Keyword research is the process of finding the right words to target. Done properly, this can make all the difference to a successful search engine optimisation campaign.

Research needs to be done to find out a few critical pieces of information...

What keywords are people actually searching for...

Why would you go to the trouble of optimising your website for a phrase that people aren't searching for?

Using keyword research tools, you should aim for the popular phrases that will bring in visitors.

Wordtracker, at http://www.wordtracker.com is an excellent tool to start with. As is the digital point keyword suggestion tool at http://www.digitalpoint.com

Research the competetion

If competetion is too strong for a particular phrase, then you should consider starting with a less popular phrase. Before comitting to a particular phrase, have a look at the quality of the competetion, and decide if you are likely to be able to beat them or not.

* How good is their SEO

* How relevant is their content to this query

* How many incoming links do they have to their site

If you have better incoming links than the competetion, then getting a top position is quite achievable with some clever on-site SEO.

Shopping List

At the end of your keyword research, you should have a shopping list of phrases to use on your web site. Take one phrase per page, and optimise the page by including the phrase in the title, url, h1 tag and body content as many times as you can without looking spammy.

By repeating this process across a good number of pages, you are able to target a range of key phrases.

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