What is a Keyword Search Tool for?
Update: The WA Keyword tool is no longer available, however, Jaaxy is what has replaced it there. If you want to know more about Jaaxy and how that particular keyword tool works, go read my review of it here.
For anyone who has decided to give affiliate marketing a try and decided to join Wealthy Affiliate, you’ll find that there are a lot of things you need to learn in order to have a successful online business.
One of the great things of joining Wealthy Affiliate is that there are training courses and tools at your disposal and we will be taking a look at one of those specific tools.
Now you may have heard of something vital to success online and that is keywords. In order to be successful online and to get traffic, you need to target specific keywords so that you can get ranked in the search engines such as Google and Bing. So then what is a keyword search tool for? The answer is simple.
It is a tool that helps you find quality key words with low competition so you can get targeted traffic to your website. A great thing about Wealthy Affiliate is that once you join, you have access to a great keyword tool and I’ll take a look at that and explain what everything means so let’s take a closer look at Wealthy Affiliate’s keyword tool.
The Wealthy Affiliate Keyword Tool
Now as I stated above, Wealthy Affiliate comes with a free keyword tool to use. A lot of people have questions of how to use it and what specific numbers mean when it comes to researching keywords to help get you ranked. I will go through each one of them and what they mean.
Searches
When you start using the keyword tool in WA and search for keywords, one of the first things you’ll notice is a number under the word “Searches”. This just means that it is the number of monthly searches for that particular keyword or keyword phrase.
You’ll have some keywords that will have large searches, but I do have to caution you that just because there are a large amount of searches for some keywords does not mean the traffic will be as high. Obviously the higher the number of searches for a particular keyword the greater the chance for some decent traffic.
I started out using the WA keyword tool when I first joined Wealthy Affiliate and it was certainly beneficial in helping to get my first posts/articles ranked. I did some training that other members had posted on how to use the keyword tool and it was extremely helpful in order to understand everything and what to look for in keyword research especially when it comes to searches and traffic.
Traffic
The next set of numbers after searches is traffic. As I said above, the number under traffic won’t usually be as high as the number under searches.
Just because someone searches for a keyword that you’re wanting to use doesn’t always mean they will click on your post/page. Something I want to mention though is that if you’ve found a keyword or phrase that you want to use, but it has low traffic and you feel discouraged to the point that you might decide not to use that particular keyword, you should use it anyway and I will explain in the next part of why that is.
Competition
This is an important part here because it will definitely help to determine how great or how little traffic you will get when targeting a specific keyword.
Competition (also known as QSR for users of another keyword tool) is the amount of posts and pages from other sites that are also using that same keyword. The lower the number under competition the greater the chance of your post ranking especially if it is good quality content.
When searching keywords you might find one that for example has monthly searches of 5,678 and monthly traffic of slightly over 1,000 but the competition is 300 or above. If that happens that means your chances of ranking on the 1st page of Google will be extremely tough because you’ll be competing against many others that have used that same one.
This is where the training at Wealthy Affiliate comes in as one of the things they will teach you is that when you first start out doing keyword research, you want to go after what is called low hanging fruit meaning keywords with lower searches and traffic, but much less competition and much greater chance of you getting ranked on page one of the search engines.
The more you go after low hanging fruit and consistently post quality content on your site, the more Google and other search engines such as Bing will trust your site and the faster you will move up in the ranks which will also mean more traffic. This brings me to the last main set of numbers to explain.
Article Power
The numbers here are a bit different as you won’t find anything in the hundreds or thousands but instead a number that will generally be anywhere from 1 through 10.
Anything closer to 10 is what you want here because it means that your articles will get ranked better because these are the type of articles that people are looking for and it is not oversaturated so to speak. The training on how to use the WA keyword tool (from a fantastic WA member named boomer. If you join Wealthy Affiliate, look him up) says that you should target a keyword that has an article power number of 8 or above.
To me this makes a lot of sense because it is more likely that people searching for those keywords or what you are offering will be more willing to click on your article especially if the competition is low as well.
Now you know what a Keyword search tool is for
We’ve now gone over what a keyword search tool is for, how you have access to a great keyword tool at Wealthy Affiliate when you join, what each of the numbers mean, why you should target keywords with lower traffic, searches and especially competition (sometimes you might get lucky and find a great keyword with high searches and traffic and very low competition. It happens more often then you think!) and what the number under article power means.
This keyword tool is just one of the many reasons to give Wealthy Affiliate a try. If you’ve read my review of WA, you’ll read why I rate it so highly.
It is absolutely free to join and for 7 full days you get access to everything in Wealthy Affiliate to see what it’s all about. Even if you decide not to become a premium member at the end of the 7 day trial, you still have 2 free websites you can create and access to the first 10 lessons for free!
With what I’ve posted above, you now have a basic understanding of what a keyword tool is and you can use it to help get your 2 free websites ranked. If anyone asks you what is a keyword search tool for, you can now tell them or direct them here. You’ll always have access to help at Wealthy Affiliate anytime you need as the massive community there loves to help anyone with any issues that arise, plus I’m there as well so you can reach out to me there. Give Wealthy Affiliate a try and use the keyword tool that is provided. You just might be pleasantly surprised.
August 31, 2016 @ 5:17 am
Hi there, keyword research is vital to growing an online business but it difficult to know what ones to target. Back in the day Google and Yahoo made a lot of this data easily available and for free but clearly they realised the value of this and a lot more reluctant to share this information now. The keyword search tool sounds like it does the job but I would like to know how the data for searches, traffic and competition is compiled? Also how reliable is the data based on the limited info the search engines provide?
September 3, 2016 @ 9:31 pm
Hello Manny, I must say that those are very good and valid questions, but I don’t have the answers to them as I have not developed/created this keyword search tool. I will have to say though that I am curious as well on how all of that is compiled. I will have to get into contact with the owners of WA to see if they would be willing to give at least some insight on to how they compile their data for the keyword search tool. One thing I can definitely say about it though is that it works.
July 9, 2017 @ 11:56 pm
Keyword search tools are so important in building a website and getting traffic. Since I belong to Wealthy Affiliate I can attest to the facts here about their keyword tool.
They teach you to go for the low competition keywords and you have a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google for those keywords.
You explain everything in great detail and if followed correctly, you’ll be successful. Thanks for the information. It’s all you need as far as a keyword tool.
July 10, 2017 @ 12:45 pm
Glad you liked the information about the keyword tool. It is vital today if you want your website to be successful and get ranked accordingly on Google.
December 8, 2017 @ 5:22 pm
Hi Brian, thanks for the informative article. Keyword research is, in my opinion, the true way to go. I don’t think paid traffic is all that viable because you don’t have as much retention with your viewers with ad words. Ads come and go, and most of the time, they are not targeted, while organic traffic leads people to relate and enjoy your site because people find what they are looking for.
Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best places to learn how to organically get traffic. Cheers!
December 9, 2017 @ 1:01 am
I totally agree that Wealthy Affiliate is the best place to learn how to get traffic organically and it teaches you how to do keyword research just for that purpose.
December 22, 2017 @ 2:51 am
I always thought that I can use the Google keyword planner to do my research since it’s free, but I’ve not been able to get a lot of targeted keywords with it. Also, I believe that their metrics are solely for PPC campaigns, which I am not into just yet.
With this keyword tool that you are recommending, is it good for bloggers? Have you been able to get any of your article ranks using it? It would be helpful to know.
December 22, 2017 @ 2:30 pm
I most certainly have gotten my articles to rank because of a keyword tool, but I use Jaaxy as it just has so many more features as you can always check on the competition and always see where your article ranks at any given time.