Help! Funny questions on keyword research..

Hi there,
Firstly I am a newbie (ish so sorry if it seems silly) I have picked the niche I would like to do an affiliate site about. I want to create (due to my interest and knowledge) a website on womens fitness/nutrition. I chose it to be aimed at women just because I can relate and believe there is a market and afer some keyword research it seems to confirm this however here is where I would really like some things clarifying if you know the answers…


1)When doing keyword research there is limited keywords (but enough) for fitness (or other related words) that have the word women(s) in there too, couple of main ones are ‘womens fitness’ and ‘womens exercise’ but there are of course MANY searches for fitness/exercise/nutrition etc without the word women. Now I of course know I can use other fitness related words to drive the traffic too but as my site is aimed at women does this not make disappointing if say a guy lands on my site on a fitness related longtail keyword search only to find it is aimed at women?? Is it a bad idea to aim just to the ‘women niche’ if it means having traffic click away when they arrive at my site-though by the way I really don’t have a problem with men at my website!
2)What about keyword misspellings (when people have searched at google and mispelled maybe a common word)do you just ignore them as you cant write a page/post mispelled just to get that traffic can you?
3)Is there a limit on the minium amount of daily searches you should consider when choosing keywords for writing a page/post/SEO on? Ie if it only had say 5 searches a day but had a few similar keywords that might make it add to say 50 searches a day is it worth it?
4)Can you blend 2 or 3 longtail keyword phrases in the same post so maybe you cover your main longtail keyword (and the variations within that) and then also catch longtail keywords that do not have as many searches but is quite closely related to your main topic/longtail keyword.
5)Any feedback on my site idea would be appreciated my intention is to create great content and then have affiliate products ie: vitamins/supp and some fitness products ie: trends from fitness world….aimed at helping women to stay fit or get fit and have fun!

Any comments/feedback on my niche idea and the questions would be greatly appreciated…have a nice day :)
oh and thank you :)
Mel

it's me again answering my own post just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on my questions or whether they are just not answerable :) any input would be greatly appreciated esp from Lynne if you have the time :)

Hi Mel,

I think your idea of targeting women is great!

Don’t forget that you also need to look at the competition. The more competition there is for a keyword phrase, the harder it is to get ranked in the search engines.

You absolutely want to drill down to a main keyword phrase that has enough searches for potential traffic and not too much competition.

Pages and posts should include the long tail keywords to gather up the traffic for those related phrases with lower traffic.

Of course you can use more than one related keyword phrase per post or page, but you want to make sure you don’t overuse them an appear like you’re spamming. Always give quality content.

Have you read Lynn’s post about her Web Page Optimization Checklist? It’s got a good example of using keyword phrases.

1) It's best to 'focus' on what you're aiming for. If you're shooting for women's fitness, then focus on women's fitness. You could end up trying to spread yourself too thin otherwise and get into way more competitive words that you're not really going to be focusing on building links for, at least at first. What you want to try to do is get the traffic for the keywords you're focusing on. So pick them, keep them as laser focused as possible and work on those. Don't get distracted with everything else in the world out there.

2) If there are enough keyword misspellings, they can be good low hanging fruit. If there are just 1 or 2 per month, yeah it can't hurt to do a post and build a couple of links for them but don't waste too much time on them if there aren't a lot of searches for the misspellings.

3) That's all going to become personal preference. We all have our preferences and our methods to make things work for us. You need to compare those searches with the competition of the searches to determine if they're worth it. I don't usually look at anything below 30-50ish depending on overall picture of everything but I've been known to go as low as 20 in special cases.

4) You can blend them if you do it right, with what you're trying to achieve. One 5 word longtail would cover the other words in it too yes. It may not match the variations you want, depending what they are though. If the words are in a diff order, I'd do them on their own post.

5) I don't have much feedback offhand because I don't know much about your niche, the keywords you're looking at and the competition attached to them ..but fitness usually has a good amount of competition. If you choose your keywords wisely, plan how you will attack everything, build the links you need for everything, continue fleshing out, continue adding good content, and get your site out there with links and engagement you can generally succeed if you stick with it.

Hope that helps. I could write pages on each question so I tried to keep it short & sweet. There's no one magic formula for everything. You have to always take the overall picture into consideration and figure out what works for "you".

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply! I intend to stay directed at women but in that case that means I can still try longtail keywords related ie 'big butt' or 'flabby arms' right? meaning things that of course that women usually relate to or what help with not only women but majority of women....
But still with the direction of women....
hmmm sometimes I think I should of gone into my other interest idea 'aromatherapy' just purely as maybe womens fitness is maybe little deep with a first niche with all the big boys out there talking fitness..do enjoy the subject though :)

oh also forgot to say within the site I intended to discuss nutrition info ie: foods,vitamins, healthy diet...

Sure you can. The first key is making sure you choose your keywords wisely and choosing a handful or so to focus on first, build content and links for those and then start fleshing out.

You know who your audience is and you're familiar with their needs so you'll do fine =-)

Make a list of the low search/low competition keywords and write a post on one of them each day and continue to build on your main keywords in the meantime too.

Just don't go too many directions at once, get established first so that you can create a flow before you start trying to go so many directions with so many words that you are spread so thin you don't get love fast enough for any of them.

So let's say you've got 5 main keywords you're going to focus on first (5 that have a good search return). Try to post content once a day (or every other day at least if you can't stick to once a day for some reason) for one of your main keywords. Then try to also make at least one post every day or two for one of your lower search/lower comp keywords. This way you're consistently building for those higher searched/higher comp keywords while you also get a little love from the lower searched/lower comp keywords.

If you've got a day where you don't have much to do, schedule several posts to be posted each day for the next week so you don't have to worry about it each day and can work on other aspects of the business.

If you stay dedicated, you'll get there!!! BEST of luck =) IM is the best!

Thank you so much again! you really helped make it clearer for me and I so appreciate you taking the time to do so :)
can I just ask you a couple of questions if you might also be able to help..

I want to build a static website using wordpress (heard you can do this) as I dont want it to look too bloggy if you know what I mean but the plus side seems to be having the blog facilities at hand with this but still want to add a blog can this be done? and to get static pages through wordpress is it just a matter of changing some things when I am in there or is it a different area altogether within wordpress for static pages? and can I still add a theme? not too familar with wordpress so sorry if this seems a daft question!
When looking at your competition (top ones at google) and you check out the backlinks etc how does it work when you come across (in the top spot) results like 'yahoo answers' or 'youtube' or 'ezine articles' how can you compete with them with links or whatever methods???
Thank you again for your time it is really helping me get a grasp on this IM and yes I agree I think once I am in and started IM will rock! right now though I just have some questions and appreciate your help!
mel

Yes there are several ways you can build a static page for the homepage and then add wordpress to the blog part by uploading your static page as an html file to the root directory, then uploading Wordpress to a sub-directory named 'blog' or whatever you want to reference it as. And adding a tab or link to the home page will help people know how to access the blog.

I usually just roll with WP over a static page with WP installed on backend and make it look nice just because the options w/WP are unbeatable for so many diff things. But it's certainly a matter of personal preference and CAN be done.

You can add a WP theme to the blog part but if you use a separate static homepage, no you can't do that. However there are some WP tricks and themes and programs that will allow you to use WP for whole site and display only a static page or landing page of your choice (even a non-wp static page) so those are some options you can look into.

Well the thing about finding that your competition is getting top spots from Web 2, social, etc. sites is kind of good in this way...now you know what you need to do is go secure your OWN spot on those same sites and then build backlinks to IT so you outrank their spot on that site in the SEs ;-) You may get some top spots temporarily on these sites just by grabbing a spot there but building links back to that page will help you stay toward the top with them because these sites generally display new entries in top spots of SEs but usually only temporarily...so building links to it helps you secure it.

=)

Thank you for the replies I am taking it all in and am busy working on this but I am regularly reading at the forum to learn more..I am sure I will be back with more questions and again thanks for the welcome and detailed answers...heres to success!