Keyword Research Concepts

By Jay Stockwell | Published 10/4/2005 | Keyword Research Articles |

Your Mind is Your Best Tool

It's always important to remember while doing Keyword Research that your mind is still your best tool. Don’t be afraid to use it. Think laterally and think how your customers will think. When doing Keyword Research try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. The more you can do this the more powerfully you can use the software tools you have at your disposal.

Also, consider other factors in the equation that a tool cannot tell you directly. For example, think about the conversion potential of the keyword area. If you’re niche mining, how easy is it to get your hands on a product to sell? Or is there a suitable affiliate product to promote? There's no point having lots of traffic going to a site that has no way to turn that traffic into dollars.

The best book I've seen which gives solid, useful examples of ways to use your own mind as a keyword research tool was published recently by Wordtracker. It's called Keyword Research Guide and it's free.

Wordtracker created a fictional company, Virginia Veg, and asked experts to provide real answers to the problems facing its CEO, Susan Webster. Although the ebook appears to be aimed at beginners, it is crammed with insights, tips, and techniques on keyword research that you can apply to your own website, whether you're using Wordtracker or some other tool.

Contributors include:

Bryan Eisenberg - Convert more traffic using Wordtracker.
B. L. Ochman - Understand your customers' real motivations.
Kevin Lee - Combine thousands of phrases for an effective PPC campaign.
Stephen Mahaney - Use Wordtracker to find the size of the market.
Ken McGaffin - Discover the most important sites in your marketplace.
John Alexander - Find inspiration in Wordtracker's Top 1,000 Words report.
Neil Davidson - Learn how an ad agency uses keyword research to position a client.
Robin Good - Use Wordtracker to identify niche opportunities.
Nick Usborne - Incorporate keywords into your content and copy.

You can download Keyword Research Guide here.