Keyword research should be one of the first things you do if you want to perform search engine optimization on a web page. You should do keyword research even before you write the text content for your page.

Keyword phrase research involves identifying a group of keyword phrases that will be used in optimization. This step is critical and requires a considerable amount of time to find a good set of phrases that offer a balanced combination of two important factors: high usage by searchers and relatively low competition within the search engines.

Determining the most used phrase that contains your targeted keyword(s) is relatively easy. Online tools allow you to enter a particular keyword or words and will return all the ways in which that word(s) was used by searchers in the last month and in what volume. However, the most used phrase(s) is also likely the one with the greatest competition within the search results and may, therefore, not be where you would want to devote your optimization efforts. A more effective approach is to find a set of phrases (10 is a nice round number) that are heavily used by searchers but somewhat less competitive in terms of the total number of search results.

The best way to determine how many people are searching "your business" term is to use the Google External Keywords Tool. Just type in the key phrase and see how many monthly search Google gets for that term. Since Google is the leading search engine that processes the majority of the searches, this is a fairly accurate reflection of what people are likely to type into the search field.
Steps to Effective Keyword Research

An understanding of SEO Keyword Research is necessary to perform Effective Keyword SEO Research;

1. Make an initial list of every possible search word/phrase referred to as keywords that a potential customer may use to search 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.

4. Add and refine the keywords you listed above by analyzing your competitors keywords.

* 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. 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.

6. Keep track of your server logs or stats to check what people have searched for (keyword) to reach your site.

7. Ask your visitors what all keywords they had used in order to get to your site if you get a chance to interact with them and make a list. Try to pick out the most relevant keywords from the list and use them on your website.

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

9. 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 Freelance SEO website.

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

Free Online Keyword Research Tool -

Google Keyword Tool is the best online Keyword Research Tool. It generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends.

Good Keywords is a Desktop Keyword Suggestion Software. This Keyword Tool Quickly Discover New & Hidden Keywords Using Keyword Strategy Studio.

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