Your objective with SEO is to get to the first page of Google search engine results for the keywords (or search terms) you want to rank for.  I’ve said elsewhere here that SEO involves some time & energy, and that people usually won’t go beyond page 1 of the search results.  So if you don’t have a shot of getting to page 1, better to develop your leads some other way.

The more competitive a keyword, the more difficult to rank for it. In other words, if an exact search on Google turns up a couple hundred thousand results, you might want to try a different keyword.

In the post "On-page SEO for Realtors " I gave a few examples of how to check various keywords for their level of competitiveness.  I’ll re-state some of that here. Just cause I like ya, and don’t wanna have ya clickin all over the place.  (Say "thankya")

Type this into Google: “your city real estate”.  Make sure you use the quotes. (That’s called an exact search. More about search types later.)  Check it out:

What other kinds of keywords might I use? “cincinnati investment properties” yielded only 1,920 results. “cincinnati homes for sale” only 37,900.  “cincinnati mls” – 7,610.   What other search phrases might you try?  What if you use a suburb that you farm, rather than the big city name?  What happens then? Better chance of ranking there?

So, the purpose of keyword research is this: find maybe 3-5 keyword phrases where we know there’s traffic, and there’s not a lot of competition.  By "not a lot", I’m talking generally under 10,000 results. The lower the number, the greater your chances of making it to Page 1.

Another point - if the page 1 results for your keywords are already occupied by big sites - say, lead aggregators (grrrrr….. ), and NAR and Yahoo homes and such - you’re usually gonna have to work real hard to unseat them.  I say usually here, because if you’ve found keywords with low volume results, they may not have worked that hard to get their position.  In another post I’ll show you some tools that let you evaluate those sites.

Keyword Research with Google

Our friendly Googlers have another free tool that’ll help with keyword research. It’s called the AdWords Keyword Tool .  Just go there, type in a keyword you like, and it’ll give you more information than you can probably digest in one meal.  NOT YET THOUGH.  Your ADD is showing.  Keep reading here for now.

There are actually two ways to use this tool - to suggest alternative, closely related keywords based on keywords you enter; and to suggest keywords based on a look at your website.  (Actually, I don’t think it’s that good at the second… but see what you think!)

Oh yeah, there’s another way to use the tool, too.  If you have a particular competitor who seems to rank better than you in the search engines, check out what keywords Google suggests for that site… vs. what it suggests for your site.  That site vs. your site = insight .  Get it?  ( I just made that up… might be a pretty catchy tag line for one of these tools!)

So let’s have a look.

Google Keyword Tool Results

I put in "cincinnati real estate", and selected "Exact match".  Google told me about the search volume for my selected keyword; and returned about 100-150 alternative, but related keywords.  And their rough monthly search volume, and level of paid advertiser competition.

OK. This is such a cool tool, I want you to play with it a bit before we go any further.  Check it out and then come back.

Are you back now?  Good.  Wasn’t that fun?  Did you try the little bit I mentioned earlier about trying a suburb rather than the big city name? (If not, don’t worry. You’ll go back. I just know you’re gonna go back to that tool.  Probably over and over again.)

So did it give you some good ideas about keywords you might rank for?  Did you write them down? (I’m imagining your head is shaking up and down right now, and there’s a big smile on your face, and you can’t wait to give me a big fat kiss.  Save it. You’re not my type.)

Next step - check the "real" competition.

Now, let’s do what we did earlier.  Type each of those search terms into the Google search engine, and see how many results it gives you.  Don’t forget to surround your keyword with quotes.

Again, what we’re looking for here is how much competition there is on the keyword. In particular, we’re looking for keywords that have 10,000 or fewer results.  And, we’re looking for not too much "big name" competition showing up on the first page of the search results.

Now, we have to take a sanity check.   If one of your keywords is "Podunk fixer-uppers" you might find very low search engine results.  (Hopefully none).  Which means you could rank for that search term in a jiffy!  But now, going back to the Keyword Tool again, you want to see that there’s some people searching on that keyword.   Upwards of a couple hundred a month.  The higher, the better.

If you find a keyword that has decent search volume, and not much competition, you just got three cherries on the slot machine!  Save that keyword, go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.  YET.

Ideally, you’ll find maybe 3-5 keywords that look like reasonable prospects.  If not, take another run at the Keyword Tool and try some more variations on your keywords.  This is a DO-LOOP… until you get to 3-5 good keywords that 1) are relevant to your website; 2) have decent monthly search volume; and 3) have low to moderate competition.

Write those keywords down somewhere where you won’t lose them. No, not a sticky note.  These are your ticket to more leads.  We’ll punch the ticket later. With some good old-fashioned SEO.

To your wealth!