Keyword Research: A Key Component to Your SEO Campaign

Keyword research is one of the most important and valuable parts of your SEO campaign. Here are some the key steps you’ll need to undergo in finding the right keywords for your site.

1.Brainstorm
Keywords are the bread crumbs you leave to help search engine spiders find your site. Before you start inserting keywords into your content, start doing some ground work. Think about what keywords would be relevant to your site. Do they relate back to something you sell? A service you offer? A user of your product? A type of product? A type of manufacturing process? A descriptive word or adjective?  If you were a customer looking for your site, what search queries would come to mind? Write down your ideas and then move on to the next step: targeting!

2.Target
Who are you trying to target with your SEO campaign? Decide who exactly you’re trying to reach with your message and start researching. What does your target market like? How about what they don’t like? What do you have to offer to the target? What sort of values do they have? Do they like to read blogs? Outlining your target market will not only make your keyword selections more accurate, but also make copywriting easier. When you have a feel for the audience, it becomes less difficult to try to reach them. Make sure your message is going to mean something to them before you start sending it! Go back to your brainstorming notes and trim out keywords that will be irrelevant to your target. Think of new ones that will be easy to relate to.

3.Research Tools
You have a feel for your audience and you have ideas on what keywords to use; so what next?     Now is the time when you put your researching skills to use. Use keyword research tools like Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Google’s Keyword Tool, and SEOBook.com’s tool to find out the search volume of your keywords, as well as similar terms and queries that you may not have thought of. Try to target more specific terms, as they are easier to rank for. Also, be sure to check out the competition density of your keyword before putting it into content. One easy way     to do this is to search for your term on Yahoo!’s search engine and see how many sites are     showing up for that term (located on the upper right hand side of the page, right below the     search query).

Now theses aren’t all the in’s and out’s of keyword research.

If you’re looking for a more in-depth resource for conducting and utilizing keyword research, try SEOmoz.com’s Internet Marketing Handbook. This guide is AWESOME! It’s packed with tips on SEO, keyword research, link building, blogging, social media, and more.

Happy Keyword Hunting!