If you’ve ever had to embark upon a keyword research project for your sites and campaigns, you know exactly how painful and sometimes bewildering it can all be. What’s the best way to do it? Who’s right? How much is enough? What if it doesn’t work? What’s a “buyer’s keyword”?

All valid questions, and ones that do need answers. Let’s take a quick look at several aspects of keyword research, and hopefully provide you with some of the answers today!

So What Is Keyword Research?

Basically it’s a compilation of keyword phrases for which you’d like to optimize your site, content, or for paid marketing campaigns. These keywords will enable you to be found for the words that best represent your plans and visions for your sites or ad campaigns. There are many ways to accomplish this task. You can use free tools available on the internet, paid tools, outsourcing, brainstorming, or a combination of all of these. Checking your own server logs is never a bad idea either. You want to be aware of what searchers are typing into find you now!

Many people start off with the free Google Adwords External Keyword Tool. This returns many results with search counts that will give you a good general idea of what is popular and what is not. After finding some possibilities here, you’ll want to head over to A Google Search box and see how many pages are optimized for these terms. This will give you a basic idea of the competition and difficulty of the keywords being considered. For a free guide on how to do this download My Take On Basic Keyword Research.

Keyword Research Strategies

Here are some points to keep in mind while performing your keyword research.

• Think like a searcher. What would you type in for a search of this nature?
• Don’t go for overly competitive phrases for your primary keywords right away. Build up to them!
• Don’t choose obscure, little searched-on phrases either. You’re after traffic, remember!
• If you have a lot to do, invest in a tool to help you. You can take forever doing it the free way.
• See what keywords your competitors are targeting, and see if you should be too!
• Break your keywords down into manageable sets, both for SEO and PPC.
• Target brand names and model numbers where appropriate.

Use Keyword Modifiers

There are a number of keyword modifiers to help in your search. Some of them would be :
Buy, best, top, shop, get, find, purchase, San Diego (use local geo-specific cities and states), cheap, affordable, and anything else that helps you identify a specific search or location.

DIY or Outsource?

This is a tedious and exacting task, that can be detrimental to your sanity. If you’re not up to it, you can outsource at least the initial part of it, and get a bunch to work with. If you do employ an outside firm to do this, make sure you are as sure about them as you can be. You could also choose to set up a staff member with a good tool and let them have at it, thus relieving you of the task but still getting it done in house.

My Favorite Keyword Research Tools

Here are some of the keyword research tools I use all the time. Some do things others don’t. Clearly you don’t need them all! take advantage of any free trials they offer!

MicroNicheFInder – One of the best paid tools out there, MicroNicheFinder gives you a terrific amount of data on niche keywords, market competition, Adwords prices, search counts and great digging functions. They are coming out with a new version on March 22, with a  slew of new features. Highly recommended!!

Traffic Travis – Silly name, cool tool! Great for your overall business as well as for keyword research, Traffic Travis allows you to track, spy, dig deep and analyze a particular phrase in the search engines and more. They have a free version as well as a paid one.

Market Samurai – One of the best internet marketing tools around, it’s more than a keyword tool, though it handles that quite nicely! It’s also great for SEO, tracking rankings, soying on competition and more. They have a free trial.

CashKeywordsPro – The new kid on the block, but destined to perhaps rule over all! A huge amount of functionality, and is geared to affiliate marketing. You can build keyword lists very quickly here. They also have a number of exciting additions coming soon that will be very cool!

There are a number of other keyword tools out there, and many of them are pretty good. Tools like WordTracker, NicheBot, KeywordElite, and KeywordCountry to name but a few.

However you choose to get your keyword research going, just make sure you get it going! Floundering around with unfocused marketing is no way to get found, either in the search engines or in paid search!

Please leave any questions in a comment, and I’ll gladly answer them!

Keith