You may have learnt some keyword research tips based on niche name and then got some the idea of how to break down a high level niche such as Golf, Bowling, Jogging, Stamp Collecting, Painting, and etc. These keywords are likely to be ultra-competitive and teeming with marketers and large multi-nationals all trying to make money form them. So, we have to dig even deeper to find the true keywords that we can rank for.

But…before we can start doing that, there is one thing you need to know to complete your background knowledge. Let’s get down and dirty and talk about the Google Keyword Planner.

Google Keyword Planner – Not a Research Tool

There is just one thing to say about the Google Keyword Planner: It is NOT A KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOL! If you take nothing else at all from this article after you have finished reading it, take this one fact.

Sadly it is one of the biggest lies of Internet marketing that the Google Keyword Planner is a research tool.

You’ll even find it touted as the font of all keyword research in high price ticket IM products Which is really a dereliction of duty to you as someone who wants to learn what works and what does not in order to make money.

Indeed, most tools touted as keyword research tools are not either.

Tools like Market Samurai (which is great in other areas by the way), KW Finder and Keyword elite are also sold as the holy grail of keyword research. Not true – why? They take their information from Google the same as the Keyword Planner. If the Google Keyword Planner is not a research tool, then by definition, neither are these other tools. OK, bold statement – we’d better back that up!

Why is the Google Keyword Planner not a keyword research tool?

This really is common sense, yet it took us six years to realize this! From that, you will now understand that we are really nothing special. If we can do this stuff, you can too!

If we do a search for the keyword “diabetes”, the keywords shown in the above picture is what we get. Out of the entire 84 top keywords, every single one contains diabetes or diabetic. So, what happens is most marketers look at these results, look for a keyword that says “low” in the competition column and build a site or page optimized for that keyword.

Now, you can’t argue that diabetes is a huge market, it is a major problem for the people who suffer and they will pay money to cure it. But, because all marketers use the keyword planner or a derivative tool, they all arrive at the same keyword list, which is what you see on the above picture.

So, let’s look at the search result for the root keyword “diabetes”.

As you can see full of authority sites that you have very little chance of competing against. Even if we look at the SERPS (search engine results pages) for what appears to be a low competition, long-tail (deeper niche) keyword like “cinnamon and diabetes”, we still see the results crammed with high authority sites.

The “kicker” is that we see NO affiliate marketing sites. That is to say sites run by marketers promoting other people’s products in return for a commission. This is a “dead giveaway” that this keyword is too competitive for the small marketer to make money with.

The same is true if you look at another market favored by affiliate marketers, the market for “acne”. Again a major problem for many people. A problem they are prepared to pay a lot of money to fix. This makes it a market with lots for hungry buyers and ripe for affiliate profits.

However, we see the same outcome in the SERPS. Many authority sites that would make it extremely difficult to rank against. So, you need to be clever and find keywords that attract these same hungry buyers, but are not as competitive.

How do we do that? Quite simple, there are a series of techniques that can be used to uncover these hidden gems. So, without further ado, let’s set about finding some of them!

Below are the keyword research tips that I want to share with you.

1. Specific Specialty Search Strings

Our first keyword research tips is by using very specific and specialty search strings. We are actually going to be using Google itself in all of these techniques. However, it is how you use Google that is important.

It’s about using your brain, specific knowledge and then finding the information you need actually from the search engine as opposed to the Google Keyword Planner.

We will use the Planner again, but only after we have found our door into a niche. So, let’s get on with it.

We have seen the problem with Google Keyword Planner and, if we do a search for “blood pressure”, the below picture is the sort of thing we see…

Blood pressure is a serious, life threatening condition for sufferers, so because of this those people are prepared to spend money to solve the problem. This makes it a good market to target for online marketers.

And, again if we look at the SERPS for this top level keyword, we again see the same problem that has already been illustrated. The results are full of high authority sites that will be very difficult to beat.

So, how do we find keywords that we can easily rank for? Where it is easy to “outgun” the competition.

Now, I am going to persist with this example, even though, I can reveal that this market didn’t work out and deliver my keyword research tips. However, it does serve to distinguish how you can use this technique to “dig into” a niche.

So, the first thing I did was try to go deeper into the niche, so I searched for “blood pressure medicines”.

I found the following deep page on a site in position NO.2 in the SERPS:

http://www.bloodpressureuk.org/BloodPressureandyou/Medicines

A quick look around this site and I found the following link…

So, all I have done is a search with one qualifier on it “blood pressure medicine” and then found one web page that has revealed all these deeper areas of the broad niche.

ANY of these keywords will target the same hungry buyers as the main keyword. From this and one other site I found on that initial page in the results, I was able to rip a list of over 200 keywords. The reason it didn’t work was, that no matter how deep I dug into the niche, I still only saw authority sites in the search results. But just so as you are aware, the other specialty search strings I used to dig deeper where: “blood pressure medicine books”

From the list of drugs I picked on one drug called “Ramipril”, I then searched: “Ramipril side effects”, “Ramipril clinical name” which gave me “altace” and I also checked “altace side effects”. So you can see the specialty search strings I am using to uncover deeper sub niches within the main niche.

Anyway, as that really didn’t reveal any keywords I could effectively use, I decided to look at another niche, and this time I hit gold! This gold rush is on!

This time I decided to look at another of the higher level niches. I went into fitness and exercise. I decided to look into the sub niche of workouts. Here we go! Below picture is what Google Keyword Planner returned.

Now, you’ll notice I have highlighted a couple of keywords that might be interesting. If the Planner presents you with a “gift-horse” don’t look it in the mouth, investigate further. In this instance I did look a bit deeper and didn’t really come up with anything, but sometimes, the Planner will provide you with a “bluebird” (and old sales term that means an easy sale)!

I used my first specialty search string and searched for “best workouts”. The results produced really didn’t take me any deeper in to the niche, so I tried “full body workout”. How did I come up with that search? All I did was extend out the base keyword by using what very basic knowledge of the niche that we have.

If you want to attack a niche and don’t know any qualifiers…ask someone who does! This isn’t rocket science and a lot of it is common sense. Anyway, the SERPS didn’t really show me anything new over the “best workouts” results, but it DID find me the key that unlocked the door.

It is vital when you are in this research mode that you look at all results that are produced for OTHER RELATED keywords. Here’s the top site in the SERPS for the term “full body workout”.

The keyword was “extreme”. This caught my eye because I’d heard the term “extreme workout”. Now sometimes you will just inherently know something, like I did with this keyword. I can’t remember where I’d heard about it, but I know of it, so I started digging down.

I remembered that extreme workouts were really tough regimen but that they were supposed to deliver dramatic results quickly. So, I added “quick results” as a qualifier and searched for “quick results extreme workout”.

An image of the SERPS is below. The numbers relate as follows:

1. YouTube videos on page one – it’s not overly competitive
2. O.K Oprah is there so one authority site – but she doesn’t have the keyword in the title
3. Indeed, no site on page one has this keyword in the page title (so they’re not trying to rank for it)
4. What is really interesting is that i found a company called Beachbody. This is what I did!

Now we are starting to get somewhere!

So, I picked on P90X – I had heard of this program before and had seen a couple of videos in the past. However, the results for P90X were still very competitive and dominated by Beachbody themselves, so I dug a little deeper.

One of the things I’d seen on another page was a reference to a workout schedule, so I searched for “p90x workout schedule”. And look what I found!

There affiliate sites (highlighted), Ladies and Gentlement, we have found a true keyword! And look at the search volumes in KW Finder!(KWF has results that are slightly closer to reality than the Planner)

P.S. https://kwfinder.com/ (Not a research tool though, but you knew that didn’t you?)

2. Using Your Brain

Now we are going to be using the grey matter that sits between your ears.

As I want to show you as many example as I can, we’re going to look at the dating niche. The dating niche is huge and full of rabid buyers, everyone wants love.

I won’t paste in images for images sake, but if you do a search on the broad term “dating” the SERPS are full of the main dating stes such as eHarmony, Lovestruck and Match. You’ll also find other authority sites such as Wikipedia and newspaper websites.

High authority sites that are difficult to complete against. Google Keyword Planner does its usual trick and returns a whole list of keywords containing the base keyword, so we have exactly the same situation as with all of the markets. So, let’s use our brains to dig into the niche a little.

Let’s think what might people be looking for in this niche? How about advice or tips on dating? It’s a fair starting point.

However, a search for “dating tips” still reveals the same authority sites, so we need to think again! Let’s go a little lateral and think, how can we make money in this market? Well…there are plenty of books on the subject by so called “dating gurus”. So, I searched for “dating gurus” and got some interesting results.

There are the results from No.4. Look 5 affiliate sites! We are getting somewhere here, indeed, we could be on to a winner here. However, if we stretch the point a little further and do a search for “dating gurus websites” something very interesting showed up.

That one page has a wealth of keyword ideas on it such as David DeAngelo, Double Your Dating, Mr L Rx, Dating to Relating, and Tiffany Taylor. Plus many more if I dig into the site a little deeper. However, I did a little bit more research into these books and found out that the big one in the niche is Double Your Dating by David DeAngelo.

Now, I am going to break one of my own cardinal rules now – well they’re there to be broken sometimes aren’t they? If I type “double your dating” into Google Keyword Planner, something very interesting happens. I actually find some useful keywords. Have a look…

I’ve highlighted the potentially useful keywords. So, why does the Planner suddenly start throwing up usable keywords now? Quite simple, it’s because we are so deep into the niche that it has a return relevance.

To prove the point, if we look at the search results for these keywords you can see the competition is either NOT optimizing for the keyword, or the competition is very week. (I will show you how to assess the competition later).

You can also see that once you are this deep into a niche Google’s autocomplete can also be a big help.

So, here we have a number of great keyword by this KEYWORD RESEARCH TIPS! This is just so easy isn’t it? Really, if we can do this stuff you can too. We are nothing special!

3. Top of the Pops

Without further ado, let’s get on with the next technique for finding super profitable keywords. If you were sharp you would have seen a few clues to this technique later in this article. Indeed this is one of my favorite techniques and it finds so many amazing keywords that are hugely profitable. So, let’s do it!

If you remember, we looked at the dating market earlier in this article. Well I am going to stay in that market for this method. So, last time we looked at dating gurus, and the top of the pops method just introduces the “qualifier” “top” to the search criteria, it’s really just that simple. Let’s look at what we get.

Just look at all of those great sites we can dig into to find realistic keyword. Also you’ll notice affiliate sites there as well. So, “top 10 dating gurus” is a keyword research tips in its own right. Having said that the search volume is not brilliant, and we did dating in the last section, so let’s look at another niche.

How about entertainment? One of the most popular niches on the globe, but tied up with big companies, superstars and big budget marketers – or is it? Well, not if you use the top of the pops method to delve into the niche and then apply a little bit of lateral thinking. So, let’s do a search on the top celebrities and see what we get!

All the usual suspects, let’s go with the most popular and dig into Kim Kardashian! In a keyword sense – I can read your mind! So, having decided to do this, what qualifiers might we use to try and find keywords related to Kim?

How about diets. Kim was known to have experienced difficulty losing weight after the birth of her baby, so how about “kim kardashian diet” as a keyword? So, having used the top of the pops method to find a potential niche, I am now using my brain and some specific knowledge to dig a little deeper into any potential niches.

Unfortunately, this returned a lot of celebrity authority sites, so we have to keep looking. Being counter intuitive can sometimes produce incredible keywords. So, I tried that and went for “Kim Kardashian weight gain” – again, she was known to have had this problem during her pregnancy. So I am using my brain to a degree, but also thinking laterally. So that I could have promoted all manner of diet pills on a site about Kim Kardashian weight gain.

Now the reason I mention this is that I want you to understand the thought process I went through. That particular keyword “Kim Kardashian weight gain” also produced a lot of authority sites fairly well optimized. However, my thought process had got on to diet pills. Another market full of hungry buyers who will pay an awful lot of money to lose weight.

Commissions on produces like raspberry ketones and garcinia cambogia are huge. Sometimes up to $50 for a sign up, let alone a sale. So, that lead me to use another qualifier. I could have used “top 10 diet pills” and I would have got results like green coffee bean, raspberry ketones etc. However, rather than use the top ten method per se, having started thinking about diet pills, I wanted to see if I could find a new market that was untapped. So, I used one of the most powerful keyword finding qualifiers: LATEST

4. Use Qualifier: “Latest”

I searched for “latest diet pills”. You can see what I got below.

The top of the page reveals the usual suspects, but look what turned up further down the SERPS – GOLD! Contrave is apparently a new diet pill and there is the proof. So, qualifiers like New, Latest, Newest can reveal keywords with huge potential.

As I mentioned…there are times when our friend, Google Keyword Planner, comes in handy, this is one of them! Let’s have a look at Contrave in the planner

We see that Contrave is a popular keyword. The search volume was 74,000 in average in 2019. We can also see from the graph this search term is very stable. So, we have a chance to get in before the hordes of Internet marketers enter the market. This is why the “new” or “latest” qualifier is so powerful.

And, once you have found a keyword like this, you can add typical qualifiers such as “buy”, “best place to buy” and see what SERPS produces. If you look at the next page you’ll see an affiliate site at No.1 as well as other affiliate sites high in the SERPS (for the search “buy contrave”). Now, as it happens, the buycontrave.net site is not actually selling anything? Goodness knows why not???

However, in doing just a little bit of research I found out that Contrave is available on prescription only. But, there is a huge buzz about it online. What would I do? I’ll give you three guesses, you should only need one! Yep, I’d promote diet pills on the site.

Before we move on, I’d just like to show you one more way of searching using the “top of the pops” method. It is to use the qualifier “best”.

Obviously it means the same as “top” which of course, you can also use without the “10” appended. If you want to go broader and find even more keywords, perhaps go “top 20” or even “top 50”. They all work exceptionally well. An example of using “best” might be “best cloud software”.

I know cloud storage is a big thing these days, indeed I just bought my own personal cloud, which is quite amazing. It allows I and my partner to share anything seamlessly at any time.

But, there area ton of solutions and, if you look for affiliate programs you will find hundreds of them, so finding a keyword like this in the cloud software / solutions market could be extremely profitable. If we look at the search results for this keyword there is a big surprise in store!

Two things leap out of these results. Firstly an affiliate site is at No.1. Secondly, none of the sites showing are actually optimized for the keyword “best cloud software”.

It’s wide open! It’s amazing how simple it is to find these keywords sometimes! To be fair it’s not got a huge search volume, but if you built a site on the broader subject and had pages covering many of these sorts of keywords, you would have a real money spinner on your hands.

Again, the affiliate programs in this area have large commission ripe and ready for you to cash in! And, remember, no matter how deep we dig into a niche, the keyword we find will STILL TARGET the same hungry buyers as the front-line keyword. That is why this keyword research tips is so wonderfully profitable! Let’s move on!

5. Knowledge is Power

Yes, knowledge is power when looking to find profitable keywords. Let me show you how!

Despite what you might think, you and your friends and family know and awful lot of “stuff”. For example, I know a lot about Racquetball, I’ve played for years. I also know an awful lot about football (or soccer), rock music and cricket. Certainly I know online marketers who have made money from the rock music market. And, they used this techniques to do it!

However, I can’t steal their Thunder (sorry, bad joke totally intended). So, I am going to use an example from my son. At a very young age he got into Pokemon.

According to my son, Pokemon spurned a whole raft of Japanese cartoon series. And, this fact exposes the flaws in Google Keyword Planner yet again.

The genre is called Anime, no I hadn’t heard of it either. But if you research it is hugely popular and my son absolutely loves it! Let’s have a look. It is pointless showing you the planner results for “cartoons” because there was no mention of anime no matter how many pages you go through.

As you can see no mention of the term “anime”. Indeed, you have to get down to page three of the results before you even see the word anime, and only then in the keyword “Japanese anime cartoons” so even then it is not really making the connection.

Even if we search anime itself, we still see small search volumes and no anime show names! See the graphic below. However, if we use a variation of the “top of the pops” method and search for actual names of anime series we get some very interesting results.

If we click on either of the first two results, we see a huge list of anime series names

Now, I happen to know that my son’s absolute favorite is “Fullmetal Alchemist”. Don’t ask me what it’s about, but he says it’s “great escapism and I love it” = fair enough.

But, once again, now we are this deep into a niche, Google Keyword Planner becomes useful once more and prepare to be amazed yet again! Here are the results for “Fullmetal Alchemist” from Google Keyword Planner.

Just LOOK at those deep niche keywords and the search volumes. This truly is Keyword heaven!

How do you monetize? People in the U.S and U.K are desperate to get hold of DVDs of these animes or to watch them online. There are other keywords like “watch fullmetal alchemist”, “watch full metal alchemist online” or “fullmetal alchemist dvd” that you could optimize for. Then you could sell the DVDs or online streaming services via affiliate links.

Because people are desperate to watch these series, the DVDs sell at inflated prices in the U.S and European markets. How do I know? I paid for my son! So, I have used my own personal knowledge couple with some of the techniques I have shown you earlier to uncover thousands of highly profitable keywords in a niche that you probably didn’t know even existed half an hour ago.

6. Assessing the Competition

This is an area of online marketing that people tend to over complicate. I really do like to keep things easy, I always apply the maxim “Keep It Simple Stupid” (KISS!) and that is exactly what i will do here!

I really only look at 2 or 3 things. First of all let’s go back to one of our searches earlier. The “best cloud software” search.

If we look at the top 5, we see that no-one has their website optimized specifically for this keyword. Therefore I could optimize a website and / or page for this keyword and get ranked fairly easily.

Indeed, none of the sites showing up in the SERPS have the actual keyword string in their meta description either. That tells me 99% for sure, that none of these websites are trying to optimize for this particular keyword.

That is an indication you could easily rank a site. Secondly I would look to see if the exact domain name has been taken by checking Namecheap. Why do I check this? Internet and affiliate marketers will often buy the domain name for the keyword if they are intending to market. If the .com, .net and .org are available hat tends to mean no-one has picked up on the keyword.

I still check this, but after recent Google algorithm updates, this isn’t quite so important. For sure marketers still go “after” “exact match domains”. However, with Google preferring “authority”sites covering broader subject matter these days, fewer marketers are taking this route.

It is still valid though as we saw when we were searching contrave as there were a few domains of this nature and they were ranking – remember we found contrave.net at No.1. So, here’s what Namecheap shows for the cloud software keyword.

As you can see three out of the four time level domain extensions are available. That tells me this search is open for you to rank.

So, with no-one particularly optimizing a site for the keyword and top level domains being available, I now want to check the level of the competition. To do this, I look at Market Samurai. If you remember I said this tool is not good for keyword research, and this is certainly true. However, for checking out the competition it is quick and easy and delivers great competitive inforamtion.

It is a paid product. If you look around the Internet, you can pick it up for as little as $97. In my opinion, if you are serious about your online marketing, it’s worth having in your toolbox. So, let’s have a look and see what it says about this keyword.

As you can see it’s relatively simple and easy to use. It does include a rank tracker which is really useful and has some other useful tools. However, it is best for analyzing the competition.

Things to take note of:

1. You are able to designate what competitive areas (backlinks, trust flow, citation flow, metas, etc) you want to research and easily see your results on one screen.
2. Trust and Citation flows are easily identified.
3. You can easily assess how well optimized the competition’s website / pages are for the given keyword.

To have all this information available at the touch of a button is extremely powerful when assessing how easy a given phrase is to rank for.

Conclusion

So, congratulations, you have reached the end of my keyword research tips.

As far as keyword research and your ability to find “money” keywords, you are now for ahead of most of the competition. Even some of the most successful online marketers who are earning thousands of dollars, don’t know how to research and find profitable keywords like this.

I would say good luck in using these techniques, but luck is simply:

L – laboring
U – under
C – correct
K – knowledge

You now very much have the correct knowledge. The only trick remaing is to USE it! I see so many people buy worthwhile products, read them and then… do nothing with them.

Understand and apply this knowledge. Use if in your daily Internet marketing efforts and you WILL find keywords that allow you to make money at will. You may need to learn how SEO works to rank your keywords now.