There are basically two ways of getting your website placed so it can be found during a search engine inquiry: paid placement and organic (free) ranking. Conducting keyword research is extremely important for both, but it is not approached the same way. For paid placement your focus should be in not losing money by targeting extremely competitive keywords. When using free placement through articles, blog posts, and/or video keyword selection needs to be a lot more strategic and should take into consideration various elements. Following, we will examine the most relevant aspects of effective keyword research, particularly as it pertains to video marketing.

First, we need to understand what is meant by a “long tail keyword”. As you know a keyword is the word or phrase that someone types when they are conducting a search on a search engine. Well, a long tail keyword is a keyword phrase which incorporates descriptive or amplifying terms which make the keyword more focused and narrow. For instance, if your product is an energy drink, then using just “energy drink” as your keyword will probably be too broad. What that means is that there will be a lot of competition, and it will be very hard for you to place on the first page of Google or any other search engine, especially if using organic means of ranking. Using a keyword like “vitamin-filled energy drink” might make it more manageable as far as the competition goes. That means, it would be easier for you to achieve a good placement within that keyword.

Now that we have that clear, here’s the proper way to conduct effective keyword research for video marketing, or any other type of organic placement method. You will need to access a keyword research tool. I use two great tools which are 100% free: Google’s Keyword Tool External and the Freekeywords version of Wordtracker. With these tools, you will type in the desired keywords that you want to target. They will show you terms related to the keyword you typed in, along with some statistical data that shows you whether people are actually searching for that term or not. You want to look for keywords that are being requested on the search engine, but not necessarily the most searched for, as the competition will be too great!

Once you have chosen some keywords you might be interested in using, go back to the search engine and type in the keyword of your choice. You want to look for two things: result volume and type of properties ranking for the keyword. Let me explain. Under the search box, you will find a number for the total number of results for that keyword. I suggest you place the keyword between quotation marks, which will give you the exact number of results which use the keyword exactly as you plan to use it. What you want to find for video marketing and organic ranking is a keyword which, when placed in quotes, yields no more than 50,000 results. The ideal scenario is to have as close to 5,000 results as possible. Then, you want to see whether other videos are ranked on that first page. See, Google and t he search engines like variety, so if there are other videos, your chances will decrease. However, if there are no videos on that first page, then your chances of placing on that first page are actually quite good!

Effective keyword research for video marketing is not a science, but it does take time and practice. It will be well worth the effort, though, once you find yourself on page one of Google without paying a single cent. The author of this article does have a video tutorial on this subject which might be helpful if you still have questions. The best way to get proficient at this technique, and any other, though is to just get to it. So, go get it done! Have fun!

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