How To Research Keywords For Search Engine Marketing

by Dan J. Fry, 5/25/2005

The core element of any type of marketing utilizing the search engines is the keyword. Why is it so important? In terms of general marketing principles keyword search is equivalent to targeting a niche. It can help you focus your advertisements on certain key areas that will already have an interest in what you are offering.

Targeting proper keywords or key phrases, groups of 2 to 5 keywords, is the way to market successfully with pay-per-click search engines and obtain high ranking in search engine indexes. It is a rather arduous task, but one that can yield massive returns in ranking, traffic, and sales if done correctly.

So where do I start?

Many free resources exist to research which keywords you should target. The two deciding factors are the number of searches performed on a particular keyword or key phrase, and the number of sites currently targeted these. Its nothing more than supply and demand.

Overture

The premiere pay-per-click search engine who previously supplied search results to several major search engines, is now on its own. The free search tool can be found at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ . Search results are displayed only for the previous month. This should be sufficient. The internet changes so quickly that what happended 6 months ago is not of much importance. What makes Overture's tool king in my view is that it provides hard numbers on how much a phrase was searched, allowing you to directly compare with the number of sites targeting each phrase.

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