How Do You Do Keyword Research?

I use the various free tools out there to come up with lists of words like wordtracker and the google keyword tool.

Then when I am doing competitive analysis with the SEO4Firefox addon, I normally keep an eye out for the article directories or web 2.0 type sites in the top 10. Many of them give the date created and how many views they have obtained to help you gage if the phrase is actually getting any traffic for that spot.

Really there are 2 things you can do.

1. Run an adwords campaign for X days and see how many impressions you get per day for the word.

2. Slap up a page of content around the phrase, see where you end up, and see if that's getting you any traffic at all.

One costs money and the other costs some time/effort.

Eventually, I will keep an eye out for what my visitors are searching for from analytics and start to make pages around those terms as well if I already haven't made a page of content around that term.

At the end of the day, alot of it is hit and miss since none of the tools are completely accurate.

Hope that helps you out a little.

Try the trial for market samarui they have a lot of cool features, that might help. I also heard micro niche finder is good.

I use micro niche finder to find my keywords and se nuke to see the competition levels

I follow the 5 steps mentioned below to do the Keyword Research for my sites:
Step 1: Creating the list and checking it twice - in this process is to create a list of potential keywords. Brainstorm all the words you think a customer would type into their search box when trying to find you. This includes thinking of phrases that are broad and targeted, buying and research-oriented, and single and multi-word. Come up with enough words to cover all the services your site offers. You can also take help from your friends, colleagues or past customers for help.

Step 2: Befriending the keyword research tool - your next step is to determine the activity for each of your proposed keywords. You want to narrow your list to only include highly attainable, sought-after phrases that will bring the most qualified traffic to your site. By inputting your proposed keywords into a keyword research tool, you can quickly learn how many users are conducting searches for that term every day, how many of those searches actually converted, and other important analytical information. It may also tune you in to words you had previously forgotten or synonyms you weren't aware of.

Step 3: Finalizing your list - Now that you have your initial list of words and have tested their activity, it's time to narrow down the field and decide which terms will make it into your coveted final keyword list.

Step 4: Plan your Attack - So you made your list of about 10-20 highly focused keywords, now what do you do with them? You now need to prepare them for launch. You've spent a lot of time molding your keywords; make sure you use them in all the appropriate fields to get the maximum benefit.

Step 5: Rinse, Wash Repeat - As your customer's and your site's needs change over time, so will your keywords. It's important to keep monitoring your keywords and make tweaks as necessary. Doing so will allow you to stay ahead of your competition and keep moving forward. So always keep updating your keywords in regular interval of time.

Most of my niche websites are blog based. Over the last year I have found MarketSamurai to work really niche for what I need. I start my search with a main keyword like "Health" then look for niches like "body building" that get a lot of traffic then narrow my search for "body building" and look for keywords that get above 80 searches a day and less then 40,000 competing pages this way I know the post will rank with minimal backlinking and article submission. Hope that helps. You can also do this with the google adwords keyword tool, but it takes longer, but is free

adword is the best..go for long tail keywords made using keywords you get from adword

GI want to thank everyone for the input. Great information here. When testing with AdWords, what do you generally set for max bids? Do you keep it super low? Cause it seems that your ad would have to be on the first page to ensure accurate feedback.

I spy on other peoples sites and campaigns and copy and optimize.

google keyword tool, yahoo answers and search suggest tool for yahoo and google. Oh yeah my brain to!

google keyword tool but also keyword tracker to start off then i see from the content i made what i am getting traffic for and then, as said earlier, build more content around that area i get the visitors for.

Google keyword tool. I start with a broad niche and then drill down for keyword phrases, making sure to use the 'exact match' parameter. I look for terms searched anywhere from 300 times per month and up, check the competition in Google (in quotes). If the competition is low I write an article containing that exact keyword phrase, post it on my blog, throw and few backlinks at it with the same keyword anchor text, and the traffic starts coming.

You don't have to find search terms with thousands of hits per month to get traffic. It is much easier to rank high in the SERPs for longtail phrases with fewer searches, and thus much less competition. Write enough articles targeting these terms and you will have your traffic without trying to beat hundreds of other webmasters in the rankings. Best of all your traffic will be laser targeted, and your site will begin to rank as an authority for the broader niche you are focused on.

There are many online articles about keyword research, Just search google and read. keyword research is a critical step into building a website. it is the very first difference between a website that makes 1$ and the other that makes 1000$ when other factors are fixed.

Hey Dral

A quick question about market samurai, When you are determining a good keyword to go for do you select phrase match or exact match?

I use Market Samurai and SpyFu...a great combination

Wordtracker is not using Google results.

That is why they differ so greatly in how they report.

Also remember that even if you get to the #1 spot you are not going to get all 4k to click on your link.

Count on half this.

I try to see what competitions sites are out there. Put your keywords in quotes " " and do a normal search, this will result results that only include competition sites.

I do keyword research through tools listed here.

5 Keyword Research Tools That I Use | Moola Days

Daniel's post has helped me a lot:
http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...ion-101-a.html