How To Keyword Research – A Guide for Newbies

Keyword research is the first thing that Internet marketers – both new and seasoned – must do before writing any content or beginning any marketing campaign. Ordinarily, an inexperienced marketer would write whatever he or she finds interesting without taking into consideration the important aspects of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Gone are the days when you can freely write your content and be read by millions of people right away.

If you want to succeed as a marketer nowadays you have to know that this old-fashioned I-just-want-to-write-about-stuff-I-like simply doesn’t work anymore. This is perfectly fine if you just want to blog, however, if you want to be a real marketer and earn off of your blog then you have to know how to keyword research.

For example, you are a person who loves cats. Back in the 90’s you could write all you want about the keyword cats. Now, you have to properly research the keywords and determine your niche so you at least have a fighting chance of being read by Internet users! Instead of writing about cats in general, you can write about training a cat to use the toilet, info about cats or cats musical. These are just a few ideas – when you do your research you can easily find what cat lovers are looking for!

Researching your keywords properly will save you a ton of time, effort and in most cases, money, and will allow you to focus on marketing your keywords the right way. When I first got interested in Internet marketing, I didn’t know anything about keyword research. All I knew was that I at least had to identify what niche market I wanted to go in. So I decided then that I would just identify my niche and proceed once I’ve done it. After reading several articles online I determined that most people think that the top most profitable niches are weight loss, making money, and relationships.

Once I determined these niches, I decided to do some keyword research for weight loss using Google Adword’s keyword tool. In the beginning, I thought this was a pretty cool tool since I can instantly see how many people are searching for that particular keyword and even learn some related keywords within that niche. I even saved some keywords in a spreadsheet and thought I would be targeting those keywords within the weight loss niche. But boy was I wrong!

While Google’s keyword tool is great for knowing the number of searches every month, it doesn’t list the competition or the exact number of websites who target that particular keyword! Having this knowledge is very important so you can assess if it would be worth your while to create a campaign around that keyword.

For example, if you search how to keyword research on Google adwords, it will show:

Are there 100, 1,000, or 10,000 websites who have optimized those keywords? If it turns out there are only 100 then that’s great for you! Your chances of ranking higher on search engines for your keyword is greater as compared to competing with 1,000 or 10,000 other websites!

Are you ready to start implementing proper keyword research?

I hope you can see my point with this hub. If you want to be an Internet marketer, then I hope I have given you some useful ideas to get you started on the right path. If you are not, and you have spent considerable time on your campaigns, then you might want to start doing proper keyword research today!

I've written a hub comparing Google's keyword tool versus Jaaxy. Click here to read why Jaaxy ultimately trumps Google!