SEO Basics (Keyword Research)

SEO (Search engine optimization): The processof building a website to pull the maximum amount of relevant trafficfrom search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves.
Keyword Research: The process of researching terms to be used in SEO for a given website.

Thefirst step to successful SEO is always keyword research. Without it youare shooting from the hip. If, for example, you would like to create awebsite about cooking you could optimize your site for the generic"cooking" term but how well is that going to perform? Well according toOverture there are 8,233.8 searches /day for "cooking" sounds goodright? Not exactly.in order to rank high for this term you would haveto compete with high end websites such as cooking.com and foodtv.com.Now that might be your ultimate goal but if you are just starting thereis little to no chance you will be ranked high enough to receive anytraffic for the term.
If you were to do a little keyword researchyou might find more specific terms with much less competition likeitalian cooking 344.3 /day or crock pot cooking 253.5 /day. Nowobviously the number of daily searches is much less with these termsbut your chances or ranking will be much greater. Its always a goodidea to start off with several low competition terms and as your sitebuilds start optimizing for the larger terms.

Step 1: Create a list of related terms
Openan excel spreadsheet and start making a list of all major industryterms and buzz words related to your site in one column. The listdoesn't need to be extremely detailed quite yet so don't add partnumbers, brand names or several variations of each term. For example ifwe want to remain on the cooking theme our list might look somethinglike this.
Cooking, chef, cutlery, foods, meat, dairy, wine, seasoning, poultry, fish, dining.(simple generic terms)

Step 2: Expand the list
Nowits time to start adding all those 2, 3 and 4 term combinations alongwith other very specific terms related to your site. For this we willemploy a few web applications to speed up the process.http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion and http://nichebot.comare two of the best free tools at your disposal.
Simply type inyour first generic term and the tool will list several related terms.Add each new relevant term to your spreadsheet. Do this with eachgeneric term and you should end up with a list of at very least 50possible terms to optimize for.

Step 3: Find your primary and secondary keywords
Nowgo to nichebot and type in each of your terms. Look for the "COUNT" and"RATIO". (listed to the right of each term) Plug these into yourdatabase in the second and third column next to the correspondingterms. Once you have completed this step go through your list and seekout the terms with the highest count and the lowest ratio. Take the top5-10 terms and place them into a separate list. These will be yourprimary keywords. You will use these in the optimization of the toppages of your site.
Then take the remaining list andalphabetically order it from lowest to highest ratio. (there should bea tool in your spreadsheet to do this automatically for you) These willbe your secondary keywords.

That's it! You now know the basicsof keyword research. I'm sure you are asking "what now?". Well there isquite a bit more to learn. You are going to need to know on-site andoff-site optimization and various methods and tools available to youfor these tasks. You will need to learn the difference between "whitehat" and "black hat" SEO which basically outlines what is acceptableand what is not acceptable in terms of SEO. So stay tuned for my nextarticle. I will take you through the process step by step. By the endthere will be no need to hire greedy SEO firms for something you can dofor a fraction of the cost.

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