Analytics 2.0™

Published by Jim

SEO Keyword Research

In any search marketing campaign, one of the first questions to answer is: what keywords do I want to go after?

The ideal keywords that you are looking for are:

• Relevant
• High Volume
• Non Competitive

Of course, the reality is that many of the relevant and high volume keywords are fairly competitive. But it also doesn’t make sense to target a lot of irrelevant, low volume keywords - just because they are not competitive. The key for any SEO campaign is to identify the right set of keywords to target.

So what are some of the top tools for SEO marketers to conduct keyword research? To start you want to identify words that have a good amount of volume to make sure that your SEO efforts are worthwhile.

The Key is in the Volume

Four popular tools for keyword volume research are:

• Overture - Overture is a free keyword research tool that provides good keyword volume data, but is no longer actively maintained by Yahoo and has frequent downtime.

• Microsoft Keyword Forecast - Microsoft provides a free keyword research tool that provides keyword volume data, trends, and demographic information.

• Wordtracker - Wordtracker provides keyword volume data based on queries to meta search engines such as DogPile.

• Keyword Discovery - Keyword Discovery provides keyword volume data based on user queries through a large install base of its toolbars.

These tools provide a good starting point to look at keyword volume.

Apr 03, 2008
Filed under: SEO, Keyword Research, SEO