Keyword Research First Steps

Keyword Research – The Beginning (source: Peter Hollier, Seo Wizardry)

In recent Blog Posts I have been promoting the importance of keywords. Since keywords play such an absolute fundamental role in all your online business activities I have decided a few Keyword Research tips were due.
Although keywords can be utilized in your Social Media and Pay Per Click initiatives in the next couple of Blog Posts I will providing some insider keyword research techniques and tips for Organic Search Optimization and your web site content development.
Although I use a range of tools and techniques the information provided here on keyword research is an actual part of my keyword research process.
It must be remembered he use of keywords for Organic SEO, Social Media Marketing and Pay per Click differs, and when researching keywords for other uses the keyword lists developed in the following process will be useful however, the analysis of the keyword information will differ.

Developing the Keyword List
The first step of any Keyword Research is to develop the preliminary list based on topics, sub topics and so on which generally represent your business, the services, products and information provided. In many ways your keyword research will be reflected in your overall web site architecture.
The First List
Developing your first list does not have to be a long comprehensive list of keywords that reflect your business’s core activities. The basics will do.
It’s hard to beat brainstorming with work associates, friends and family as the starting point. Obviously not everyone uses the same words to find the same things. Brainstorming does bring some very interesting results that will leave you saying “I would never of thought that term would be used to find …….whatever”
Tip: Use spreadsheets to store your keywords. The filtering functions are very useful in future Keyword Analysis techniques.

Getting Your Competitors Keywords
Knowing what keywords and phrases your competitors are using is a definitive advantage to your future web site optimization.
It might pay to take a close look at who your competitors are. I’m sure you can name a few without much thought, but in Organic Search Optimization the real competitors are the web sites holding the top 10 rankings for your keywords and phrases.
Viewing Competitors Keywords.
There are a number of tools and software programs which can assist you with this task. Since both the Firefox Browser and SeoQuake plug-in for Firefox are free tools I will use them for this example.

This is really simple. First thing is to Download and install Firefox if your not already using it. Then install the SeoQuake toolbar. Then:
Visit Competitor web page for review
Right Click: scroll to SeoQuake Select Keywords Density
Review SeoQuake results in New Window
Repeat as required.

Seoquake Competitor Research Video

Now in most cases there are an abundance of keywords and phrases to review. It would be nice if you could download these terms into a Spreadsheet but so far I have not been able to find this function in the SeoQuake toolbar. (If you know how this is done please let me know).
This may not be the ideal way to do this but its quick and easy if you know your way around Excel. To get these terms into a spreadsheet so you can use them later:
Copy and paste to a text document and save.
Open Spreadsheet software and use Import Data function
Save or merge with your first list.
Using these simple steps it is likely you will have developed a substantial preliminary keyword list. But your not done. Next time I will review how to expand and filter your keyword lists, that’s just the beginning once the keyword lists have been developed then comes the analysis. The analysis is key to finding keywords which your web site has the potential to obtain visibility