The Basics of Keyword Research | Lead Generation

By AshleyLichty
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Word Count: 548

Keyword research is one of the most important stages of developing a website - especially if the purpose of the site is to generate money and business. Your first step is deciding exactly what you will be selling on your site - is it a product, service or information? Next is taking the steps to find out the type of things people type into the search engines when looking for your particular product or service.

The more terms people use to search, the better you can target your Internet marketing straight to them. It will also help you to better target your search engine optimization techniques. The more general your topic, the longer your keyword research will be. For instance, if you're only selling fishing rods, your keyword list will be shorter than if you sell the whole shebang: rods, tackle, bait, etc.

The first step to keyword research is often just putting yourself in your target audience's shoe and brainstorming. Put together a general list of the terms they may use to find your product or service. Then you actually conduct your keyword research. Everyone has their own way of doing I, but there are generally two schools of keyword research.

Most people will use online tools and programs to conduct keyword research. There are programs that will search several keyword tools on the net. You can also use the individual tools yourself and figure out which works best. Google's Keyword Tool generates a list of related keywords as well as suggested terms, also giving you an idea of how often they're searched for.

If the purpose of your keyword research is for your pay per click ads in Google or Yahoo, there's a better way to conduct your research. How is that you ask? Just a bit of experimentation involving your pay per click program.

This technique involves spending a little cash on for your research, but it often yields better results than more traditional keyword research. Just take your first general list of keywords and build your text ad campaign around them in whichever program you use. Most marketing programs allow you to chose a broad or exact keyword match for your terms - choose the broad option. This means whenever someone searches for a combination of words that include one of your keywords, your ad will show.

You can spend some money by running your test campaign for a week or two, and wind up actually cutting the manpower hours your keyword research takes in half. Using the analytics software most search marketing programs provide, you can track which keywords led people to click on your actual ads. Than you can add keywords and tweak your campaign as necessary, to get the most for your marketing, eventually cutting out broad match keywords for exact matches.

Keyword research can sound daunting, especially for newcomers, but practice makes perfect, and this tip can wind up saving you a lot of trouble and time. In the long run, it should also help you target your keywords to your audience better, get you higher conversion rates and hopefully save some money. It's always important to try something for yourself before you rule it out entirely!

About the Author

The author, Ashley Lichty, along with her colleagues, conduct keyword research, copywriting and other SEO practices for ProspectMX.com. You can learn more about her and her team by visiting ProspectMX.

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