Keyword research is essential for successful online marketing. Choosing the right keywords can mean the difference between succeeding online or losing your shirt. Not only should you spend the majority of your time researching the best keywords for your webpage, website, or blog, but you should implement a comprehensive keyword campaign.



To be effective online and choose the keywords that are going to best work for you, you need to: learn what your competitors are doing, find the exact keyword phrase or phrases that will attract the most traffic, and chose keywords with little competition.

There are additional benefits to keyword research. The first is that your research will help you to determine who your target market is and how they search. This information can be beneficial to anyone designing their own landing pages. Keyword research also gives you the information you need to optimize your pay-per-click campaigns. Your ad copy, keywords, and landing pages can be developed to take advantage of your new found knowledge.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

How do you know which keywords are right for your promotional efforts? There are a number of steps to consider. That said, the process isn't too difficult and can be done in just a short period of time. The first step is to identify your niche. Try to narrow down the segment that you are trying to reach. One great way to do this is to ask "who are my competitors?" Once you've narrowed your list, you can use any number of free keyword research tools to scan your competitor's websites, seeing which keywords they target.

The bottom line is that keyword research is a key part of any marketing campaign. To be successful with your online marketing, you need to spend sufficient time focused on keyword research. That is why keyword research tools have been developed. Tools like Wordtracker, which offers a free trial version is a great option for completing the first step in researching your niche.

Now that you've done some basic research, and had a good idea of what keyword or keyword phrase you should use, its now time to build a list with those keywords and keyword phrases. You will refer to this list when building your PPC campaigns, jump pages, and blog posts.

A common question I get is "Where do you place these keywords?" Step two is to begin using your keywords strategically to drive targeted traffic to your website or blog. Although this isn't a comprehensive list, it should give you an idea of where to start placing your keywords to build traffic and improve the search engine rankings of your website or blog.

1. Begin by placing your keywords on the page you are trying to drive the traffic to. Start with a keyword density of between 3.

2. Metatags. Make sure that your keywords are placed in your title tag, description tag and keyword tags.

3. Blog posts. Create at least three separate posts that include information on a topic related to your keywords and place the keywords in these posts. Be sure to include your keyword in the title of your blog posts as well.

4. In-bound links. When developing in-bound links to your website from blogs, directories, or article submissions, make sure you keywords are placed in the anchor text of the link.

Driving traffic to your website or blog all begins with solid keyword research. Even your PPC campaigns become that much more effective when you've done the research upfront. Spend a good deal of your time narrowing down your list of keywords and researching competitive sites.

Once you've identified the right keywords for your website or blog, implement various techniques to drive qualified traffic to your site. Not only will be you attracting traffic to your site, but you will be attracting the right traffic - ready to buy.