Internet Marketing For Beginners: How to Do Keyword Research
Keyword research is basically quite easy so that beginners can get a good grasp very quickly.
Like search engines mentioned in my previous post, there are many free keyword research tools, but my tool of choice is Google External Keyword Tool. There’s no need to attempt to remember the URL. It’s easier to just go to Google and type in Keyword Tool External and it will usually be the first result.
It makes sense to use the results from Google since Google is the most popular search engine at this time.
To confirm you are a real person you will need to verify the characters shown and from that point you can type in your keyword and being searching. Note that searching this way will give you limited results. By logging in with your Gmail account or creating a Gmail account and signing in you will be shown a lot more keyword search results, including a wider selection of long tail keywords.
To save you time in the future, select by adding a check-mark beside the words or phrases you’d like to save then download after you’ve completed your research. The file will be in a CSV format that you can open with Excel and save. You’ll really need to be concerned with Local Search Results only if your market is local. For results in descending order, click on Global Search Results once.
Let’s say your niche is “organic vegetable gardening”. You could start with  “gardeningâ€Â which gives  1,220,000 results. That’s too broad and too many results. If your goal is to make sales, you will want to narrow your search a lot more.
You could then type in “organic gardening†just to see results, especially for long tail keywords. Those results will also include some phrases that include organic vegetable gardening.
But to be more specific , type in “organic vegetable gardeningâ€Â and you’ll see that there are some really great keyword phrases from as low as in the 880 searches per month up that you could use as your titles, subtitles, and in your posts or articles.
Keep in mind that you want to avoid using keywords that have very  large results as it means that there is a lot of competition for those words and it will be difficult for you to achieve a high ranking for you post using those keywords or keyword search results in your post or article title.
Keyword research and Search Engine Optimization cover a whole range of topics, but this in a nutshell is enough to get you started with keyword research if you are new to internet marketing.
It's important to keep your goal in mind when doing keyword research. Is it to optimize your blog for increased rankings and traffic? Or is it your goal to make sales? There are similarities but also differences in how you will do your research. If your goal is to make sales then you'll benefit from this post by Lynn Terry who is a Super Affiliate Marketer.
Learning is continuous and I'd love to hear what you use or how this information helped you. If you have a lot of experience with SEO then please add a tip that can help someone else. I know, it will help me too. 🙂
One little correction that can sometimes make a huge difference: Local refers results within your country and your specified language, ie. searchers within the US using English, not results local to you. Global refers to all countries and all languages. Here’s more info from Google, http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8692.
Sometimes that doesn’t make a big impact, other times it does.
1I like to weave about 5 keyword phrases throughout my posts. Each keyword or keyword phrase will have a different search count. It gives me a better opportunity to be ranked high for one of the keywords in the search engines.
Thanks for these keyword search reminders.
2I’m so glad you pointed that out, Angie. Thanks for the correction, and yes, that can mean a lot of difference. I did not go into the “Advanced” feature either with other countries and languages as I think that’s more than a real beginner needs.
You said you “love keyword research” and your keen eye shows this to be so true 🙂 Thanks again. Yvonne
3You are great at doing that in your posts, Kathy, and as I get better at learning the ins and outs of keyword research I’m excited to use the information and share the information with my readers so they can succeed with this as well.
It makes a huge difference between being one’s blog being lost in the maze and being found or even getting a glimmer of light.
4Thanks for this post. I use article marketing on my own blog as well, I find it very simple and effective.
5I agree with you that it is a simple and effective marketing strategy. So simple that sometimes many people fail to see the need to incorporate it in their marketing strategies. I’m glad article marketing has worked for you as well. Yvonne
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