Keyword research and analysis is one of the most fundamental components of online marketing. If you want your website to do well and to rank high in the major search engines, keyword research and analysis is critical to your success.

Without doing the proper keyword research and analysis before designing a new website will not necessarily doom your website to failure, but it can damage its ranking and eliminate the effectiveness of the other aspects of SEO that you have used to optimise your page.

Keyword Research all starts with a keyword or keyword phrase that describes your website or online business. From there, you need to expand on the keywords to get a list of related keywords. The more words the more chances that someone will find your webpage and buy your product.

It is important at this point to fully explore the rational behind the human psychology where words are concerned. People search using words and phrases that are dependant on the urgency of their need. Let’s take an example of a person who is over weight and wanting to lose that excess weight. Initially they may want information about possible weight loss programs that are advertised online. Therefore their initial search term may be very broad such as “weight loss’ which would yields literally hundreds of potential websites all trying to gain the attention of the searcher. This type of search is based on a person’s inquisitiveness and need for information. This search is often referred to as a short tail search. This type of search is generally used to gain information

However when the research is maybe based on a specific immediate NEED people will search based on exact search words that specify a target. Now in the case of our weight loss search the person maybe looking for a diet product and will search for that product by name or brand i.e” slimming world diet pills” for example. Now this is a person looking for a specific product or brand. This type of search is known as a long-tail search, and converts at a greater rate because the searcher is motivated and using specifics to locate the product that fulfills their need.

It is important therefore that your list of keywords you generate are those keywords that directly relate to your product or website that you are advertising for.

So think naturally and think like your competitors and your customers alike. Most keyword research tools will provide you with data for each keyword you choose such as how many people search for that keyword each month, what the keyword would cost for a Pay Per Click campaign and more besides.

The most effective and by far the best FREE keyword research tool is Google’s own.

https://adwords.google.com/Select/KeywordToolExternal

This will display a lot of information for any keyword you could imagine that may describe a website and its content. What’s great about this tool apart from its cost is the ability to analyse your competition and also to gain related keywords that are not necessarily our chosen keyword but are words that relate to our keyword. The term used to describe the related words fall under a collective known as LSI (latent Semantic Indexing). Now LSI is a whole subject in itself so I will not make anymore of that right now. Trust me you want to know more and you shall but to get into LSI now would cloud the wider issue of keyword research.

Once you compiled your list of keywords, it’s time to do your keyword analysis. For this, you need to know who your most direct competitors are and what keyword they are optimising their web pages for. How they become your competitors and how long they have had their webpage up for. All this takes a few well chosen websites that will divulge this information for free.

So to find your competition you use Google and basically enter a search term that you would use to find your own site. Now in the weight loss scenario that’s easy, type in “weight loss” and you will find the following websites and PPC campaigns running for that niche on Google.

When the search page shows it displays the list and brief explanation of the site content. At the top and immediate right of the screen are the PPC campaigns advertisements and below that the organic or Natural websites that are showing because they are optimised for that search string or keyword you used. Now you know who is listed in terms of the organic and PPC campaigns being run by your competition. With this knowledge we now need to know how long any one of these has had a campaign running, the longer it’s been around the more chances the campaign is making money for the marketer behind it.

http://alexa.com

Use this site to find out how long your competition has been around based on your keyword research. Leave out the obvious large corporations that you recognise because they are not your competition unless you are one of them yourself.

Just enter the website address and see what statistics come up for the sites that are your competition. Remember you are trying to find those campaigns that have proven profitable so the longer the site has been around the more likely it’s profitable, especially for a PPC campaign.

As you can see, keyword research and analysis can be tedious and time consuming. But it is essential if you are to be profitable, and with the modern keyword research tools available for FREE its rewarding and targeted analysis which works.

Kevin here with more true traffic secrets to share with you.

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