I use a tool to put in a main keyword like 'dog training'. Then the tool generates a whole bunch of other keywords related to it. All I do then is filter out keywords based on the traffic they get, competitiveness of the top 10 in google for them and the commercial intention of the keyword.

1) I try to go for at least 1,000 exact visitors a month (hits to site, not general searches in google)
2) Top 10 isn't well optimized for on-page SEO and doesn't have lots of quality backlinks
3) OCI is at least over 50% but ideally greater than 80%

Concentrate on a health topic that you know a lot about. Look in the Google Keyword Tool for both broad match and exact match to get some idea of the "long tail" keywords (phrases with three or more words, some that you may not have thought of but will come up in broad searches) and drill down on those for more keywords. Make sure your topic has at least a few companies selling products that are in that specific niche, and which have affiliate programs. Look at other keyword research tools like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery if you have the cash on hand to afford them. Also, a lot of people rave about Market Samurai. While it uses Google Keyword Tool results, it does some analysis that GKT does not and can help find untapped niches.

Check out this recent WarriorForum thread for some more discussion about keyword tools.

In my own experience even your keyword have high competition, if your competitors don't optimize their keyword you're able to compete them. You can install SEO quake firefox add ons to analyze your competitors website. And when you type your chosen keyword in google you can see your competitors PR, domain age and other good information.

However lower competition is better choice, I also find that google keyword tools give us to many keyword to choose and sometimes its make me hard to pick one of them. The best tools to find good keyword is by using Market Samurai, it's paid program but for keyword research you can get it free.

Good luck with everything

Rian

You should get a good keyword tool. Keyword Analysis Tool - Market Samurai has a free trial and will help you learn a lot about exact match oci etc...

You can find pretty good videos on youtube that explain a lot of the proccess of using market samurai YouTube - market samurai Just skip the review videos and concentrate on the ones that focus on competetion oci and etc..

Get Market Samaurai free trial and go through their keyword selection guides. I'm sure that you will pick up a lot of tips from that alone.

Next get SEO for firefox plugin and analyze the top 10 sites (page rank, domain age, backlinks etc.) and see if you can beat them.

Thanks.

I also have a hard time looking for keywords, but I usually just keep going until I find something I like. I can usually do it in 10 minutes or less.

market samuray will surely help you. you can find it free somewhere. search on google. is the best

Don't be afraid of long tail keywords. Once your website rank for long tail keywords, it will get some credibility and trust on the search engine.

A great way to do keyword research using the Google Keyword Tool is to type in a keyword and then uncheck the box that says "use only words closely related to this keyword". Then out of that list, choose a keyword and put it into the keyword tool. From there you will get a set of long tail keywords and key phrases you can use. Perform this task multiple times and you will be able to go a few more levels down and start getting into buyer keywords. The sky is the limit.

I think while you are waiting, you should at least post some articles first, regardless of whether they are competitive or not just to add some valuable content to your site.

Perhaps targeting long tail keywords first.

Then after that, you can take your time looking for low competition keywords. You will get better results by doing at least something, then waiting until you find what you are looking for.

I think probably the smartest thing to do is to go after a niche that you like but that is pretty small. Become an expert in a small niche that is selling well.

So instead of promoting a product with a clickbank gravity of 200+, consider going after a product with a gravity between 5 and 10. And you have to make sure there aren't any huge products in that niche because then affiliates saturate the market by throwing up content and blogs everywhere about everything.

When you go to clickbank.com and search their marketplace for the 5-10 gravity products, you find some pretty crazy stuff. You want to dig a little to make sure it's selling and that you have a good idea how to promote it and stuff like that.

But I really think you should choose to go after a smaller niche. And the problems with finding good keywords should go away.

I know what kind of pain it is to try to find good keywords in the "get rid of acne" or "lose belly fat" niches. It sucks. It feels like there are 100 marketers throwing up content for every one person searching sometimes.

The GAKT will usually not give you many good suggestions and will actually hide keywords from you. If you want a great paid solution that pays for itself in no time, check out Keyword Sniper Pro 2.0 from Jack Duncan - all the long-tail keywords you'd ever need...