Doing Proper Keyword Research

Two of the most popular forms of internet marketing are pay per click advertising and search engine optimization. A major part of both of these is keyword research. Proper keyword research is crucial to doing any real internet marketing. Here are 4 tips to help you with your keyword research.

1. Make a thorough list. Coming up with the right keywords can be easy to start to pick primary keywords, but choosing good long-tailed keywords can often be harder to do. Try to think as the customer thinks and put every example you can think of. It’s always good to have a full list, then go over it later and revise it to pick out ideal keywords, the ones that have the best chance of conversion. Fill out your list to have more than necessary, then afterwards go back through and revise this list to specifically target your market.
2. Use a good keyword tool. There are several keyword tools available that can help expand your keyword list, both paid and free. Paid ones include services like NicheBot and AdWordAccelerator. Free ones can be just as good, and one of the most popular ones is straight from Google, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. There’s also the free version of WordTracker. Using these keyword tools can help expand on your keyword list nicely.
3. Make all keyword adjustments as necessary. There are often some small details that can make a big difference in the popularity of the keyword phrase, such as synonyms or spelling. Depending on what country you’re targeting, a word such as “optimization” may be more frequently searched for spelled as “optimisation”. Other adjustments such as testing between synonymous words can work, such as “car” and “auto”, or “cash” and “money”. Having a full keyword list to test with is always better, so try to come up with every possible variation you can to get your list.
4. Find out who searches for which keywords. In many cases you may have what you would imagine to be an ideal keyword, then realize too late that the keyword is commonly used in a completely different way. The word “dealer” could be intended to target a car dealership, but may end up drawing the majority of traffic from people looking for casino-based information. Proper keyword research will find out who is searching for the keywords used before spending money on these keywords to find out the hard way.

After doing proper keyword research and creating a full list, be sure to use methods to reduce your keywords to a very specific grouping of keywords that targets your customer specifically. You want to get keywords that convert, so being careful with your keyword research can make a large difference in your results. This can often save time and a lot of money in your internet marketing efforts.

Eric Gesinski runs Tulsa Marketing Online doing Tulsa website design and Tulsa SEO.