Finding The Right Keyword

Many people feel that keyword research is as much an art form as it is a science

, and in many respects they are correct. However, by having a method and following it faithfully each time, you can keep it more on the side of science, which is important if you don't have the experience needed to be an artist.

The first thing you need to do, before actually starting your research, is define your purpose. That is, what you will be using the keywords you find to accomplish. Do you want to find keywords for which your content can rank in the search engines? Do you already have an audience which you want to reach with just the right wording? Are you digging further into a particular subject looking for a smaller niche?

The reason it is important to consider your purpose up front is that you will want to conduct your research a little bit differently based on that purpose. To rank in search engines, you will need to focus on metrics. For a known audience, you may be looking for the right way to say something. And for niche research, you are generally looking for factors showing that there is a market in the niche.

Once you've defined your purpose, your next step will often be a brainstorming session. Here is where you will want to come up with as many different ideas as you can surrounding the topic you are researching. For this you should sit for a specific amount of time just writing everything you can think of down on paper. If you do this without editing yourself, you'll end up with a lot of unusable stuff, but you'll also have many more usable ideas than if you had allowed yourself to edit while brainstorming.

Now that you have some ideas to work from, the next step would be using available tools to help you expand your list of keywords. When searching for wording, as mentioned above related to communicating to an existing audience, this step can probably be skipped because you aren't looking for an expanding list of words, which this step provides.

There is no shortage of available tools to help you with keyword research. Google offers an array of different tools that can help you in your quest. If you are looking for a narrow niche, the new search tool called "Wonder Wheel" can be of great help. It takes a keyword and presents related ones, each on a spoke of the wheel, which can lead you down a path to find a suitable niche.

Beyond that, there are the suggested keywords supplied by most search engines while you are typing in your query. These are often excellent keywords as most search engines attempt to supply the searcher with the most commonly searched terms. Additionally, there are a number of keyword analysis software tools available that can make your searching easier, faster, and more organized.

Once you have this long list of seed keywords along with their long-tail variations, you can begin to search for some of the already available content. Looking through and consuming this content, especially the content found wherever a community of people who are within the niche gather, can help you understand what they are asking, and what they really want. Understanding this will help considerably when determining the relevancy of a given keyword.

Finding The Right Keyword

By: Chris Steiner

Finding The Right Keyword

Many people feel that keyword research is as much an art form as it is a science

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