Most marketers today realize the importance of keyword research. If you are doing it by hand, it can be a time-consuming process. We are going to talk about an efficient method of compiling the results.

Essentially the actual research is done using the free tool, seokeyword, as usual. What we will be discussing here is the method of tabulation. Any time you can save will give you more time to study the keywords themselves. Try it at least once or twice. You will obviously develop your own system as you get used to the process. But take a look at the plan that follows to see what you think.

Open a spreadsheet. These instructions are for Excel but you can always use the Calc program in OpenOffice. It is almost identical to Excel.

At the top of tye page, typed the broad category from your list that you are going to research.Start out with the term that if of interest to you.

Set up columns as follows, Type the words in bold.

Keyword Phrase    Search – Wordtracker        Search – Avg Est     Competition

Start typing on the very next row. Do not skip a row. Keep it open in another window while you begin the search.

Make the first column about 3” wide so that the keywords will fit. Move the cursor to the very top of the sheet where there are the letters naming the columns starting with A. Place your cursor over the line between the A and the B. Click and drag the line to the right so that the first column is about 3” wide. If you come to an entry that is longer than the column, simply go to the line described above and double click. That will automatically widen the column to accommodate the entry.

Searches and Competition will not be wide columns so should cause you no problems.

Open the keyword research tool:  http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Type in the broad keyword that you typed at the top of the spreadsheet.

You will be looking at a list of long tail keywords. A long tail keyword is a phrase that includes 2 or more words.

For example: if you type in CAMPING as your broad word, you would find things like “camping gear” or “camping recipes” which are long tail keywords.

Adjust both windows (spreadsheet and seobook) so that you can see both.

As a beginner, I feel you should look for long tail keywords that have at least 20 daily searches. Obviously the higher the number the better but the higher the number, the more competition it will have so there definitely is a point of diminishing returns.

During the first try, list any word that has between 10 and 70 searches. – using the column name Average Estimated. The first column with WordTracker is almost always smaller. It tends to just find the more exact matchs and eliminate the others.

Type the entire phrase in the first column.

Type the number from the WordTracker count in the second column.

Type the number from the Est. Avg  count in the third column.

You will be typing the competition number in the fourth column.

Type all of the keywords that meet your criteria and the Avg. Est. Daily searches.

I did not type entries like “oregon coast camping” or “washington state camping” because they were not the type of long tail keyword I was interesting in pursuing. I also skipped over “camping gear” because the 686 Wordtracker count was above my guidelines of 20 to 200. I continued on down the list to the first keyword under 200.

Some of these terms are over 200 but I am interested in looking into that term so I typed it in anyway even though it exceeded the limit.

As I continued on down the list, these are the 11 keywords I wrote down in the spreadsheet:

camping tips                           123   217             173,000     eliminate — competition

motorcycle camping              104   183             41,100

easy camping recipes           108   180             9,670

camping food                         149   263             248,000     eliminate — competition

camping pranks                     64     113             29,100

camping trip                           62     109             2,190,000  eliminate — competition

camping tent                          117   206             436,000     eliminate — competition

camping cots                         122   215             48,900

camping cookware                51     90               136,000     eliminate — competition

camping meals                       51     90               23,900

camping supply list                83     146             4,810

I would like to point out that I also made note that there are lots of references to specific camping spots – Oregon, Washington, Arizona, etc. These could be used later to expand the topics for study. Another point – discretion being the better part of valor, I didn’t include nude camping and naked camping.

Go back up to the Google column and search the competition. When you hit the number beside the keyword, it will NOT have the speech marks. Click at the end of the phrase and type “. Hit HOME and type “. Hit SEARCH. You should then write that number in the competition column.

You can go back to the SEO keyword screen and click the next like you did above. Probably an easier way to do it is to go to the Google search bar and alter the words for the next long tail keyword. Don’t forget the quote marks. Click search and write down the next number.

Write your competition numbers in the 4^th column of the spreadsheet.

This will save you a lot of time between switching back and forth every time and after all time is money. If you are lucky enough to have a partner with another computer, have them type in the spreadsheet as you search and call out the information.

This is a step to learning that I call “Work Smart, Not Hard”. Then when you put them together, work smart and work hard, you are doubling your achievement.

After completing the first group, eliminate any searches that have competition higher than 50,000. The decision now has to be up to you. Your objective is to find terms with high search and low competition. The higher search numbers will allow you to consider higher competition. Obviously, the ideal would be high search numbers and low competition.

Take a look at my keywords. Based on these numbers, I would discard Camping Tips, Camping Food, Camping Cookware, and Camping. That leaves me with 5 long tail keywords. Since I like the ones that are left, I would probably go back to the SEOkeyword list and investigate deeper some of the terms that I just eliminated.

Strive for 10 acceptable keywords in this topic. If you can do approximately that much, you have your topic. If you can find only 2 or 3, you may want to look at another broad topic. Be sure to report your findings in the Wizard’s Classroom.