Market Samurai Tips for Keyword Research

Here's a recent post I did for The Challenge Forums.


With Market Samurai, Google limits you on how many returns you can get and since Google is going to return what it thinks are relevant keywords no matter what you start with, the goal is to eliminate as much garbage as possible as early as possible. In terms of using Market Samurai, the first place this kicks in is to make sure you set the phrase length filter to at least two words. Single word keywords are market level keywords at best, so ditch them right away.

Once you get the list of returns, DO NOT analyze those keywords until you've gone through the list with marketer's eyes looking for what your common sense tells you are areas worth exploring. So if your seed word was "sports" and one of the returns was "sport socks" that would be something to open in a new tab, because it obviously represents a niche. It doesn't matter what numbers it has because you're going to use it as a "seed" for more research. At this point you're looking for niches, not keywords so the numbers aren't necessary and you'll get them later anyway.

Once you've pulled out everything that looks interesting, then go ahead and analyze the keywords, but DO NOT filter them in any way. Then what I do is order the keywords by SEOT highest to lowest. Again, I don't care what the actual numbers are because I'm still looking for niches. Now in this situation I'm looking for words with high traffic and relatively lower competition. So if the top ten keywords all have millions of competition but one of them is only hundreds of thousands, then that is one that I want to explore further and it gets a new tab too if I didn't already catch it in the first look through the list.

Next, I re-sort the list by Adwords Value highest to lowest and again, I'm looking for stuff that doesn't fit the pattern. Many times I find keywords that are high value, but significantly lower traffic and lower competition than it's neighbors, so it too gets a new tab.

Once I've mined the list this way, THEN I apply my Challenge guideline filters to see if any keywords of opportunity show up. 

Then I make my way through the rest of the tabs, repeating the same "look for niches first" process every time.

I start the ball rolling, then I let Google guide me.

Another trick is to remember is that market research works in both directions. For example, if I'm looking at what's hot on eBay and I see "radio controlled pickup trucks" I would still use that obvious micro-niche as a "seed" because Google is going to move up the food chain automatically. So radio controlled pickup trucks might not pan out, but it may lead you to some other "radio controlled" thing or some other "truck" thing that does work out. 

Basically, looking for keywords that meet the guidelines is the last thing I do. I consider my "looking for niches" steps just as important as looking for keywords that meet the guidelines.

I hope this helps!