Keyword Evaluation: Search Volume

As discussed in my previous post, Let’s Do Some Keyword Research, I’ve divided the keyword research topic into three different subtopics. These are the following:

1. Keyword Evaluation
2. Competition
3. Exploration

To begin with, there will be three different subtopics under keyword evaluation. These are the following:

1. Keyword Evaluation
1. Search Volume
2. Search Trends
3. Commercial Value
2. Competition
3. Exploration

Today, we’ll start discussing what search volume is.

In a nut shell, search volume is basically the number of people searching for a particular keyword.  To find out how many people are searching for a particular keyword, we are going to use the Google Keyword Research Tool.  You may want to sign in using your Google account in order to avoid answering the captcha every time you do a keyword research.

To begin my keyword research, I’m going to input my keyword (the market that I decided to engage in, photography) in the Word or phrase box.  You may also want to add some options by expanding the Advance options section.  In my case, I’m going to search for All Countries.  Once we are done with our search parameters, we click the Search the button.

As you can see in the image below, the keyword “photography” is being searched 11,000,000 times monthly, which means that the search volume globally of the keyword “photography” is 11,000,000.  In addition, the search results that were displayed are niches under my market, photography.

Another thing that I want to discuss in this article is about match types.  Match types have three different types – broad match, phrase match, and exact match.  In order for us to clearly see the difference between these types, let’s look at these examples.  To make things a little bit simple to follow let’s look at the search term “photography ideas “.

 

Match Type	Description	Example
Exact Match	Relates to how many people are searching for the exact term “photography ideas” and then visits the top ranked websites.	photography ideas
Phrase Match	Relates to how many people are searching for a phrase containing the words “photography ideas” in this order.	photography ideas photography ideas for beginners wedding photography ideas
Broad Match	Relates to how many people are searching for a phrase containing the words “photography” and “ideas” in any word order along with additional words.	photography ideas photography ideas for beginners photography theme ideas ideas for wedding photography

By default, Google search implements a broad match. To further demonstrate, here is an example.  I searched for the keyword “photography ideas” and here is what I got:

The 1^st ranking website contains the word “Ideas” and not “photography ideas”.  The search result also shows other variances of our keyword phrase like photography ideas, art of photography, digital photography tips and ideas, and other variations.

For us to have a phrase match in our search result, we simply add a quote before and after our keyword phrase.  Here is an example:

The search results now contain our exact keyword phase “photography ideas”.

The next question is – what's the relevance of match types in search volume?  Here is an example for us to have a clear view of what are the relevance of these match types.

In Google Keyword Research Tool, let’s search for our keyword phrase “photography ideas”.  Once the results have been displayed, we select the three match types in the Match Types section.  The results will be refreshed and will show the results of the three match types.

 

As you can see, there are 33,000 broad match results, 18,100 phrase match results, and there are only 2,900 exact match results.  These figures are very significant because these will give us an idea on roughly how many people are searching for our target keyword monthly.

We have to take note that the search volume is not the only factor that we are considering in finding our “perfect keyword”. There are other factors that we need to consider and one of those is search trends, which will be discussed in my next article.

Let’s Do Some Keyword Research

If you’ve read my previous article, What are Market, Niche, and a Micro Niche?, I’ve identified the different market niches that I want to engage in.  I’ve also considered various factors for me to come up with my final decision.  It was either to create a website about a topic that I am passionate about such as the asp.net web applications niche, or to create a site based on something I want to learn, like photography.

My final decision is to create a website about photography.  The main factor that made me come up with this decision is that I want to document all the things that I will learn with regards to this and hopefully, readers will find my articles helpful especially if they are new to this field.

Going to back to SEO, now that I’ve identified my market niche, the next step is to do keyword research.  This is like what most businessmen do before engaging in a business. They do market research first. They analyze different factors and come up with a strategy in order for them to penetrate their market.  That’s what keyword research is all about. We research first on the best keywords to use in order for us to penetrate our chosen market niche.  In my case, it’s the photography market.

To begin with, let’s start with the most basic of all questions: What are keywords?

A keyword is any term or phrase that users enter in the search field of the search engines.  It may be a single word, a phrase or an entire sentence.  What makes keywords important is that they serve as keys to unlock specific doors that provide access to market niches.  

When we do keyword research, our main goal is to find the “perfect keyword” in our market niche.  The “perfect keyword” has the following criteria:

• Has a high search volume – People are trying to search for that term every single day.
• Is on an upward trend or is consistently searched for – We want a keyword that people will still be searching months and years from now.
• Has low competition – Websites which are badly optimized with that keyword and can be easily outranked by our website.
• Is very specific – A keyword that is very clear and is exactly what the searchers are looking for.
• Is a buying keyword – People searching for it are ready to buy and willing to pay money.

Now that we’ve defined what a “perfect keyword” is, the next question is how are we going to find our “perfect keyword”?  That’s where the keyword research kicks in.  In order for us to have an organized discussion of the topic, I’ve divided the keyword research into different parts (keyword evaluation, competition, and exploration) so make sure to watch out for those articles.