Keyword is the term entered by the user to find the information in search engine. These keywords may be single words or long tail terms.
Keyword research is important as it gives the details about the keyword used by the visitors and to target on those keywords.
These keywords may vary based on-
1) The website – number of pages, quality and type of content, etc.
2) The objective of website – to promote brand, deliver information, sales, etc.
3) The target audience.
4) The industry and the competition.
The steps to follow when doing keyword research-
1) Start with seed keywords - The general keywords that define your niche.
2) Form long tail keywords of your niche – The long tail keywords are specific and provide have a
greater chance at being discovered.
3) Generate keywords - Put yourself in the searchers place and try to think what keywords they would use when searching.
4) Study the competitor’s website – Search for the keywords to know who are the competitors. Now study those websites to find what keywords they are targeting. But keep in mind that some of them may be using Black Hat techniques, so only study the competitors, note down the keywords on which they rank on top but do not copy their content.
5) Analysis of client site (one’s own site) is also done to check the keywords that have been already used.
6) Now that you have a list of keywords, you will check which keywords are the most searched and what is the competition level for them.
7) Now you can select the keywords best for your website. Generally, you should select the ones with high traffic (the keyword used most) and low competition (less number of website targeting the keyword) because then you have better chances of coming on top for that keyword.
Several keyword research tools are also available online to help search keywords. Some of the tools are-
1) Soovle
2) Google Keyword Planner
3) Keyword Permutation Generator tool
4) Keyword Shitter
5) Google Correlate
6) WordStream’s free keyword tool
7) SEO Chat’s suggestion keyword finder
And many more.