What is keyword research? It is the development of keyword phrases that pertain to a specific web site. You want to research and develop a keyword strategy to apply towards the optimization and promotion of your web site. Keywords will not only help obtain search engine rankings, but are a doorway to visitors finding your business on the internet. This is a process that should be applied to both organic and pay per click campaigns.

Keyword research is one of the most essential areas of a good web marketing plan. Simply adding many keywords into a web page whether it is within the content of the site or in meta tags will not help you achieve great rankings. In fact, some of these tactics can have an adverse affect on your rankings. You do not want to stick directly with highly competitive phrases. For example, let’s say you sell gift baskets online for a variety of occasions. Your first thought may be to make sure you rank in the top ten for the keyword “Gift Baskets”. It is going to be a very competitive market both organically and in pay per click to obtain such a high ranking quickly. Instead, you may want to focus on smaller, yet highly regarded phrases such as “cookie gift baskets”, “get well gift baskets” or even location specific if you deliver locally such as ; “Orlando gift baskets”. As your site continues to improve in its rankings, you can add more keywords and focus on some of the more competitive phrases.

How to begin your research? Start off with thinking like your customers. You will be surprised that often many web site owners think quite differently than a visitor when searching online. There are also several different programs out there such as Word tracker and Keyword Discovery. Both of these are most effective when using the paid versions which run a few hundred dollars a year.

If you do any Pay Per Click Marketing, you can take advantage of the keyword tools offered in Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Solutions.

Any professional search engine optimization company should provide some sort of keyword research. Many SEO companies will include this as part of the optimization process whereas others may offer this as a separate service. Either way, if you are using a search engine optimization company, they should be using some form of keyword research to successfully market their clients.

Going blindly into SEO of your web site can really have consequences on the success of your web business. Taking these simple steps ahead of time will make a very big difference on your site performance.