Keywords and Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the first steps to making your own website.

Done properly it will identify good projects and help eliminate unprofitable ones.

Keyword research is used to research the website theme/niche and also the web page topics as well as in Pay Per Click research. Keywords and keyword research is vital to any website.

What Exactly is a Keyword?

Before we go into keyword research we need first to clarify what we mean by the term "keyword"

The term "Keyword" has two meanings depending on whether you are :

1. Search for something or
2. Writing a webpage

From the perspective of an Internet surfer a keyword is the word or words used to search for something. For Example, if you were looking for a information about cruise holidays you would go to your favourite search engine and enter:

These are the keywords from the perspective of the searcher. Notice that although we have used the term keyword the searcher usually enters more than one, 2-3 word searches are the most common.

From the perspective of an Internet publisher i.e. someone who writes web pages, a keyword represent the topic or theme for a web page. For example if you were going to write an article Mediterranean cruises then the page keywords would be Mediterranean cruises and the page content would all be focused on that.

What is Keyword research

Keyword research is about finding out what Internet surfers are actually searching for. Are they searching for:

You don't want to make a website or write a web page on Romantic Mediterranean cruises if no one, or very few people search for them.

Keyword Research Tools

 There are number of tools available for keyword research:

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool

This is probably the most commonly used tool for keyword research and it is entirely free. The tool is also used by many third party keyword research or suggestion tools such as Good Keywords and the brainstorming tool from Site Build-it.

 Overture is a pay per click search engine and the results returned by overture are the results of searches done on the overture search engine.

 Because the tool is research tool for pay per click marketing the results can tend or seem to be inflated to encourage you to buy those keywords. However the main disadvantage with this tool is that is doesn't distinguish between singular an plural.

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is commercial software but does offer a free limited trial version on the website. This software was developed specifically for keyword research and hence has no keyword bias in either direction. It also provides alternative keywords based on synonyms and keyword analysis and profitability reporting.

Comparing Wordtracker and Overture

Even though Wordtracker and the Overture keyword suggestion tool usually give slightly different results both tools are very worthwhile and usable. Overture and its derivatives are very good for quick research, and Wordtracker for more detailed research and plural checking and brainstorming keyword variants.

Because Overture and most of its derivatives are free it remains the most popular choice. Researching your niche takes your through keyword research (using overture) and how you go about finding the best keywords.

Web www.build-your-website.co.uk

Useful Keyword Research Resources:

• Overture keyword suggestion tool
• Wordtracker
• Good Keywords - A free downloadable tool that uses overture but provides a nicer interface and remembers queries so that you don't have to repeat a search.
• Digital point  Wordtracker and Overture suggestion tool.-shows results from both tools on a single screen.

Related articles and resources:

• Increase Website Traffic
• Keyword Tips
• Misspelled Keywords
• Targeted Web Site Traffic
• Longtail keywords