By following these top 5 keyword research steps you will be able to dominate your competition in any internet marketing campaign you launch. Keyword research is the foundation that your entire campaign should be designed around for. Below is a list of 5 simple to follow steps that if followed will lead to a solid foundation and a very powerful campaign.

1.) Google Suggest is a great free tool which you can find for free doing a Google search. You simply start typing in a keyword and it will automatically start suggesting some great key terms of your choice. This tool can help get your juices flowing and give you some great keyword phrase ideas.

2.) Use SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool which is a free tool you can find on Google. You type in your seed keyword and it will return the most popular searched keyword phrases back along with how many times it's being searched. You want to find a few keyword phrases that drive traffic using this tool. If the keyword phrase you want isn't producing any traffic then don't waste your time any further. Find some keyword phrases getting some great results, this is the key.

3.) Now that you have a few keyword phrases go to Google and type in the keyword phrase in the search bar. This will show you how many competing websites there are out there. Next put quotation marks around your keyword phrase like this "keyword phrase" and Google will return the number of optimized results, this is the real number we're looking for, record that number. Repeat this to all your keyword phrases and select the keyword phrase which has the least optimized competition on Google with the highest traffic and do the math. A formula for this is to take the optimized results and divide that by the number of searches. This will give you the R/S value, the lower the number the better the keyword phrase. Select the keyword phrase with the smallest number.

4.) Another great free tool you can find on Google is Google Adwords Keyword tool . You can type in your keyword phrase and it will return the advertiser competition along it's search volume. You can even see the estimated average cost per click competing advertisers are competing for. If you see advertisers paying big bucks for the cost per click that's a sign that there is money to be made with that keyword phrase. Use this tool wisely.

5.) Next go to Google and type in your selected keyword phrase and study all 10 of your competition on the front page. Start by looking at each websites PR(Google Page Rank). If your using internet explorer make sure you have Google's toolbar as on it they have a feature which shows you the Page Rank of any website. If you have competition with PR's of 7 or above I don't recommend competing for that keyword phrase as it will be very difficult to beat them for that spot. The lower the PR the better chance you have of taking their position.

Any good marketer can tell you that the most important part of any campaign is doing solid keyword research. Without it you won't have any results no matter how much time you put into your campaign. Using the simple 5 steps above will allow you to completely dominate your competition on Google and provide you with the foresight to see great success in your campaign by having a solid foundation built underneath you.