Market Samurai is very powerful software that you install on your computer but don’t worry, it works with Windows and Mac. According to the makers of Market Samurai, The 3 Golden Rules of success are High Traffic, Commercial Value, and Low Competition. Properly analyzing your keyword phrases will help you win at all 3 of the golden rules. Please note that this tutorial is basic and will not cover all the features of Market Samurai.
Supplies Needed:
- Market Samurai Software
- Computer with Internet Connection
- List of Keyword Phrases you want to research
Step 1: Create a new project
Once you have installed the trial or registered version of Market Samurai, open the software and click on “New Project” to create a new project.
After clicking on “New Project”, the “Project Settings” screen below will appear.
When doing keyword research, I recommend you start with at least 10 keyword phrases that you want to research. These would be keyword phrases you believe apply to your business website. If you already have a website, you can review your stats to see which phrases are already bringing you traffic. If you haven’t optimized for the phrase and you are already getting some traffic, imagine how much more you can get if you create a page or post and optimize it specifically for that phrase. Please avoid one-word keywords (i.e. gluten) as it is usually very hard to rank for these. Do a good enough job with your keyword phrases though and you may end up ranking for a few one-word keywords.
Ok, let’s get started. Enter your primary keyword phrase and complete the rest of the screen.
Step 2: Select the Keyword Research module.
Market Samurai has quite a few modules. Rank Tracker, Keyword Research, SEO Competition, Monetization, Find Content, Publish Content, Promotion and Adwords.
Choose the Keyword Research module by clicking on it.
Market Samurai - Keyword Research Module
NOTE: You will now see a tab at the top with your keywords.
Step 3: Complete your initial search
To begin your Keyword Research, click on the “Generate Keywords” button.
Enter the CAPTCHA text in the box and click on Submit. The purpose of this step is to ensure a human is performing the search rather than an automated process.
At this point, you will see a popup box that says the data is being generated.
When the box below goes away, you will see your results.
Step 4: Evalute the results.
As you probably noticed in the graphic above, Market Samurai uses Google’s database.
Here is a screen print of the initial results for the keyword phrase “Christian ministry”.
Step 5: Eliminate irrelevant keyword phrases.
Eliminate any keyword phrases that you already know you do not want to target by simply clicking the X to the right of that phrase.
Step 6: Determine the appropriate phrase length.
If you only want keyword phrases that are at least 3 words, change the “min” value to 3. I recommend changing this value to “2” as it is usually difficult to rank high for one word keywords.
Step 7: Run your analysis.
Click the Analyze Keywords button.
Step 8: Fine-tune the results.
Change the Phrase to Broad Match Ratio (PBR) to 15. This will, according to Market Samurai, “eiminate those misleading and dangerous keyword phrases that Google can sometimes return”.
To change the PBR, click the + sign beside that option.
Enter “15” in the box that opens up.
You can also at this point, change the Match Type to Phrase or Exact if you so desire.
To refresh the keyword data, click on “Refresh Filters”.
Click the word “Searches” in the column header to sort the data by # of searches.
The screen print below shows the first few results (without the more advanced columns). You will, of course, want to scroll down and review all of the results.
Keep in mind that the # of Searches is being pulled from Google’s data. The # of searches is, according to Market Samurai, the average # of people searching for that phrase daily.
Depending what other tools you are using, you may need to adjust your data if you want to be able to compare data across tools.
I personally do not recommend comparing the information from various tools to each other. I recommend that you choose one tool and stick with it. That way, you know you are comparing apples to apples.
The goal here is to look for phrases that apply to your website and will likely convert the visitor into a buyer/customer.
If your website is less than a year old, you should probably focus on phrases toward the bottom of the list. If your website is older and you are good at acquiring backlinks, then you can probably pull from the top results as well.
Look for long-tail keyword phrases. That means look for the longer phrases that are more targeted. If your website sells women’s shoes but only high-heel wedding shoes, you wouldn’t want to optimize for “women’s shoes” as someone looking for sandals or tennis shoes would not be your potential customer.
Review the results from your search. Choose 5-10 keyword phrases you believe you can get ranked for. If you’re a beginner at creating keyword-rich content, you’ll probably want to target only two keyword phrases per page or post. Your main keyword phrase will be your primary and the other is considered secondary.
Step 4: Create and optimize your content using the keyword phrases
This is a beginner guide so we won’t go into much detail here but you need to actually USE the keyword phrases in your content for the research to accomplish anything.
Make sure you use your keyword phrases in the Title, Description, Headings, Alt Text, etc. When possible, link from other pages/posts to the new page or post using the keyword phrase. This is called internal linking.
You’ll also want to get external links from websites other than yours. The external links need to appear natural to search engines so don’t obsess over all of the links having the same phrase.
Additional Tips
The more popular a search is, the fiercer the competition usually is. Make sure you look for long-tail keyword phrases. These are phrases with multiple words that further define the search. For example, “web design” would be a typical search and “small business web design” would be a long-tail keyword phrase related to web design. The number of searches on “web design” is far higher than for “small business web design” but getting a first page ranking is harder with the more popular search.
Step 8: Rinse and repeat
Things change over time so conduct keyword research periodically to make sure you are still targeting the best keyword phrases.
NOTE: This tool is very powerful. This is a beginner tutorial so we just scratched the surface. I would highly recommend you at least download the trial version and give it a try if you are serious about keyword research.
RESOURCES
Introduction to Keyword Research – Video Tutorials with transcripts – http://www.noblesamurai.com/dojo/marketsamurai/7284-introduction-to-keyword-research
Video Tutorials and Support
http://www.noblesamurai.com/support
If you need any help with KEYWORD RESEARCH or Market Samurai, please contact me and I will give you a quote. If you just have a basic question, feel free to ask it in the comments section below.
Glennette Goodbread, Owner
Premium Web Design and Hosting
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