One blog post from searchengineguide.com stands out in the SERPs (search engine result pages) when you are looking for information on effective keyword research. The post is written by Lisa Barone and covers five main steps people should follow when planning their research.

The five steps covered are;

• Demolishing Misconceptions
• Creating the list and checking it twice
• Befriending the keyword research tool
• Finalizing your list
• Plan your Attack
• Rinse, Wash Repeat

More than anything, this list is a good example of the planning and research that is required to build a good keyword set ready for your SEO or SEM campaign.

As I have recently had described to me by a SEO professional;

If you’re not targeting the right keywords and phrases, then even the best rankings are of little value!

The hardest part of effective keyword research is making sure that you don’t spend too much time on it while still going deep enough into a topic that you have covered the major bases.

Good luck!

Having a look at the source keywords will give you a better understanding of exactly what people are typing in to get to the content you have written and it will also help you to think about other keywords that you are not already targeting that you know you could be receiving traffic on.

First, login to your Google Analytics account. You will see the Dashboard displayed as the first page. Click the Traffic Sources navigation link on the right-hand menu and then the Keywords link.

You will now see a traffic graph and list of source keywords that have been typed in to all search engines (e.g. Google, Bing & Yahoo plus many more) where the user has clicked through directly to your website after entering the term.

The main heading on the report will read something like “Search sent 50,000 total visits via 20,000 keywords”.

If you are running paid campaigns (e.g. on Google Adwords) you will have the option to click the “paid” keywords filter link underneath that main heading to show the source keywords in Google Analytics for paid search campaigns.

Reasonably new to the scene on keyword analysis tools is the latest from the benevolent giant that is Google called Google Insights for Search. While it’s still in its beta format (what isn’t from Google) it provides a significant improvement on the usability front compared to other keyword analysis tools.

While the tool is not particularly clear on the exact number of keyword searches that are being made on the phrases you’re looking at, the trending graphs give you a brilliant display on what’s hot and what’s not in comparison to each other.

It’s incredibly useful for keyword research and will even give you a list of keywords from content on a specific web page.

Over time you’ll find technical information, in-bound and out-bound links, whois lookups, content keywords and even traffic rankings from different websites across the globe.

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