’s time to put them to good use.
What we are trying to figure out here is how many people type those Exact words (in same order) whether alone or in phrases. I will start by ticking [Exact] and “Phrase” choices under Match Types, remove Broad matches.

Dedicated Servers Keyword Research - Exact and Phrase Match.

With this data, we can now analyze the Exact-to-Broad and Phrase-To-Broad ratios. This is what we get:

Keyword	Broad / Phrase / Exact Monthly Searches	PBR (Phrase-to-Broad Ratio)	EBR (Exact-to-Broad Ratio)
dedicated server	450,000 / 368,000 / 49,500	82%	11%
server hosting	301,000 / 165,000 / 18,100	55%	6%
dedicated hosting	135,000 / 49,500 / 12,100	37%	9%
dedicated servers	90,500 / 90,500 / 27,100	100%	30%

We are interested in finding the keywords with the highest PBR and EBR. This basically gives us an exact percentage of how many people are looking exactly for what you are targeting compared to how many people use those words to find other information (broad match) not related exactly to what you do or sell.
By targeting “dedicated servers” as a keyword in your SEO campaign, you can be sure that ranking for that exact term will bring in good amounts of valuable traffic as it has a 100% PBR and 40% EBR.

Broad vs Phrase/Exact Results

If we compare both screenshots above, we get the following data:

Keyword	Keyword Value (After Analysis)	Keyword Value (Before Analysis)
dedicated servers	1	4
dedicated server	2	1
server hosting	3	2
dedicated hosting	4	3

In this case, you should optimize your website and build links to target the keywords in the following order:

1. dedicated servers
2. dedicated server
3. server hosting
4. dedicated hosting

As you can see, the monthly searches value is not always a good indicator as to whether SEO efforts should be made towards that keyword. Yes you do want high-traffic keywords, but those that will convert the most. You can work on those keywords once you have achieved good rankings for the most converting ones.
The keyword “dedicated servers” was in 4th position for monthly searches but after some digging, we quickly realize that it is probably THE most targeted keyword for that industry and will bring great commercial value.

As a general rule, having a PRB of 20% or more indicates that the keyword is relevant to the industry. The higher the PBR, the more targeted the keyword is towards a niche. It might not be the keywords with the most traffic, but they have more commercial value than the high traffic keywords and tend to convert more sales.

As well, if you optimize for a HIGH PBR keyword, and you do rank well for it, you will get far more traffic as your SEO campaign and backlinks anchor text are targeting that keyword and people are looking exactly for that. Whereas if you target a LOW PBR keyword, you will most likely see traffic for long tail keywords containing the phrase which are less competitive but you will not rank well for competitive and high-value long tail keywords which include those words.

I hope this tutorial has helped some people extend their keyword research knowledge Stay tuned for more advanced keyword research methods and tutorials.