EP 49: Our Favorite Keyword Research Tool

00:00:00 [Melissa]
Even when I do, like, SEO audits for people, like, I’ll pop their keywords in because I wanna be able to tell you, is this keyword getting any traffic volume?
00:00:07 [Melissa]
Is this the one you really should be targeting?

00:00:09 [Alison]
Hey.
00:00:09 [Alison]
I’m Allison, military spouse and family photographer.

00:00:12 [Melissa]
Hey.
00:00:12 [Melissa]
I’m Melissa, also a military spouse, lifestyle newborn photographer, and SEO expert for photographers.
00:00:17 [Melissa]
Between the two of us, we have a combined twenty seven years in photography and have nine business relocations.

00:00:22 [Alison]
We’ve coached each other through all these challenges, and now we want to share our experience with you.
00:00:26 [Alison]
On this podcast, we’ll give you actionable steps to help you keep it moving.
00:00:34 [Alison]
Hey guys.
00:00:34 [Alison]
Thanks for joining us again this week.
00:00:37 [Alison]
On this episode, we are talking all about our favorite keyword research tool.

00:00:41 [Alison]
So you’ve heard us talk time and time again about blogging, about not duplicating your keywords on homepages and blog posts and blogging for content that’s actually getting searched.
00:00:51 [Alison]
Well, this one tool is the linchpin to how we make all that work.
00:00:55 [Alison]
So how do you know what’s being searched?
00:00:57 [Alison]
How do you know what people are looking for?
00:00:58 [Alison]
How do you know if it’s worthwhile to target a certain homepage or webpage with a keyword?

00:01:03 [Alison]
We do it with this one thing called Keywords Everywhere.
00:01:07 [Alison]
So, Melissa, you wanna explain how it works?

00:01:10 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:01:10 [Melissa]
So it’s a browser plugin, and so you can install it for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
00:01:15 [Melissa]
If you’ve got something else beyond that, like sorry.
00:01:17 [Melissa]
I use Chrome, so I have it in Chrome.
00:01:19 [Melissa]
And, basically, it’s a plugin that gets installed.

00:01:22 [Melissa]
And so when you go out to, like, Google search and you type in a keyword, when you see that keyword or whatever you’ve searched at the top, underneath of it is gonna be, like, a little bit of data, and it’ll tell you something like keyword volume and things like that.
00:01:35 [Melissa]
And that’s how you can figure out, is this a keyword that people are actually searching or is it not?
00:01:40 [Melissa]
So the more general keywords you type in, if you type in photography or newborn photography or whatever, you’re gonna get tons and tons of searches.
00:01:46 [Melissa]
When you start narrowing down, like, if I type in Charlottesville newborn photographer, I think it gets, like, 20 searches a month.
00:01:52 [Melissa]
And that’s exactly it’s gonna tell you per month.

00:01:54 [Melissa]
But that thing, like, before that, you would have to use, what was it?
00:01:57 [Melissa]
It was like the Google Ads keyword planner.

00:02:00 [Alison]
Yeah.

00:02:00 [Melissa]
You have to go look in there.
00:02:01 [Melissa]
Or if you look at your Google Search Console, you’ll find out what you’re already ranking for.
00:02:06 [Melissa]
But this tool best.
00:02:07 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:02:07 [Melissa]
This tool helps you figure out what you want to be ranking for, like, new keywords and stuff.

00:02:12 [Alison]
Searching what people are already looking for currently and their past trends.

00:02:17 [Melissa]
Right.
00:02:17 [Melissa]
And so it’s cheap, guys.

00:02:19 [Alison]
It’s so cheap.

00:02:20 [Melissa]
They bill it out annually, but it’s, like, $27 a year for a 100,000 credits.
00:02:25 [Melissa]
And if you’re like, well, what does that be?
00:02:26 [Melissa]
100,000 credits is, like, a 100,000 searches.
00:02:29 [Melissa]
So every

00:02:30 [Alison]
time credit is one search term.

00:02:33 [Melissa]
Yes.
00:02:33 [Melissa]
And the thing is you can turn it off if you’re not in SEO mode, but I’m pretty sure you guys aren’t gonna have a problem with having a 100,000.

00:02:41 [Alison]
No.
00:02:42 [Alison]
Like, to give you we just like this up before.
00:02:44 [Alison]
So their previous structure, I bought 10,000.
00:02:47 [Alison]
Or is it a 100,000?

00:02:48 [Melissa]
It was a 100,000.
00:02:49 [Melissa]
Is that

00:02:49 [Alison]
a 100,000?
00:02:51 [Alison]
Over almost a whole year ago, I bought a 100,000 credits.
00:02:53 [Alison]
I turned the plugin on and off as I’m searching because it’s not like a whole new web page like Melissa described.
00:02:58 [Alison]
It just displays data on the page you’re on.
00:03:01 [Alison]
Okay?

00:03:01 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:03:01 [Melissa]
So So it does clutter it up.
00:03:02 [Melissa]
I will say that.
00:03:03 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:03:03 [Alison]
So you want to turn it off because it’s a lot to look at.
00:03:06 [Alison]
I have 91,406 credits that expire in twenty four days and I paid $10 for that.
00:03:12 [Alison]
So I’ve been using that for eleven months and some change and I’ve got 90% of what I purchased.

00:03:18 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:03:19 [Melissa]
And so now they have new annual plans.
00:03:20 [Melissa]
They raise their prices a bit.

00:03:21 [Alison]
It’s changed.

00:03:22 [Melissa]
And I will say this.
00:03:23 [Melissa]
I did find, like, if you click on their pricing page for Keywords Everywhere, and it’s keywordseverywhere.com, you’ll see three plans.
00:03:30 [Melissa]
It’s like silver something and something.
00:03:32 [Melissa]
Underneath of that, I happen I just noticed this, guys, before we went to report.
00:03:35 [Melissa]
If you click it, it’ll say see the bronze plan if you need less.

00:03:38 [Melissa]
And that’s the one that’s $2.25 a month, 27.
00:03:41 [Melissa]
And you get a 100,000 credits.
00:03:42 [Melissa]
So like Allison was saying, she still had a crap ton of hers because she turns it on and off.
00:03:46 [Melissa]
We for the agency, you know, we bought 400,000 credits May.
00:03:52 [Melissa]
We still have I think it said I think it’s a 250,000 left.

00:03:57 [Melissa]
And Yeah.
00:03:57 [Melissa]
I don’t bother turning it on or off.
00:03:59 [Melissa]
I just it’s always on.
00:04:01 [Melissa]
So if I’m searching for my kids’ school lunch menu, which I don’t really care what the keyword value from that, it’s taking a credit from me because but I have so many that I just it doesn’t bother me.
00:04:10 [Melissa]
Like, I don’t care at that point.

00:04:12 [Alison]
Directly to that pricing page with the bronze on this because that’ll Yeah.
00:04:15 [Alison]
That’ll be helpful.

00:04:16 [Melissa]
It’s a little tricky to find.
00:04:17 [Melissa]
But it’s, like, totally worth it.
00:04:19 [Melissa]
I mean, it makes it so much easier.
00:04:21 [Melissa]
So the big things you’re looking for is it’s gonna give you search volume from those keywords because it is pulling from, like, Google Search Console data that it has and keyword planner, the keyword planner tool.
00:04:29 [Melissa]
They talk about, like, where they get their data from and everything.

00:04:32 [Melissa]
And so at the top, under your search, it’s gonna tell you exactly the keyword you searched for and what the search volume is.
00:04:38 [Melissa]
And then on the right hand side, you’re gonna see a whole new section.
00:04:41 [Melissa]
You’re gonna be like, what is that?
00:04:43 [Melissa]
And then things like people also search for or related keywords, and it’s gonna give you even more ideas.
00:04:48 [Melissa]
And that’s one of my favorite parts because Yep.

00:04:50 [Melissa]
Like, when we’re doing research for clients, you know, we have a whole process with a spreadsheet and doing it in bulk.
00:04:55 [Melissa]
But then we’ll take some of their top keywords and, we call it hand jamming because we plug it into Google by hand, and then we go and scour those sidebars.
00:05:03 [Melissa]
Because sometimes those sidebars have keywords that you wouldn’t think about.

00:05:07 [Alison]
Right?

00:05:07 [Melissa]
Like, they just you’re like, what?
00:05:09 [Melissa]
That’s a key okay.
00:05:10 [Melissa]
I didn’t know that was getting searched.

00:05:11 [Alison]
People are searching for a lot while Yeah.

00:05:13 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:05:14 [Melissa]
I mean, a very interesting to me is in a lot of cities, people are actually searching for black photographers in those cities, and it gets a decent amount of search volume.
00:05:22 [Melissa]
So if you are a black photographer in certain cities, look for that keyword.
00:05:26 [Melissa]
See if it’s in your city

00:05:28 [Alison]
or

00:05:28 [Melissa]
trending and use it, which, I mean, I would never have thought to look for that.
00:05:32 [Melissa]
So Yep.
00:05:33 [Melissa]
Find those keywords and

00:05:34 [Alison]
stuff.
00:05:34 [Alison]
It’s a really good way also when you’re in a city to find the smaller areas in your surrounding area that you want to traffic.
00:05:41 [Alison]
Some pages and posts and stuff.

00:05:43 [Melissa]
Right.
00:05:43 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:05:43 [Melissa]
And you can look at this.
00:05:44 [Melissa]
It’s not even just, you know, oh, my location, photography.
00:05:47 [Melissa]
Mhmm.

00:05:47 [Melissa]
It can be, alright.
00:05:48 [Melissa]
Well, I’m doing a post on date night ideas in my city, and you put that up.
00:05:51 [Melissa]
And then it’ll even give you some ideas of, like, other things that could go with that keyword.

00:05:55 [Alison]
Okay.
00:05:56 [Alison]
So to that point, I was just looking at this.
00:05:58 [Alison]
So my website is Oahu family photographer.
00:06:01 [Alison]
That’s my targeted keyword.
00:06:03 [Alison]
But the long tail keywords on the bottom, keywords everywhere just told me things I’ve already blogged about, but this is how I got the ideas.

00:06:09 [Alison]
Honolulu family restaurants, Honolulu family activities, Oahu family restaurants, North Shore family stuff like, oh, Lulu Zoo rules.
00:06:19 [Alison]
20 searches a month.
00:06:21 [Alison]
That’s weird.
00:06:22 [Alison]
But those are all blog posts right there.
00:06:23 [Alison]
If I hadn’t already written them.

00:06:25 [Melissa]
Hey fellow photographers, Melissa Arlena here.
00:06:28 [Melissa]
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00:06:31 [Melissa]
I get it.
00:06:31 [Melissa]
But guess what?
00:06:32 [Melissa]
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00:06:34 [Melissa]
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00:06:41 [Melissa]
Whether you’re eager to learn or you just want somebody to take care of it for you, I’ve got your back.
00:06:46 [Melissa]
With my SEO coaching and done for you services, you’ll get noticed on track more of your ideal clients and keep doing what you love most, photography.
00:06:54 [Melissa]
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00:06:57 [Melissa]
Visit pictureperfectrankings.com, and let’s make SEO simple and effective for you.

00:07:02 [Melissa]
Let’s get your calendar booked.

00:07:05 [Alison]
Actually, I don’t think I’ve done Honolulu anything, so we might need to do that.
00:07:09 [Alison]
Exactly.

00:07:10 [Melissa]
So, I mean, that’s the thing I really love about it.
00:07:11 [Melissa]
So you can see all that stuff on the right hand side.
00:07:14 [Melissa]
It will also give you, like, trend charts where you can see like, you’ll see it’s like a little graph, and it’s, like, up and down or whatever.
00:07:20 [Melissa]
And And what it is if you’re able to look closely at it, it’s the months.
00:07:23 [Melissa]
And so it’s showing you, you know, like, pictures with Santa gets tons of traffic from, like, July to December.

00:07:29 [Melissa]
But January to May, it drops off.
00:07:31 [Melissa]
So if you search that keyword in, like, May, it may be like, oh, yeah.
00:07:35 [Melissa]
It’s not getting a lot of traffic right now.
00:07:36 [Melissa]
But then if you go and look at the trend report, you’re like, oh, because it’s just the wrong time of year.
00:07:40 [Melissa]
It gets tons of traffic at these other times.

00:07:42 [Melissa]
So I really love that with the trend reports, and I like looking too to see, are we noticing that that keyword is getting searched less?
00:07:48 [Melissa]
Like, if a client’s like, well, hey.
00:07:50 [Melissa]
I’m not getting as many clicks and stuff.
00:07:52 [Melissa]
It’s like, oh, as we look at it, we notice the search volume has been down the last couple months or whatever for Yeah.
00:07:57 [Melissa]
And stuff.

00:07:57 [Melissa]
So I like looking at those trend reports.
00:07:59 [Melissa]
Those are nice.
00:07:59 [Melissa]
And then the other thing you can do is let’s say you’re looking for your target keyword, and then it’s got all of your competitors on that page.
00:08:07 [Melissa]
You can see information about them.
00:08:09 [Melissa]
It’ll put it in there.

00:08:09 [Melissa]
And so it’ll have information, like, where you can click to get their backlinks because it links up to Moz, the Moz database.
00:08:15 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:08:16 [Melissa]
And so, dude, that is a big tip I tell people when they’re trying to find backlinks.
00:08:19 [Melissa]
I’m like, go look and see where your competitors got a backlink.
00:08:21 [Melissa]
Like, can you get one there too?

00:08:23 [Melissa]
And so you can click on that.
00:08:24 [Melissa]
Always show people stuff.
00:08:25 [Melissa]
You know, sometimes people just don’t have any.
00:08:28 [Melissa]
But then some sites, people have got a lot.
00:08:30 [Melissa]
And then you can go and see, like, oh, well, maybe I could go get featured by Peerspace or expertise or, you know, listed in a photography directory.

00:08:38 [Melissa]
Or sometimes you’ll see where Yeah.
00:08:39 [Melissa]
Maybe they got featured in an article and it’s like, could you find something similar to that kind of thing?
00:08:44 [Melissa]
So that’s always an easy one to go and just check out.
00:08:47 [Melissa]
I’ve even seen where, like, I saw one girl.
00:08:50 [Melissa]
She had a really good domain ranking.

00:08:51 [Melissa]
And when I went and looked at her backlinks, she had backlinks from, like, these recipe sites that were, like, high domain authority.

00:08:57 [Alison]
You can

00:08:57 [Melissa]
bet your butt I went out to those same recipe sites and left comments with my website.
00:09:03 [Melissa]
So I was like, it’s working for her.
00:09:04 [Melissa]
I mean, that’s a free backlink I’m doing with that.
00:09:06 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:09:07 [Melissa]
A good domain authority?

00:09:08 [Melissa]
Heck, yeah.
00:09:09 [Melissa]
So we love Keywords Everywhere.
00:09:11 [Melissa]
Like I said, we use it all the time.
00:09:12 [Melissa]
Every day, I’m pretty much using it.
00:09:15 [Melissa]
Even when I do, like, SEO audits for people, like, I’ll pop their keywords in because I wanna be able to tell you, is this keyword getting any traffic volume?

00:09:22 [Melissa]
Is this the one you really should be targeting?
00:09:24 [Melissa]
And, you know, you’re gonna have all kinds of variances.
00:09:26 [Melissa]
Like I tell people all the time, people who are searching date night ideas in a big city is gonna have way more searches than somebody looking for a newborn or children’s photographer in that same city.

00:09:35 [Alison]
And anytime whether you’re relocating a genre, like, I spend so much time in keywords everywhere to figure out where to target my efforts.
00:09:43 [Alison]
Like we can’t do everything all the time.
00:09:45 [Alison]
You’re going to have to move one genre first or relocate one, one genre first, and you really want to focus on the one that’s going to give you the most bang for your buck, literally.

00:09:54 [Melissa]
Right.
00:09:55 [Melissa]
Exactly.
00:09:55 [Melissa]
Because, like, typically, family photography gets the most searches, I find, you know, whenever it comes to it.
00:10:01 [Melissa]
But sometimes maternity photography can be surprising and get a ton of searches, like outranking newborn.
00:10:06 [Melissa]
And then other places, newborn gets a ton, and maternity gets not so fascinating because it really just depends on where you are.

00:10:13 [Melissa]
And then speaking of that, it does have, like, a little drop down because it so it’ll be up in your toolbar as the letter k.
00:10:20 [Melissa]
And when you click on it, that’s where you can see some information about, like, how many credits you have left, but you can also change your location.
00:10:26 [Melissa]
So you can set it to be US specific.
00:10:28 [Melissa]
You can set it for Canada.
00:10:29 [Melissa]
You can set it for Australia.

00:10:31 [Melissa]
Because sometimes we’ve made a mistake, like, we’ve worked with a client that’s overseas somewhere, and we’ll change it.
00:10:36 [Melissa]
And then we back go back to a US client, and then we’re like, wait a second.
00:10:39 [Melissa]
These search volumes don’t seem like that’s funny.
00:10:41 [Melissa]
And then I look and I’m like, oh, we forgot to change the drop down.
00:10:44 [Melissa]
So sometimes I leave it at just worldwide so that way I don’t screw it up.

00:10:48 [Melissa]
Yeah.

00:10:49 [Alison]
That’s awesome.
00:10:49 [Alison]
And there’s a whole bunch of other tools too that y’all should just get in there and play with once you get it installed.
00:10:54 [Alison]
Like, the com competitor gap, the bulk trends, analyze page content, y’all need to, like, just get in there and play.
00:11:00 [Alison]
It’s fun.

00:11:01 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:11:01 [Melissa]
I would start with just a couple keywords, like, looking them up.
00:11:04 [Melissa]
This is the same tool we use for my keyword research course.
00:11:08 [Melissa]
And I created a spreadsheet that will let you just, like, input in the city, the genres you shoot, and then it auto populates, like, all the combinations of keywords.
00:11:16 [Melissa]
And then I walk you through how to, like, bulk research all of them.

00:11:19 [Melissa]
And we do the same thing with, like, blog topic ideas for all the different genres.
00:11:23 [Melissa]
So, like, you can do all of your keyword research in an hour with my keyword research course and have all of the information about what keywords you need to be targeting for your website and then have, like, a huge amount of keywords for targeting for blog posts and stuff too.
00:11:38 [Melissa]
And you can have that done in one hour with the way this tool works because I started using the tool, and then I created this for self because I didn’t wanna do this one z two z thing.
00:11:46 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:11:47 [Melissa]
And then I created a course to go with it all because

00:11:49 [Alison]
That’s amazing.

00:11:49 [Melissa]
Exactly what I did.
00:11:50 [Melissa]
So yeah.
00:11:51 [Melissa]
And we’ll have a link in the show notes too.

00:11:53 [Alison]
And once you do all that research, it serves you for over a year.
00:11:57 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:11:57 [Alison]
Like, maybe once a year, go look and renew your blog plan just to make sure you’re on track.
00:12:03 [Alison]
But, like, all that bulk keyword research lasts you for, like, a year or more.
00:12:07 [Alison]
Like, maybe every now and then once a year, maybe just deep dive, like, kind of take a scan Well,

00:12:12 [Melissa]
you wanna check the trends and stuff because some things will will start like, obviously, near me searches are becoming a bigger thing for some places and everything.
00:12:19 [Melissa]
So, you know, you could even go in and see, like, what is the trend volume.
00:12:23 [Melissa]
It’s gonna be more global, but we noticed at one point that trend volumes for certain cities was coming down, but then the near me searches were going up.

00:12:30 [Alison]
Oh, weird.
00:12:31 [Alison]
Okay.

00:12:31 [Melissa]
And so really that trend volume can be really helpful on things like that.
00:12:35 [Melissa]
But just anytime you’re sitting down to write a blog post and you’re trying to think of, like, what might be a keyword for this post that would work, like, you can just pop that in there.
00:12:42 [Melissa]
And then Yeah.
00:12:42 [Melissa]
That way you’ve got an idea.

00:12:44 [Alison]
And then I like to use those long tail or other ideas related as secondary keywords in the same blog post.
00:12:49 [Alison]
And then you get a whole, like, blog post that’s coming up for a bunch of different organic keywords.

00:12:55 [Melissa]
Yes.
00:12:55 [Melissa]
Exactly.
00:12:56 [Melissa]
So let’s say Allison’s done some posts on local businesses in Hawaii.
00:12:59 [Melissa]
I’m pretty sure.

00:12:59 [Alison]
Yep.

00:13:00 [Melissa]
So her main topic, let’s say it’s restaurants in Hawaii.
00:13:03 [Melissa]
She’s gonna target that for her main one.
00:13:05 [Melissa]
But then she could go and do research and find out which restaurants, what keywords people are searching, like, for those particular maybe they’re looking for, you know, family friendly.
00:13:13 [Melissa]
Maybe they’re looking for brunch.
00:13:14 [Melissa]
Maybe they’re looking for With a view.

00:13:16 [Melissa]
With a yeah.
00:13:17 [Melissa]
Different things like that.
00:13:18 [Melissa]
Restaurants with a view.
00:13:19 [Melissa]
That now can become a subtopic.
00:13:21 [Melissa]
And so now Yeah.

00:13:22 [Melissa]
Her overall post is Hawaii restaurants.
00:13:24 [Melissa]
And then these subtopics, she’s also gonna be able to rank for those because they don’t get a ton of traffic volume.
00:13:29 [Melissa]
So they may not necessarily be worth a separate blog post, but adding it into that one can help out.
00:13:34 [Melissa]
So you could have more than one keyword that you’re targeting for a blog post, which I know probably is blowing some people’s minds right now.

00:13:39 [Alison]
Yeah.

00:13:40 [Melissa]
Like, keep in mind, it’s not smaller.

00:13:41 [Alison]
Yeah.

00:13:41 [Melissa]
And you’re trying to it’s a smaller keyword.
00:13:44 [Melissa]
And so it’s folding under that main keyword.
00:13:45 [Melissa]
When we say smaller, we mean, like, 20 or less.
00:13:48 [Melissa]
Yeah.
00:13:48 [Melissa]
Like, really tiny.

00:13:49 [Melissa]
And do if you do a search and your main genre like mine only gets 20 searches a month, just remember you live out in the boonies.

00:13:56 [Alison]
So there you go.
00:13:56 [Alison]
There you go.
00:13:58 [Alison]
So hopefully, that makes a lot of sense for you guys, and you’re gonna find that really, really useful.
00:14:02 [Alison]
If you have any questions or if we manage to confuse you in any way, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
00:14:06 [Alison]
We’re here for you.

00:14:07 [Alison]
Please, as always, share it, tag some people, think of one or three other people that would find this useful, and send it to them in a DM, and let

00:14:14 [Melissa]
us know.

00:14:15 [Alison]
Yeah.
00:14:15 [Alison]
So thanks for listening, guys.
00:14:17 [Alison]
Thanks

00:14:17 [Melissa]
till next time.
00:14:18 [Melissa]
Bye bye.
00:14:22 [Melissa]
Thank you so much for listening.
00:14:24 [Melissa]
If you’re enjoying the show, would you do two things for us?
00:14:26 [Melissa]
First, leave a review.

00:14:28 [Melissa]
Just stars would be awesome.
00:14:29 [Melissa]
And two, forward this episode to a Biz Nil spouse or anyone facing moving their business.
00:14:34 [Melissa]
We’d love it if you shared this episode with even just one person.
00:14:37 [Melissa]
If you have questions, you can reach out to Allison on Instagram at Allison Bell Photog, or you can find me, Melissa, in my Facebook group, Picture Perfect Rankings.
00:14:47 [Melissa]
Check the show notes for links, and we’re so excited to have you guys here.

00:14:57 [Melissa]
Here.