7 Keyword Research Tips

Keywords are an extremely important tool for being found on the Web. Regardless of whether you're talking about a website, video, blog or a tweet, the right keywords can make a difference in being found or not when someone does a Google, Bing or Yahoo search.

Here's an excerpt of a great article from SearchEngineLand.com that I numbered, and added a few comments to. It outlines 7 tips for better keyword research.
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"Keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization. It is all about getting traffic from relevant search queries, the keywords people use to find our products or services or whatever we offer that our target market is looking for.

1. Placing a handful of words into the Google Keyword Tool, exporting the results, then calling it a keyword chart is skimming; it is not keyword research. Quality keyword research takes time and investment.

2. Before you open one keyword tool, study the topic you are researching, at least to the point that you can explain it intelligently to someone else and answer basic questions. This means to put some thought into exactly what your brand is, and exactly what your offering to a potential viewer.

3. Study your marketplace competitors. These are basic sources for seed words and phrases to put into keyword tools. This means look at other artists, bands, studios, engineers or producers to see what they're using.

4. Seeds are the words and phrases you enter into the keyword tools. Track these and use the same ones in every keyword research tool.

5. Use multiple keyword research tools. Every service has its strengths and weaknesses. Using different keyword tools is like seeking differing points of view. You want to be certain you have the best information possible.

6. When you have some good keyword candidates, begin studying the search engine results for rankings competition and additional keywords. In SEO, the real competitors are the websites that rank for your keyword targets, not just your marketplace competitors. This means to look at competitors and similar acts that rank high during a search, then see what keywords they using, and how they're using them. Are the keywords only in the title, in the description, or in the text of the page, or in all three?

7. Revisit the keyword tools. Look up additional seed keywords you may have added along the way. Create a complete dataset for every keyword research tool you use."

 You can read the entire article here.

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