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Free Long Tail Keyword Research Tools
By Thomas Christopher (c) 2010 

Long tail keyword research tools are essential for small
web businesses. You must put together collections of micro
niches, each identified by a long tail keyword. You need to
do long tail keyword research to find those niches of
low competition keywords.

You need to find a large number of keywords, the number of
searches for them per day or month, and the amount of
competition for the keywords. The competition, at minimum,
consists of all those web pages containing the keyword.
More detailed information would include the number of pages
optimized for the keyword. You can get all this information
for free on the web, from Google; although, there is
software available that automates the process for you.

You can use the Google keyword selector tool at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal as a
long tail keyword generator. It suggests a large number of
keywords with low search volume but low competition.

When you type in a keyword into the Google keyword selector
tool, it suggests related keywords and gives you a
downloadable spreadsheet of their search frequencies and
AdWords competition.

Sort by declining numbers of searches and delete those
keywords with too few. They are not worth optimizing pages
for. What's too few searches? That is up to you, but I have
heard people say they set the limit somewhere between 200
and 300 searches per month (7 to 10 per day).

If you wish, you can reserve those keywords with too few
searches to sprinkle into ezine articles. Keywords with low
competition may bring the article to page one of a search
engine's results.

Next you use the Google search page. It is not usually
thought of as a long tail keywords tool, but you use it for
two competition searches. Do a Google search for the
keyword in quotes to find the number of pages containing
those keywords as a phrase, that is, adjacent to each
other. The first page of the results gives an estimate of
the number of pages containing the phrase. Do not search
without quotes -- that  counts all pages containing all the
words in the keyword phrase even if they are not close on
the page.

Remove the keywords that are on too many pages from your
list. Various people give the cut off at more than 30,000
other pages, give or take. Your pages will be lost in the
crowd if you try to compete for them.

The next step of long tail keyword research is to find the
number of pages optimized for the keyword, and you can find
the number of pages optimized for a keyword by a Google
search. A page is optimized for a keyword if

(1) the keyword is embedded in the URL of the page, for
example in the domain name or in the page name,

(2) the keyword is in the page title, or

(3) the keyword is in the anchor text of one or more links
pointing to the page.

You can tell Google to filter for pages with these
optimizations by specifying, for example, inurl:"keyword"
to select only pages with the keyword in the URL. (You can
find information on advanced Google query operators at
http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/operators.html ) Delete
the keywords with too much competition of this kind. What
is too much competition? Again, it is a matter of taste,
but the boundary may be somewhere between 50 and 300. (I'm
relying on the opinion of James Jones who suggested these
limits.)

Pages optimized in all three ways are serious competition.
Not only do those optimizations tell search engines that
the page is relevant to the keyword, but they indicate that
someone is consciously trying to compete for the keyword.

If you are intending to sell products or services to the
people searching with these keywords, you may want to check
the estimates of their "online commercial intention" (OCI).
You can get those estimates at
http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/ It
will give you a fraction between zero -- the search seems
to have NO commercial intent -- and one -- the search does
seem to have a commercial intent. The numeric value
indicates a kind of confidence level, not a fraction of
searches that have the intent. In experiments, the
non-commercial keywords averaged about a 0.2 value, and the
commercial keywords averaged about 0.83. Fractions near 0.5
had a high rate of incorrect classifications. If you intend
to sell, you can cut off those keywords with an OCI less
than 0.6 or 0.7. There are, however, questions about the
methodology and assumptions used in the construction of
this tool.

You can do long tail keyword research for free by using the
Google keyword selector tool, a Google search, and
optionally the MSN online commercial intention page.
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Thomas Christopher has gathered videos and other information
about using long tail keywords for ezine article marketing
at http://ezinearticleshow.com/ . See a video showing how
to begin a search for a niche market at:
http://ezinearticleshow.com/NicheMarketResearch.htm
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