The average keyword research document, providing it's thorough, can take upwards of days to compile. It's important when performing keyword research to make sure that you cover every conceivable variation of the main terms that can potentially drive traffic to your website. The keyword research stage is probably the most crucial element in any SEO Campaign and the one stage that you need to spend that extra bit of time on to make sure you get it right.
The Google Keyword Tool is the most popular keyword research tool on the market. This is a tool provided by Google that gives exact, phrase and broad match keyword volumes for any term you type in to the box provided. When using this tool it's advisable always to select "exact" match, this will return exact keyword volumes for the terms you have entered and is the preferred method of collecting data for SEO professionals. It's also important to remember that the values provided by Google are merely estimates and that it also accounts for the entire search volume around a particular term rather than the amount of traffic you could potentially receive from a first placed listing.
Type some of what you believe to be your main target keywords into the tool, order them by local search volume and analyse the data returned. It's important when performing keyword research to keep a mind on exactly the terms that will convert when they drive traffic to your website. Gaining additional traffic is one thing but always keep in mind the intent of the searcher whenever they perform a query keeping in this mindset will ensure that you acquire more revenue for your site, rather than just more traffic. Another thing to keep in mind is that the plural and singular values returned by Google can often be completely different always make sure and get both singular and plural volumes for each of your main target terms.