The Basics of Keyword Research

If you want your website found on the web, keyword research is the first step. Well, actually, the first step is deciding what products and services your website will sell and then actually building a website, but in between those two, keyword research has to be conducted. It means finding out what your potential clients are searching for online.

The thousands of terms people use to search for things related to your industry online will help you target your pay per click advertising and other web marketing, as well as help your SEO efforts (especially so you know what anchor text to use when link building). The wider your subject and more services or products your provide, the more in-depth your keyword research will get, sometimes resulting in lists tens of thousands of words long.

Much of keyword research is just old-fashioned brainstorming. You sit down, think about your target audience and get in their frame of mind. Think about the types of things they might type in to find your service, and get yourself a general list of several terms. Once you have that together there are one of two ways to conduct keyword research - this is where the 'secret' comes in.

Most people will use online tools and programs to conduct keyword research. There are programs that will search several keyword tools on the net. You can also use the individual tools yourself and figure out which works best. Google's Keyword Tool generates a list of related keywords as well as suggested terms, also giving you an idea of how often they're searched for.

If you're doing keyword research in order to target your pay per click campaigns, there is a way to save yourself some time. You may even wind up saving money in the long run. It's just a matter of experimenting a bit with your search-marketing program of choice.

This technique involves spending a little cash on for your research, but it often yields better results than more traditional keyword research. Just take your first general list of keywords and build your text ad campaign around them in whichever program you use. Most marketing programs allow you to chose a broad or exact keyword match for your terms - choose the broad option. This means whenever someone searches for a combination of words that include one of your keywords, your ad will show.

By running a test campaign for a week or two and spending a little bit of cash, you can cut your keyword research time in half and actually raise your marketing results as well. As people search and click your ads, you can tell exactly what SPECIFIC keyword terms (long-tail or short) will attract you the most business for the least amount of money. Once you let the campaign run a while, you can start building a more detailed campaign, and eventually get rid of the "broad" match option and instead spend your ad money on a long list of exact keywords.

Keyword research can sound daunting, especially for newcomers, but practice makes perfect, and this tip can wind up saving you a lot of trouble and time. In the long run, it should also help you target your keywords to your audience better, get you higher conversion rates and hopefully save some money. It's always important to try something for yourself before you rule it out entirely!