SEO Keyword Research

Steps for Keyword Research

1. Make a initial list of every possible search word/phrase referred to as keywords that a potential customer may use to look
for your product, information or services that you have on your website. Use more phrases rather then individual words.

2. Don't use highly competitive keywords initially in the first phase of your seo as your seo handwork would get wasted. Try getting your pages ranked for less competitive keywords (but relevant) initially .

3. The more information you can include in your keywords , the better. What I mean by information is be specific about the
location or services you provide. Add your location to your keyword if your content is geographically sensitive.

For example: A person may use "search engine optimization India" is you are looking for an SEO from India.

4. Add and refine the keywords you listed above by analyzing your competitors keywords. For each of the top 3 pages you find in Google, yahoo and msn make a list of the title and keyword tags. See if you can find patterns of why these 3 pages are ranked for the keywords you wanted to be ranked for.

My approach to remove and prune the above keyword list is to

• Remove difficult terms
• Remove Over-Competitive terms
• Use questions for which your website would provide answers or solutions
• Remove Ambiguous and broad terms (try to be as specific as possible)
  

5. Try to append the following most common action words to your keywords wherever relevant and make sure your website caters to them.

Some of the action words are:

Free
Buy
Find
Purchase
Discounted
Lowest Price
Luxury
Cheap

and so on.

6. Avoid keywords that do not ad any value or weight to your keyword list such as

The
Of
For
Or
This
And
That
To
www
web

and so on.

7. Keep track of your server logs or stats to check what people have searched for (keyword) to reach your site. keep track of those main top keywords that people have used to reach your site and hence make them your primary keywords over a long span of time to capture the market for those keywords in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

8. Ask your customers and potential customers what all keywords they had used in order to get to your site. Try to pick out the most relevant keywords from the list and use them on your website.

9. Try getting a ranking by using the most common misspelled keywords.

For example: A person may use "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimization" to search for an SEO website.

10. Use both singular and plural versions of your top keywords.

For example: A person may use "seo freelancer" or "seo freelancers" to search for an SEO website.

11. Use Specialized Keyword Tools to measure the actual statistics or popularity that your keywords give eliminate the few
that are not getting traffic.

Example Tool: Word Tracker, Keyword Overture Selector Tool, Google Ad words Keyword Tool.

This is the only keyword tracker I have ever needed to get the job done. It is reasonably priced and the features seem almost endless. You can even download a free version and use most of the functions and get by if you wish. Paying definitely had its benefits though. You can research a ton of words at a time and analyze your online competitions back links. WebCEO is the only program I have ever needed to accomplish high rankings on good keywords that I have found with little competition