How To Do Keyword Research For Internet Marketing
Just about any of your internet marketing efforts begin with finding keywords that people are actually searching for that you can use to get traffic. One of the most solid ways to get visitors to your website is through the search engines.
Begin with a spreadsheet where you can keep a record of your keywords. If you begin with the most common keywords or keyword phrases that represent what you think people are searching for when you want them to find your website. This is the list that most everybody else that has a website has considered, so we need to take this to the next level with more specific keywords.
Once you’ve looked for those broad keywords, start looking for keyword phrases that match even more closely what you’re going after. These 3+ word keyword phrases are usually known as “long tail” keywords. These longer keyword phrases usually represent an individual that is much closer to making a purchase or making a decision on a service.
With any of these keyword phrases that you’ve found, you’ll need to determine how many monthly searches are done so you know which of these keyword phrases will be worth going for. Two great tools for doing this are the Google Adwords keyword tool and the free keyword tool at freekeywords.wordtracker.com.
With the reports on how many searches per month you’ll have from the free tools, you’ll also need to find the competition. The easiest way to do this is to find out how many websites Google or the other search engines have in their index that contain that keyword phrase. The less competition, the better.
There are a few ways to narrow the competition to determine which keyword phrases are the best. The tools I use are the advanced search features available through Google. I use the allintitle, the allinanchor, and the search with the keyword phrase in quotes. People don’t typically search that way, but remember that you are collecting data and not trying to mimic the search patterns of 99% of internet users.
In order to decide which keyword phrases to use, start with keyword phrases that have a minimum of 100 searches per day or 3000 searches per month. Of course, if you are very specialized, you may go for less than 100 searches per day. It all depends on what you want for your business. As far as competition, target keyword phrases that have less than 10,000 allintitle results. The lower you can get on this number, the easier it will be to rank high on the search engines.
When you have your keyword phrases found, you’ll be ready to start implementing those keywords into the website. There are strategies you can use on your website or on any web 2.0 properties that will help you get your website ranked in the search engines. Finding these strategies is a matter of researching search engine optimization.