You have probably heard and read a lot about the concept of search engine optimization. This is important for all Internet marketers in order to be found by prospective customers online. This is possible through keywords, which are identified through keyword research. Keywords must be relevant to your business since they bring visitors to your website.

For your website to rank high with the search engines that are responsible for bringing focussed traffic, some serious keyword research is essential so that you can find out exactly which ones are used by your visitors. Finding these keywords will also enable you place them in the right locations.

You can shortlist your keywords via brainstorming with peers and friends, competition analysis, and use a keyword research tool for evaluation. What we now want to share with you are crucial criteria to bear in mind when you select keywords to receive targeted website traffic:

• Select key phrases rather than keywords, as you are likely to get better- focussed traffic and appear in more specific results
• Keywords must be related to your website and be relevant to your product or service on offer
• The more specific the keywords, the better the chances of prospective customers visiting your website and the lesser the chances of facing competition
• Pay attention to the variation of keywords used in different locations across the world. Accordingly web pages must be optimized for the audience. The English say ‘lift’ while the Americans call it an elevator - so take care to use the right ones at the appropriate domains.
• You primary keyword can be used for website optimization. The secondary keywords can be used to draw traffic.
• Remember that keyword research tools are effective, but your own knowledge also counts just as much.
• The final keyword list must be tested. This may seem like a tedious process, but it is necessary in order to enable you finalize a list that is effective and ranks well with the search engines
• A variety of relevant keywords is more effective than the same keyword being used over and over.
• Keywords must be located in the title tags, header tags, ALT tags, anchor text, URLs, meta tags and comments. There are efficient tools that help by suggesting the best ways to do this.
• Also add keywords that are spelt slightly differently by users to your list since they are equally responsible for traffic
• By including a site search function on your website you will be able to monitor the keywords being used by your visitors, as well as making it easy for them to navigate your site.
• There are keywords that have a high search rate even though they are low in terms of competition. These keywords are just as important.

To be successful, keywords must have a high conversion rate. This means you must be able to turn your visitors into customers.

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Step one
Never choose the product and then the market! Before you think of which products you would like to promote, you must first find the niche market. How will you identify your niche market? You can start thinking of the kind of markets you are passionate about, active markets, markets with plenty of customers willing to pay for what they want. The idea behind choosing something you will be interested in is that you will enjoy working with it.

To find your niche, find what you enjoy doing most. Make a list of what you are interested in. Is there anything you would like to learn? This is a good time to think about what you find challenging. You can also conduct a research on what’s hot in the market right now. You would be amazed at what you can find in your local newspapers for what people want. Online forums and blogs are another source of niche ideas. If you are alert to what people complain about, you’ll probably find a great idea for a niche.

Yet another way to identify your niche is through keyword search. What words would your niche market use to find you? There are keyword research tools you can use online to get this information. You can also find out how many times these words were searched in a given month. When you search your short-listed words on Google, you will get an idea of what kind of competition exists for your niche market. Your keyword list will probably generate more ideas for other niche markets you didn’t think about before.

Step Two
You now know who your niche market is going to be, you must find the right products for them. First off, your products must be of high quality and relevant to your niche market. You will need to find out how much competition you have for this product and what kind of income you can expect to earn. You could create your own product or promote someone else’s as an affiliate. The idea is to offer information, products or services that your niche market can only get from you online.

You can actually test market to find out whether your niche market will be interested in what you have to offer. This is possible by setting up a web page where your visitors can complete a survey. You can make a useful report on the topic that you can offer free, as a thank you gesture to all those who fill out your survey. The results of the survey ought to give you a pretty good idea as to how successful your product will be. After all, you don’t want to spend time and money creating and promoting a product that wont sell.

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SEO helps to optimize keywords for your site. Many hours of hard work go into this process. You pick keywords and phrases, select some, discard others and so the process carries on and on till you zero down on the best keywords for your website. For this procedure, you employ the best keyword research tools and Viola! you have an exclusive marketing strategy at hand.

The Best Keyword Research Tools - Types

Though there are many keyword research tools, some are the best of the best. Let us see the best keyword research tools, know how they work and learn their key features:p>

• Trellian’s Keyword Discovery Tool: This keyword tool is considered good for keyword discovery. It captures data such as frequency of searchers, searches of exact keywords and key phrases, related key phrase searches, keyword density analysis, misspellings as well as seasonal trends, from more than 180 search engines. It is comprehensive, and has a database consisting of approx 30 billion searches in the last 12 months.
• SearchStatus: This is also one of the best keyword research tools. Developed by Quirk’s CEO, Craig Raw himself, it fulfills the specialized needs of search engine marketers. Also a toolbar extension, it assists you in your endeavor to know how other websites are performing. It is all the more wonderful, as it is an open-source product that requires no licensing fees. Now isn’t that awesome?

• SEO for Firefox: Although one of the relatively new best keyword research tools, this tool is getting popular by the day. It has an exclusive design that helps you add more data to Yahoo and Google! It gives you a complete picture of the marketing scenario online and the marketing strategies that are being used, by providing to you marketing data points and important SEO information. The negative point of this tool is that it uses a large bandwidth, though that is nothing that you cannot handle if you show some care.
• Digital Point’s Keyword Suggestion Tool: This tool is free. Counted one among the best keyword research tools, this tool displays results from Wordtracker as well as from Overture to help you to find the most commonly searched for keywords and keyphrases.
• Wordtracker: Also one among the best keyword research tools, an old timer in the field, it searches only meta-search engines. Wordtracker is excellent not only for its massive database of the most searched-for keywords, but it also has the ability to show you the related key phrases that you have given a miss. This keyword research tool is an organized one as well as it records the number of per day per keyword searches, keywords in competition with each other and much more in a tabulated form.

These are some of the keyword research tools at your disposal. Some even offer a free trial period, so take the best pick.

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