Keyword Research describes the practise of looking at what users are searching for and how they search for it on the Internet. More specifically, Keyword Research helps us understand the types of things people are trying to find, as well as the words they’re using. Using Keyword Research you can discover if “technics turntables” are more popular than “numark turntables“ or if people prefer to use the word “turntable“ or “decks“ or “wheels of steel” when they’re searching for these record players.

The really cool thing about Keyword Research is that we can go beyond the basics with this information and use measures that help us find out if we should be trying to sell turntables at all. We can see how much competition we may be up against and decide if in fact we should be targeting smaller markets such as turntable “slip mats” instead. So we may find ourselves a popular little niche market that has little competition – a little niche in which it will be easier for our website to be seen among the “noise” of all the other websites.

Using Keyword Research, you can actually see all the different ways that people find products like “slip mats“. While many searchers use just the basic search term, others seek more specific items such as “butter rug slip mats“. Using Keyword Research, we can tap into these kinds of hot topics. I mean unless you were in the scene, how on earth would you find out that people actually use the term “butter” and “rug“ together to describe anything at all!

The Internet sure does feel crowded at times doesn’t it? However, it is also so massive that even things that are bought only a couple of times a week in your home town may be making someone rich online. With Keyword Research you can figure out what these things are, see how many people you have to compete with as well as use indicators to see if these people are actually making money.

In essence, Keyword Research really is the foundation of good Internet marketing.

So, how does Keyword Research work practically? In general, there needs to be a sample source. This is basically a chunk of information (millions of real user search queries) that is pulled from a single search engine or sometimes a group of search engines. There is a good chance that one of the searches you have done will have made up part of this data.

This huge chunk of information is inserted into another database that you can search. This is regularly updated so you have fresh data that is not seasonally skewed. You are now able to search through this mass of information to find the number of times the keywords you're interested in appear in that database. This is called a vertical search. Let me give you another example that will help you understand a vertical search.

Let’s say I was to go down to my local library and ask the librarian to go and find every book on a particular topic and stack them up in a pile. That would be rough example of a vertical search. It is a vertical pile of books on one topic. In the same way, Keyword Research tools go out and grab all the keyword phrases (books) with a particular keyword (topic) and then return them stacked in a pile. Fortunately, these Keyword Research tools do it a lot faster than my local librarian.

Many tools are also be smart enough to be able to look at the keyword you're searching on and find alternative, similar words that users may also be searching for. So if your seed keyword is “turntable“ the tool brings you back other variations such as “decks“, “record player“ or “wheels of steel“. This is called a lateral search.

To carry on our earlier librarian example, it would be like asking her to bring me books that were related to the topic I chose. She could bring me back books on all sorts of different material that related to my requested topic and stack them beside my original topic search. How smart she is will affect how useful these books are. In the same way, the better the Keyword Research tool, the better the lateral search results you will get.

Many tools also go beyond the basics and bring back extra information to help you understand your market. Some of this extra information includes competition data, competition website URLs, as well as data that relates to advertising on pay-per-click advertising networks such as Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing). This kind of stuff is really useful as you get more experienced in Keyword Research. It can help you spot trends, access competition, as well as see if there is money to be made or if you would be wasting your time.

Keyword Research really is an important skill to learn. It’s easy to get started and pays dividends if you master it. When I was down by the beach the other day, I was talking with a friend who was interested in trying to leverage the Internet to grow his business. He was intrigued by Keyword Research and wondered how quickly he would be able to learn how to do it. I explained it to him like this.

“I like to think learning how to do Keyword Research is a bit like learning how to surf. You can go out and learn how to stand up on your surfboard within an afternoon and have lots of fun. However, the more practise you have, the bigger waves you can take, the better tricks you can do (and the more girls you will end up with!)”