Introduction to Keyword Research

Keyword research is an essential part of writing effective content pages. A “keyword” is the word or phrase that a web surfer types into the search engine in an effort to find exactly what he is looking for online. It also refers to the word or phrase you bid on when using any pay per click system. In essence, keywords are important in internet marketing because research about what keywords people are searching for reveals what content a marketer should try to provide.

So how do you as a content provider ensure that you have a better than average chance of being found amidst the millions of other pages available to web surfers? The answer is found in keyword research.

When you have a "content site" as opposed to a "mini site" each content page should be keyword focused.. Each page should be built around a keyword that is very specific to that page. Ultimately, which keywords you choose will determine how well your pages do in major search engines.

Keyword research tools allow you to assess demand by evaluating which terms surfers are searching for and how often. Depending on which tool you are using, a list is returned revealing the number of times that word was searched for in a particular week or month. Suggestions are provided for variations on the word or phrase. This allows you to see how popular your original topic is, as well as come up with phrases for additional keyword focused content pages.

For example, if you input a word into wordtracker's free keyword tool , the tool returns up to 100 related keywords. By inputting the phrase “work at home”, here are the top related keywords and an estimate of their daily search volume:

work at home

6,760 total searches (top 100 only)

2223 - work at home

561 - work at home jobs

160 - legitimate work at home jobs

153 - work at home opportunities

133 - work at home psychic jobs

120 - work at home scams

111 - work at home business

101 - work at home classifieds

85 - work at home data entry

84 - work at home moms

82 - free work at home jobs

79 - free work at home

76 - work at home opportunity

74 - work at home mom

73 - legitimate work at home

Each phrase is a potential catalyst for a keyword focused content page.

Keywords need to be analyzed for demand and supply. The number of times a keyword was searched in a given day or month is an indication of the demand for that keyword. By going to a search engine such as Google and inputting your keyword, you can get an idea of the existing supply of sites that are already using that keyword. A spreadsheet can be created to list keyword, demand, supply and supply site info. Under supply site info, take notes from the top 20 sites you found in your supply search. This will give you an idea of what sites a particular keyword is currently leading to.

By tracking this data in spreadsheet form, it can then be resorted by demand or supply. The best opportunity lies in high demand, low supply keywords.

This is a brief introduction to keyword research. The whole process of keyword research and analysis can be time-consuming and tedious. A simpler way is to start your website through Site Build It. For a preview of the business building tools offered by Site Build It, here is a sneak peek at the Site Build It Action Guide The Action Guide is the core of the SBI business, and used in conjunction with the SBI forums, and takes a lot of the work and time out of keyword research – actually, I would say it reduces the time involved by around 90%. Another tool SBI offers is Analyze It, which analyzes the keyword density of the page at the click of a mouse. Keyword research doesn’t get simpler than this.

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