Keyword Research

If you are at all interested in getting more people to see whatever it is you are putting on the net, you have to know about Keywords and how they work. If you have spent time in the blogosphere you are probably amazed by the number of people there's out there who complain about not being able to make funds on the net or not getting their stuff higher on hit lists. But if you read between the lines of what they are saying it becomes obvious they don't have any understanding of keywords at all. There is a new field of study out there -- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- focused on techniques that will yield effective placement on hit lists. In earlier times Webmasters figured out that by loading up a webpage with Keywords they could force a higher placement but the Search Engines like Google and Yahoo caught on and are now constantly changing the technology they use to produce their hit lists to minimize cramming and take other things in to account. But Keywords remain as a major driving force behind web profit.

What is a Keyword?

Keywords: Supply and Demand

A "Keyword" can be broadly defined as whatever an Web user enters in to a Search Engine to obtain a result. As such, a "Keyword" can actually be a phrase and using phrases has become more common as the Web has gained in popularity. Time was when entering "Dog Training" in to a search engine would produce a manageable hit list, but no more. Users are getting more specific with their search terms. Today users are more likely to enter "training a German Shepherd to fetch" in to the engine. Okay, you have an e commerce site offering a variety of dog training products. How do you use Keyword Research to generate more traffic to your site? To get you in position to deal with that query, you first need to know a small about the laws of supply and demand as they relate to Web Marketing.

Web Users provide the demand, Web Web-sites provide the supply. A "hot" keyword -- and remember this can be a phrase -- is one for which there's more requests from users than there's sites that contain the keyword. To make it elementary, you can come up with a great keyword but if it is already appearing in thousands and thousands of sites, the competition for the demand from users can make the keyword useless. Finding keywords with high demand -- lots of users entering the keyword -- and low supply -- not that lots of web-sites containing the keyword -- will give you maximum impact.

Getting Started with Keyword Research

There's some experts out there who will tell you to start using Google Adware's Keyword Tool as a beginning point. This is lovely advice since Google has over 70% of the Web Search Market, but this tool does not give supply information. Use it as a vehicle to get you in to the game, but ultimately you should think about exploring the paid versions of Keyword Research application that will provide both demand and supply information. Lovely luck in your Keyword Research!

Given the size and complexity of the Web world today it is simply not realistic to think you are going to be able to do much of anything here without help. So where do you go? Enter "Keyword Research" in to your favorite search engine and dig through the hits. You are looking for application programs that do Keyword Research for you. There's free versions out there, but, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. The major problem with most free versions is they do not give you any supply information. WordTracker is a popular Keyword Research program and its free version will give you up to 100 of the most frequently used keywords for a given section, but nothing about supply. And remember, the best keyword in the world may not help if lots of Web-sites already use it.