1. Competitor keywords: At this point, it seems elementary to say that appearing for a keyword search of your competitor is a must these days. However, it’s ridiculously expensive as your quality score will always be low. A good way to refine it is to go for “better than Product XYZ” fashioned long-tail terms.People tend to already know brand names; what they really want to know is a good alternative that might make them change their mind about a purchasing decision. I’ve found that “review” keywords can be good, too…such as, “Product XYZ reviews” or “product ABC comparison.” (Just make sure you’re not infringing on anyone’s trademark – read your PPC program’s terms of service to make sure). Create a landing page with a review matrix or something to that effect that caters to those kinds of searches and you might be on to something.
2. Product Model Numbers: Many people (especially myself) will not bother to type in 46” Sony HDTV. We’ll just find the model number and search for deals on that…so, a search for “KDL-46XBR9” it is.Use that knowledge in affiliate marketing PPC: perhaps it makes more sense to gear your ads toward model numbers, product codes or anything else alpha-numerical beyond the actual product name?
3. “Call to action” queries: If you’ve ever dabbled with Google Keyword Tool or played with Google or Yahoo’s “auto-fill” feature within the search bar, you might have noticed that many people type in bizarre terms like “where to buy product XYZ” or “best price on product XYZ.” I don’t think I’ve ever typed such a thing, even during my first year of using the internet. Still, it’s a great long-tail term that might yield clicking customers who are on the verge of typing in their credit card info, if only you could present them with a helpful, BS-free landing page!
4. Seasonal or holiday-based keywords: It’s almost Memorial Day…are you advertising Memorial Day sales on your affiliate sites via AdWords? Consider it – many people search for deals online based on traditional holiday sales periods, mostly because the economy sucks, and they’ve been waiting all year to save $50 on a new refrigerator.Perhaps your lawn & garden store gets traffic spikes during early Spring: why not gear your PPC campaign toward an “early spring” push for gardening tools? Research “spring,” “4^th of July” and “Mother’s Day” keywords for your niches and see what you come up with.
5. Free shipping keywords: It’s one of the hottest topics for anyone who owns an online retail business. Perhaps your affiliate or dropshipping store is running a program that honors this: by all means, go for “product ABC free shipping” keywords and note it directly in your PPC ad itself!There were many times where I’ve bought an item from a store that charged slightly more for a product but gave free shipping, rather than one with a better price plus shipping fees. Customers will do the math and see what the more economical choice is, even if they have to wait longer for it to arrive. Be sure to lasso these customers.

Psychology is a part of PPC – if you know what people are typing as casual internet users rather than marketers, then you’ll be able to give them what they’re looking for. The rest of your newb-ish marketing competition will continue going for generic long-tail terms, and complaining about they spend more on advertising than they actually make ;)

When it comes down to thinking up a name for a new website, some people opt to name their project or business with at least one (if not two) keywords that they want to be associated with. Many businesses have benefited from this…for instance: Pear Analytics, Search Engine Journal, iPhone, Pizza Hut, etc. Perhaps these entities haven’t purposely included their main keyword for SEO (certainly not Pizza Hut, since it was around before the public internet era), but it sure helps these businesses rank for those terms for one main reason: anyone who references them as a company will automatically be including that much-desired keyword in a backlink that points to their site.

Naming Your Company After Your Domain Works

Here’s another example: WordPress theme designer “PremiumThemes.net” has its focal keyword as its own actual name. Therefore, it’s assured that he’ll naturally get tons of links pointing to his site with the advantageous keyword “premium themes,” which happens to be a major search term for people who look for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other website themes that have a price tag on them. As a result, the site is always within the top couple results for a Google search of “premium themes” (which enjoys about 40,500 searches per month according to Google Keyword Tool, at the time this article was written!) According to Backlink Watch, the site has well over 12,000 backlinks with a majority of them including that 2-keyword term, either with or without a space in the middle.

Think about it: the most grueling part about launching a site is associating it with a keyword. While you’ll have to mindlessly build links to your own site, you’re also hoping that others will throw you an occasional link here and there along the way. There’s nothing more that you’ll want during this initial launch than keyword-loaded links that include the search terms you’ll want to rank for, because people will be forced to give you backlinks for that keyword, since it’s also your company name…catch my drift?

This is why exact keyword domains will NEVER decrease in demand. Many debate the hypothesis which states that having keywords in your actual domain name is a factor in helping you rank for those words in search engines. This may or may not be true, but one thing is for sure, it guarantees that you’ll get backlinks with those keywords.

This is a great tool to use for doing anything from setting up UK-based affiliate sites, to writing UK-targeted articles or even registering .co.uk domain names.

Note that if you’re a Yank, you’ll want to research keywords in British syntax (i.e., “favour” instead of “favor”). You can research both variations and note the differences…it could provide some interesting results.

We can only hope that Google will create this tool for more countries and regions; so far, there’s only one for the US and for UK. If you need to do additional keyword research in other countries, you’re pretty much stuck beyond using Google Insights for Search. It’s nowhere near as in-depth in terms of keyword results as the Keyword Tool, but it will be a big help in providing insight into rising search terms in practically any country of the world that uses the internet.