Recently I was doing article keyword research and I spotted an almost perfect long tail keyword in my niche. It’s related to an annoying problem everyone who runs a WordPress website or does web design encounters – comment spam.

What caught my eye was 1900 searches per month in the US, and 5400 globally. And, importantly, zero competition. Yep, not one article out there actually focused on this keyword phrase.

You see, I’d just been looking at my Google Analytics, figuring out where traffic was coming from. I was focusing particularly on keywords, and the lesson was clear that people are looking for what they want, not what I think they want! Some of my greatest sources of traffic were obscure (but relevant) keywords with little or no competition.

The Easiest Way to Improve Your Website Traffic For Free

In short, as I was reminded of a very fundamental rule of web development: Do your article keyword research before you chose what to write about!

I Began With A Wildcard Topic Search

The first step in article keyword research is to come up with an idea to test. As I mentioned in How to Get Unlimited Article Ideas, I really like the Keyword Researcher tool. If you want to try it out, be sure to use Google Chrome, as it doesn’t run in other browsers.

I searched for How to * in wordpress. The asterisk is a wildcard, and the tool substitutes for the wildcard to create a list of long tail keyword phrases that have been searched for. I had about 145 results. Since Keyword Researcher doesn’t give me traffic numbers, it was time to move to another tool.

Then I Checked Traffic and Competition

Step two in my article keyword research was to check these keywords for traffic and competition in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. By the way, you can only check up to 100 phrases at a time, unless you create an Adwords account and log in.

I noticed that there were a bunch of related long tail keywords, and they had some of the best numbers… although they were still very low, ranging from 16 to 360 local searches per month. Obviously there was demand for information on this topic, and the competition numbers were low.

• how to disable comments in wordpress
• how to delete all comments in wordpress
• how to get rid of comment box in wordpress
• how to hide comments in wordpress
• how to disable comments on a page in wordpress
• how to block comments in wordpress

However, when I looked beyond my Search Terms and into the Keyword Ideas adwords generated, I noticed the “wordpress disable comments” phrase you can see in the image above. Now those traffic numbers are excellent, with no competition! I decided to use some of the other related keyword phrases in the article, as well.

Finally, I Wrote my Article

Of course I used proper SEO copywriting techniques to ensure that my writing effort won’t be wasted. A few weeks after I publish it, I can be confident of regular traffic. In fact, if I rank #1 for the keyword phrase, which I expect to, I should get about 42% of the traffic… that’s an extra 798 US visitors per month (2268 globally), that I can assist, and who will learn that I’m accurate, helpful, and knowledgeable about WordPress.

I”m not suggesting that you’ll want to do article keyword research for everything you write, but if even half your blog posts and articles were created this way, many more people would benefit from your writing. And, of course, if the articles are on your website, you’ll see improved traffic.

What’s A Blog Post or Article Worth?

Is Article Keyword Research Really Worth $2400 Per Post?

Well, if you write useful, timeless content that appeals to your target audience, it can be worth quite a bit over the lifetime of your business website. Steve Pavlina wrote an article back in 2006, estimating the lifetime value of each article he writes on his personal growth website at $2400. Does that help you feel a bit more motivated about article keyword research?

About the author

Karilee

I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship. Most of my learning, teaching and business is focused on effectively creating "freedom businesses" that allow you to focus on your strengths, and bring what you're really good at to the world - profitably. My clients are looking for more of the right customers - and I show them how to make that happen. I help them develop their web presence through their website, SEO, social media and other marketing tactics.