The Secret to Getting Traffic to Your Lenses
Think you know the secret? Think it is all about getting your lens to the first page of Google? That’s how you get traffic right? So the secret must be backlinking ~ because that’s what you have to do to get to page 1.
NOPE.
That’s not the secret. The secret is something that comes way before you even write 1 word.
The secret is SEARCH VOLUME.
Here’s a conversation I’ve had with at least 5 people in the last few days:
Them: “I want to promote this product”
Me: “Ok, what keyword are you targeting?”
Them: “Ummm… keyword?”
Me: “uh ~ yeah, keyword. You know the words you target your page for so you will get traffic for that term? Keywords”.
Them: “oh ~ I guess I was going to go with __________ ” (just fill in the blank).
Me: “ok, let’s take a look at it. Well this term has no search volume. No one is searching for this keyword”
Them: “oh ~ is that important? But this product is popular. But this product is a big seller. But this product is selling like hot cakes on ebay. But but but but but…”
If this conversation sounds familiar please, don’t think I’m picking on you … I’m not. This is a KEY stumbling block for many new internet marketers. In fact, it was the main thing that held me back for a couple years. I thought if I just wrote about something people would come ~ people are interested in the topic right? So they should come.
Well it doesn’t quite work that way.
If you can get this one thing ~ you will be more than half way to success. I understand as with everything in internet marketing there is always conflicting information. Some people will tell you that search volume doesn’t matter, and just find a hungry niche and start selling. That may work for them ~ and maybe it really does ~ but it does NOT work for me, and I have not met a newbie yet that can make it work.
The thing about going after a hungry market ~ think weight loss ~ is that the market is really competitive. While competition can be a good thing ~ it tells you people are buying ~ for a newbie it’s like trying to swim to the mainland from Alcatraz. There’s sharks everywhere, the currents are crazy, the water is wicked cold, and the chances of you making it ~ with no experience swimming in these waters is slim to NONE.
Before you start swimming from Alcatraz you have to do some learning ~ and a lot of practicing. You have to learn how to manage your body swimming in cold water, how to navigate the currents, how to stay out of the shark’s mouth. 
It’s not much different when we’re talking about internet marketing.
What I’m trying to teach you ~ with Christmas cash blueprint, and all these tutorials is how to manage all the variables so you can learn how to manage all the pieces ~ then when you’ve got the hang of it you may want to try swimming from Alcatraz ~ however, you may find that swimming in a small, warm lake with only a large mouth bass to worry about is a much better way to go!
So here’s what I suggest ~ you learn to swim before you journey from Alcatraz ~ and in internet marketing that means finding good keywords.
There used to be one saying that annoyed, aggravated, entirely pissed me off more than any other when I was a newbie marketer and that was “find good keywords”.
The problem was, no one EVER told me HOW!!!! I knew it was importatnt, but you don’t know what you don’t know. I can’t rightly find good keywords if I don’t know what the hell that means or how to do it. Right??
Well today I’m going to show you how to find good keywords and what they can do for you. (I’m aplogizing already because my analogy has already taken us to over 600 words lol but bear with me because this is HUGE)
I’m going to go through the proces of finding good keywords in a few different ways to hopefully help the most people. I’ll do text ~ video using free resources, and video using micro niche finder, so choose the method of learning that suits you best and go for it!!
Finding Good Keywords 101
What makes a good keyword?
2 things.
1. search volume
2. minimal competition ~ I’ve already covered how to find low competition keywords here.
Search volume:
Search volume is simply the number of people who have gone to a search engine and typed in a certain word or phrase trying to get information. This is called a search query and we are going to focus on Google search engine since they get the majority of searchers.
Search volume tells you what people want. It tells you how many people want it. It tells you exactly what words to optimize your page for. It can tell you exactly what product or service to offer on your page.
The name of the game in internet marketing is figuring out exactly what people want and giving it to them. When you use keyword research to do this, it is very easy to make your product/keywords/content all completely relevant and this will increase your conversion rate.
So let’s get started with our keyword research
I’m going to work on finding keywords for specific products because that’s what we’re doing currently. There are other ways you can do keyword research but for these purposes we’re going to look at products.
1. Get an idea.
You’ve got to start somewhere. This is why I sent you to Amazon to look for product ideas. You can start with a specific product, a product line, or even a general product category.
Today we’re going to look at inversion tables as a starting place.
We’re going to go to the Google keyword tool (or micro niche finder if you have it) and put in our idea.
We’re going to hit search and see what we get. This is why it’s called research ~ you have to go in with an open mind ~ you want to see what is going to show up. If you go in with a predetermined idea of what you’re going to do you will miss a lot of really good stuff.
2. Look through the results and see what’s there.
Look for specific product names, product groups you can look further into.
Let’s just take a look at what showed up. This is only the first few things, there were a couple hundreds keywords that popped up, but already we have some great information.
f7000 inversion table ~ that sounds like it could be a specific product, so does f5000.
Lifegear and Teeter sound like brands we could look into further, and do some more investigating.
Now the big thing we are looking at here is SEARCH VOLUME. That’s the number on the right hand side. When looking for these specific product keywords you want to find keywords with at LEAST 1000 searches.
Here’s why:
It’s pretty well accepted that if you can get your site to the #1 spot in Google you will get about 40% of the estimated search volume in traffic. (if you want to learn more about that Google it and take a look, there’s lots of info out there on this).
Let’s say you’ve chosen a keyword that has 500 monthly searches. If you get your site to #1 in Google that will mean you get about 200 visitors per month.
That’s sounds ok ~ however there are some other numbers you have to look at.
Let’s say you get about 20% of the people to click through to your product page ~ which is a conservative but realistic estimate. 20% of 200 is 40 people. That’s 40 people clicking through to your product page.
Average conversion rate can be from 1 to 3% (product pages can be much higher, but let’s stick with the average.) We’re saying out of 100 people you might get 1 to 3 people to buy. If you’re only getting 40 people a month to your site you’re going to be waiting probably 2 1/2 months before you make a sale!! That’s a LONG TIME to be patient!!!
Now let’s say you’ve chosen a product with 2000 monthly search volume. That’s 800 people a month to your lens. at 20% click through rate that’s 160 people getting to your sales page a month. with a 1 to 3% conversion rate you’re making at least 1 sale a month.
It’s a huge difference. Now don’t get discouraged ~ these numbers are just estimates and just to prove a point. You’ll see if you look on a lot of the Amazon pages they’ll say 75% of people who landed here bought, so your conversion rate can be a LOT higher ~ but if you don’t start with a decent level of initial search volume you’ve got nothing to work with.
I’m NOT saying look and look and look for keywords with 50,000 monthly search volume. You will be wasting a LOT of time doing that ~ but as you can see there are a lot of keywords out there with at least 1000 monthly searches.
Back to the keyword research:
You can now check competition for a keyword (like the specific product sounding keywords) or you can dig a little deeper. That’s what we’re going to do now.
Go back to the keyword tool, and let’s put one of the brand name keywords in and see what we get. Remember the more specific the keyword the more closely you can match the product and the higher your click through and conversion rates are likely to be.
Let’s take a look at the lifegear inversion table and see what happens.
That really netted us nothing further than what we already had ~ so let’s try ironman inversion table and see what we get.
This has yielded a few keywords that might be worth investigating:
Now when I say investigate I mean look at the competition and check to see if there are other Squidoo lenses for that specific keyword. But this is how you find search volume. Search volume is the key beginning to finding good keywords.
Let’s take a look at this in video now.
Keyword Research with Free Tools:
We’re going to be using the Google keyword tool, and SEO for firefox in this video. As well as Amazon.com
In this last video I’m going to use Micro Niche Finder to look for good keywords. Unlike the google keyword tool MNF will give you keywords that are not directly related to your initial query but are relevant to what you’re searching for. What’s really fun about this is that you can end up finding keywords you never would have even thought about searching for ~ that’s where it really helps you find keywords not everyone else is looking for.
If you have any questions about search volume, choosing good keywords, micro niche finder or any of the other tools I’ve used in this post and video ~ feel free to ask in the comment area. If you want some one on one help finding keywords for YOUR lenses feel free to grab some private coaching time with me. Sometimes it’s just easier to be able to talk about specifics individually.
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You really have surpassed yourself today, Jackie.
You’ve pulled it all together in a way that makes absolute sense. I don’t see myself as an absolute beginner but after reading your post I certainly have a clearer understanding of a concept that I thought I already understood.
I will be printing this post out and putting on the wall beside my computer – and, believe me, I don’t do that very often!
When you went down the page counting, were you adding up the page ranks? Wasn’t clear on what you meant by cut off of 30 and counting to 11 for the page, unless you were adding them up. Thanks.
Hi Lynn,
Yep it’s page rank ~ the competition piece is explained in this post (same one linked to in this post) how to choose low competition keywords
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I think the first investment I’m going to make in this business is going to be MicroNiche Finder. It seems like it does exactly what I need to get over my biggest hurdle – finding the right keywords. Every time I think I’ve got something in Adwords, I google it and there’s like a billion pages of competition. It gets so frustrating going back and forth, trying to find the something that will work.
Thanks for the detailed explanations, Jackie.
Kelly
ps – every time I link do a signature link in your comments section, it moves my lens up considerably in Google. Thanks for being so kind as to allow it!
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It really does make things really easy ~ I wish I had realized a year or two ago just how much easier it makes things ~ considering it was already sitting in my computer lol.
Glad the comment links are helping!! I have no problem as long as people are leaving good comments that contribute to the conversation.
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Hi Jackie – thanks for the great post. Can you let us know what the cost of MNF is? I clicked the link and of course it was a squeeze page with no pricing information on it – I get way too much email as it is and reluctant to give me email address – all I want to know is the price – if I can afford it now – I’m gonna go for it – if not, I’ll plan for it.
Thanks, Laura
Hey Laura,
If you look right below the opt in box you’ll see a link that will take you right to the sales page. Micro Niche Finder The videos are really good though ~ and I don’t get much if any additional email from him ~ except maybe notices if there is a webinar or something. Just so ya know.
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Hi Jackie – thanks for the info and so quick too! I clicked the link – wow the price is very reasonable and a one time fee too.b
Thanks, Laura
Jackie – 2 questions:
1. When you talk in the videos about prices of the items on Amazon, what price point are you usually looking at? Just curious what your barometer is on price.
2. Earlier up in the comments someone was talking about having their sites move up in Google if they put the name of their lens as their name in these blogs. Could you explain how to do that or point me to the area on your site where you might have already explained it?
Keep the great videos and blog posts coming!!
I really loved this post! It really cleared some things up for me. I have been at this affiliate marketing game for over 2 years now and only had marginal success with it. I think this information will really help me do better. Thanks Jackie. Oh BTW, I notice in you emails you are a fellow Kansan?
when watching the video about key word research using Google keyword tool I noticed that you did not use “exact ” you left it at “broad “i do not know if that is important
Hi jackie,
A great post as usual.very helpful to us- the newcomers! The task of choosing the right keyword and product has been explained very beautifully.The video is wonderful too!
I have just done my first product lens http://www.squidoo.com/OvalSlowCooker following your guidance.
Thank you!
sema
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The name gives it away – older than Methusela, and trying to get IM to work for me. Thanks for a most helpful post (and, as usual, a most friendly one!). A problem we have in my country is that broadband is expensive, so most of us have capped contracts. When teaching videos are used, we suffer because they use up a lot of data. I’m sure it’ll be quite a time-consuming task for you to offer text alternatives to the videos, but could you perhaps help us out in this way?
@money mom ~ I try to find products over $200 but if the search volume is super good over $100 will be fine.
To leave a link in the comments you just put your keyword in the name field and your url in the website field when you go to make a comment. Then your keyword will be linked to your lens and you’ll have a backlink.
@Jeff ~ yep ~ we’re in Kansas, just barely north of the OK border.
@bialetti ~ when you use your keywords as your name make sure you sign your comment so I know who to address my comments to
I did leave it at broad, and I’m still experimenting with how much it matters. A lot of times when you go this specific the broad and exact matches are just about the same, but when you get into more general keywords it may make more of a difference. Since I’m using MNF most of the time now I’m using mostly exact match since that’s what it defaults to.
@Sema Congrats on finishing your lens ~ you should have used html to make that a keyword anchor text link or use the name/url fields to make the link.
Those kind of links count a lot more than just the url. 
@Grandpa The top portion of this post (the pictorial tutorial) is the explanation that of the video ~ It’s the same content, same process as using the free tools to find good keywords. I realize not everyone wants to watch video which is why I put it in there ~ I think I mentioned that at the top of the post that I was doing it that way.
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What do you do when your keyword doesn’t match Squidoo’s naming convention?
For example (and I’m making up the model) if your keyword results rely heavily on being a Toshiba 7.1 Channel XR-7 The 7.1 is not allowed in the Squidoo lens’ name. Would you choose another product or drop it to ‘7 channel’ and hope for the best?
I think I know the answer, but for those who maybe haven’t run into it yet and are new enough to be stumped…..
My guess is that if the ‘7.1′ in the keyword makes or breaks the search volume then you should move on to something else, but if you really want that Toshiba lens then you need to place the keyword as close to the beginning as you can.
– Jeffery
Hey Jackie!
Your analogy kinda seems familiar to me. LOL
Thanks for explaining this further! It has really helped me to get on the right track!
Thanks again!
Cindy
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After reading this post I took this morning to re-evaluate my products/keywords/lensrank. This is very interesting, after knowing this there are some keywords I would have chosen differently. I have approx. 15 lenses and of those, 6 are on page 1 or top of page 2 on google. The search volume for these are all over 1,000, one over 6,000 and one over 9,000.
The PR is all under 30 for first page SEOQuake (this is all I use for competition research for now)
If I can get all 6 of these lenses in number one spot I will make over $1,000/month and this is using conservative numbers I think. Will you tell me if I figured estimated traffic correctly.
Number of searches (Google Keyword Tool) =1300 x .40 =520 (this would be traffic) 520 x .20 = 104 (this is click thrus) and it would take two months for one sale (one sale per 200 click thrus)
I hope all that makes sense, just wanted to know if I did that right?
Also, since I am already on page one and two am I right in thinking that with enough backlinks I should reach number one?
Thanks for all your help. I am going to make it because of you Jackie!!! You just make soooooo much sense and put everything in simple terms and I am sticking to my daily plan very well!!
Lisa
@Jeffery Hey, I’ve never really come across that situation before. Does the . show up in the keyword in the google kw tool? My guess is that it just becomes a space between the 7 and the 1?? I’m not sure if Google picks up punctuation when it looks at keywords ~ if it IS part of the keyword in the keyword tool then it’s probably important to have it and I’d look for another product ~ however ~ you’re going to be hard pressed to find anywhere you can use a . in a url.
@Cindy ~ believe me it wasn’t the only conversation I’ve had lately.
Glad this post helped clear things up.
@Lisa AAAHHHHH… Sorry ~ just because you have this information does NOT mean you get to obsess. Sorry. oh you sound just like me a few years ago. If I get these 10 sites to #1 I’ll be making 5K a month. It just never works out quite like that, no matter how you work the numbers. It doesn’t pay to obsess about getting to number 1 or all the numbers ~ just keep doing the process, and creating new lenses, build more backlinks, and you will be fine.
You can make plenty of sales not being in the number 1 position (I’ve made 3 sales off the ironman lens so far ~ at #5 last time I checked). It’s just the basic concrete number I have to use is for #1 placement in the example. But yes, more links will help move you up the search placement.
But don’t go spending ALL your time building links and neglect building more pages.
I once had an adsense site that SHOULD have made me $50 a day if it was at #1 on google. I got it to #1 and it didn’t do ANYTHING. If I had spent all the time building links and neglected building other sites I would have been out everything. While keyword research is KEY it still is only an educated guess at where to start.
ps. yes your numbers are right ~ but don’t obsess about numbers.
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Okay, okay I get it. My major downfall keeping me from productivity once again. Thanks for keeping me on track. I am glad I commented though because I probably would have spent the next two weeks doing nothing but those 6 sites! I do often obsess, but I will get back to lens building AND backlinking Thanks again Jackie
Lisa
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Hey Jackie.
Thanks again for all the info. Are you still available to make a lens?
Jane (MoneyMom)
Hi Jackie,
I have a total of 19 product lenses.
10 are on page 1 of google
3 are on page 2 of google
My blog has actually started showing up on page 2 for 4 of my products
I built more back links last week which helped move a few of the lenses up, how long do I give it before I start building more backlinks?
Total of 220 click throughs to product page on Amazon and 4 sales.
Thanks for all the great help,
Carole
Hey Carole!!
That is FANTASTIC!!!! Good work. I’d say keep building more lenses ~ and set aside one day a week to build links. Check weekly to see where your lenses are and then if they need more links do it one day a week ~ just devote that day to additional linking.
Key is to keep building more lenses though.
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Hey Jackie.
Thanks again for all your valuable superb info.
I have a question of how to make the Oval shaped orange pointer
just above Big arrow module as shown in below squidoo lens.
For your identification, it enclosed this text “Perfect size,great purchase! very helpful for working professionals! Great Kitchen Tool!”
http://www.squidoo.com/OvalSlowCooker
I am unable to get this, could you pls help me in this regard.Probably
the relevant html tag or the relevant info of same. OR is there is any
separate module for that pls…?
Look forward for your reply.
Thanks for all the great help,
Mahesh
It is called talk bubble module ~ go into add modules –> all modules –> look under the T for talk bubble.
I hope that’s what you were asking ~ if not, ask again and I’ll see what I can do.
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Hey Jackie!
In MNF when you are looking for the search volume and you go to “check filtered results”, and it asks you which “field” you want to get the info for, do you put in Local Search Count or Global Search Count? And then it asks “Criteria”. I always put in “is greater than” and then I put 999 in the next box.
So, I want to know if you put in Local or Global?
Thanks!
Cindy
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Hey Cindy,
I had to go look ~ because I don’t do it that way
you want to choose global. You always want to check the average for the last year which is what global is.
I just scroll down and look for kw over 1000 search volume, then I click the soc and whatever I want to know for them. I like to look as I go at all the available kws listed ~ it gives me lots of ideas and other things to look for.
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Thanks Jackie!
You know what? I think your way of using MNF would be faster than what I’m doing, so once again, THANKS! We all need to do things as fast as possible.
Did you see the new MOB (Measure of Backlinks) feature and the new Domain Availability feature? I’m not too sure on how to use either of those yet, but I’m going to view the videos that James has set up, so I will know how to use them. But I want to say, this is the only piece of software that I have bought that keeps on adding new and improved things to it, thus, making its value go up and up!
Thanks!
Cindy
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You know I just found that. I downloaded the newest edition hoping it would solve my OCI issue ~ which I found the fix too as well. That is some cool features. I will have to check the videos out ~ I have looked at some of the MOB but not sure what’s good/bad. Thanks for the heads up. It is VERY cool to be able to see if there are domain names available with the click of a button. Nice addition I must say.
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You got it to give you OCI? Because when I tried, it just said retrieving and that’s all it did…
Thanks!
Cindy
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Yeah on the front page there is a place you can click to lengthen the time it allows it to retrieve and it has been working better.
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Yeah, I know that and I did click on it to lengthen the time and I’m still getting “Retrieving” when I click on OCI. Don’t know what’s up with that! Oh well, I’ll keep trying!
Thanks!
Cindy
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Jackie,
Can you answer a couple of questions for me? I was trying to check my ranking for my lens about Shark Vacuum Cleaners, (Thanks for the hint about the linking in your last post), and found that on the page it showed up on in the search results, it was displayed as shown below. It’s like Google somehow picked up the associated lenses to my Christmas campaigns but I’m not sure how. Is this a problem? Is there any way to fix it if it should be changed?
1. Shark Vacuum Cleaner
… Diamond Floating Heart Pendant • Klipsch Quintet sl Home Theater System Set of Five Black • Dansko Nursing Shoes • Bob Double Stroller …
http://www.squidoo.com/shark-vacuum-cleaner – 21 hours ago
Next, when it comes to backlinking, is there a manner you have found that gets the sites to a top ranking quicker such as sticking with more Web 2.0 postings verses bookmarking or free ad blogs verses Web 2.0, articles verses free ad blogs? Or, is it a combination of all that does the trick?
Maybe I just need to test that process. Any suggestions on how I would go about doing that. It seems that as I continue with this career that would be good stuff to know. Thanks.
Jolene
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What did you put in the search box to get that? It may have been that your lens was not yet indexed (which it is now). I’ve gotten that sometimes when I put in the lens url but it’s not indexed yet.
You know that when you’re checking for rank in the search engine you just put in your keywords ~ not the lens url yes?
About linking ~ I’d download the mindmap and start at the beginning of the linking section and go from there. There’s no right/wrong way to do it. Links are links. It’s just a matter of what you can be consistent with and do regularly ~ so find a couple things that you can do and then do them.
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Hi Jackie,
I just love your blog and the information you provide. Thanks. So much help. When you are looking at search volume for a niche blog, a good volume would be greater than 300. What are the search volumes you look for with respect to keyword sniping or niche domination? I think you would need much higher search volume.
With keyword sniping it’s not only the search volume that counts but the amount of adcost and how they all work together to see if it’s going to be a profitable keyword. My ebook Keyword research revealed really focuses on finding keywords for keyword sniping sites.
For niche domination I would stick with the numbers I use for christmas cash lenses ~ 1000 searches monthly under 30 total PR for the 10 sites on the front page of Google for the main keyword ~ you may find it difficult to find super related keywords all with search volume that high so it just kind of depends. You want to find search volume but you don’t want to spend your entire life doing keyword research or you won’t ever get any real work done.
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Thanks. Your information is always so precise and detailed and right on point. I appreciate all you do for the rest of us.
How to check to see if there are other Squidoo lenses for that specific keyword that I have chosen?
I don’t know if i have done it right? I put the kw in the “search” space in squidoo with “” and search.
Most of the times there are so many lenses having the exact kw or slightly the same, what must I do in this case?
Thanks
Just go to squidoo and in the search box put your keywords in quotes. If there is already a lens with your exact keyword check to see if the url is available with dashes ~ if it isn’t then I would look for something else or else look for another keyword for the product you want to feature. There are a million products out there ~
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Hello,
I know keyword research can be fun. I do like searching around on the google keyword tool. There is lots to find. The problem I am having is that I can find a whole keyword phrase Such as “How to cure toenail fungus” (not using this) I will find that sometimes the local search volume is low and the global is higher. But when I do an exact search for the above phrase for example I get the exact global. My problem is though I do not know which is more important “global” or “local” because there are ideas when there is a high/low local and high/low global. Am I suposed to combine different keyword ideas from both local and global searches. Sometimes its confusing. But, maby this is something like a feeling or combination of different words to capture both the global an local traffic
You need to look at the global search volume ~ I think we’ve talked about this before. The global is the average for the last 12 months. That is the one that is important. I don’t even really look at the local ~ it just shows you how many people searched the previous month ~ not really all that important in the big scheme of things.
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