How Does Income School Do Keyword Research?

One of the most important things when you are creating your new website or YouTube channel is selecting the topics you’ll talk about.

Often this is called ‘keyword research’, but that’s a rather dated way to look at it. Google doesn’t just rely on single keywords to rank content anymore, in fact, it has become very advanced at figuring out what your post or video is about.

Also, in Project 24, Income School doesn’t even call it Keyword Research but rather Search Analysis.

Income School’s approach to keyword research relies heavily on using Google auto-suggest and common sense. Known as Search Analysis, it involves targetting what users are actually searching for and evaluating the existing competitiveness of those queries. They don’t rely on keyword research tools.

So, if you want to find out a little bit more about how we approach keyword research (or Search Analysis as it is known) in Project 24 then please read on.

Writing the right type of posts

The basic premise when it comes to writing blog posts (but also for YouTube videos) is to write about what people are searching for.

I can’t beleive I didn’t really get that until I started learning from Income School.

Traditionally, a blog was just a way for someone to document their lives or thoughts. People would find their favorite blogger, just like a YouTuber now, and log on each day to read their latest post.

That doesn’t really work with Google search.

If you are writing about what you think about a particular topic, it’s unlikely someone will type that into the Google search bar, so they won’t find your post.

If you are writing about something that you know a beginner needs to learn or something that needs to be corrected, again it’s unlikely you’ll be found.

People can’t search for what they don’t know they should be searching for.

So, how do you make sure that you are always writing a blog post (or creating a video) on something that someone is searching for?

Well, quite simply, you use Google search itself and the auto suggest feature built into Google’s internet browser.

Google Alphabet Soup

Google’s mission, among other things, is to be as helpful as it can be to its users.

So when you start typing in a search query to the search bar, it will automatically suggest the end to that phrase. This helps people to get the answers they need.

As content creators, this is a godsend. Google is literally telling us what people are typing into the search bar on a fairly regular basis.

All we need to do is to take that search query, analyze the competitiveness of it on the Google results page (SERP) and decide whether or not it’s worth writing an article to rank for it.

But how can you find even more search queries?

The easiest way is to take a key term within your niche, for example, “powerboats” and type it into the search bar.

Then, you simply write the letter “a” with a space after your key term.

It will auto-suggest a certain amount of queries which either start with “powerboats” and a word beginning with “a” or some combination of that.

The best thing is that this will be updated periodically overtime. So come back in 3 or 6 months and you may find even more queries listed here.

Once you have collected all the queries you want from this list, simply delete the “a” and write “b”, then do the same thing before writing all the other letters in the alphabet in turn.

How to get even more suggested queries?

You can also use question words, because questions make excellent search queries, to increase your auto-suggest yield.

Type in a question word like “do” followed by your key phrase. This will give you another list of auto-suggest terms.

You can also use an asterisk (*) to help you complete a phrase between two words

The more you do this the more terms you’ll start to find. And there are lots more question words you can use:

Need even more search terms?

Google isn’t done there, they will still give you more search terms to help with your search analysis.

When you actually search for one of these queries, say “do powerboats have a keel”, you’ll be taken to the results page, or SERP. Here Google will try to help it’s users even more.

Under the main snippet, Google will have a list of queries called “People also ask”. This is another great place to find queries.

Also, at the bottom of the SERP, Google will give you even more avenues to explore and opportunities to find more search terms.

Estimating search volume

Now, this is all well and good, but how do you know which terms will bring you in lots of traffic and which ones won’t?

Well, this is where it gets a little bit tricky.

There’s only one organization who really knows the true search volume of every single search query out there.

It’s Google themselves and they ain’t sharing that information with anyone!

This is why when a keyword search tool, paid or otherwise, gives you a number for search volume it’s going to be way off the actual figure.

So, Project 24 students are told not to even look at those numbers.

Instead, we just use something a little bit more accurate, common sense.

This is why it’s really important to create blogs and YouTube channels within niches which you are passionate about. That way you can better understand your users and their needs.

Using common sense to gauge search volume

When you review your list of queries, you are going to sort them out into what an advanced user would be searching for and what a beginner user will be looking for.

In almost all niches, there will be more beginners than advanced users, so target them as that’s where the traffic will be.

When finally choosing your search terms a general rule of thumb is, if it’s seems like a reasonable question for someone to ask then it will likely bring in a decent amount of traffic per month.

Aiming for an average of 1000 page views per post per month is a reasonable target to have.

So, just to give an example. Consider these two queries, a) how do you start a powerboat and b) how do you start a EVINRUDE – G2 300 HP engine on a powerboat.

Although a beginner may be searching for either one of these things, a) is more general and so it’s likely to have a higher monthly search volume than b).

So, this is where knowing your niche and using a little bit of common sense will come in.

Using keyword research tools

So, am I saying never use any keyword research tool? Well, no, not exactly.

Keyword research tools can be a great source of inspiration and can help you think about new avenues to explore in your own search analysis.

However, it’s really important that you don’t get misled by the false numbers they give you for search volume and that you search each and every search term to gauge its competitiveness yourself.