Do keyword research when you’re trying to figure out what words (keywords) people actually use in search engines when searching for a product, service, industry segments, etc. This is the basic notion of ‘what is keyword research’.

For example, you might assume that people searching for a book called ‘My First RC Plane’ type the following into the search box:

My first RC plane

Through keyword research, you can find that most people write:

My First RC Plane Book

This second keyword phrase can be searched more times per month than the first phrase, or maybe this second phrase has fewer monthly searches but less competition (competition = how many sites are trying to rank in a search engine to appear in the first page and trying to sell that same book; or the volume and average cost of advertising paid for those keywords)

NOTE: The above sentences are totally made up, I did not research this sentence, it is just an example.

Why would you want to do keyword research?

Identifying the keywords that people actually use when searching for the type of product or service you are marketing will make the difference between success and failure when it comes to:

– generate traffic to your website (people find it through search engines)

– convert traffic into sales (targeted traffic ready to buy, find your page and can buy from you)

If people can’t find you, they will never buy from you. That is why you want your site to appear in the list, for the search keywords that you have discovered, as high as possible in a search engine such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!

If the people you attract to your website don’t have a buying mindset, you won’t sell much. People may not be ready to buy, they may just be looking for general information about a product, even just out of curiosity. For example, someone looking for

Moto Brand-X

You may be looking for performance specs, perhaps to compare them to another motorcycle. But, someone looking

Discount on Brand-X motorcycles or Best offer on Brand-X motorcycles

You may be one step closer to buying that motorcycle, therefore a more attractive prospect to sell. If your site ranks high in search engines for “ready-to-buy” keywords, more ready-to-buy people may come to your site and are more likely to make a purchase. I’m sure you are now beginning to understand why you need to know the answer to what keyword research is and how you can benefit from it.

In this case, you would do keyword research to find data on the best “ready to buy” keywords that you could optimize your site for; with the intention of attracting ‘ready to buy’ traffic that will be converted into sales at a higher rate.

I mentioned ‘optimize your site’ and of course I’m talking about search engine optimization or SEO. If you want to be found, you want search engines to list your site at the top of the first page of results for keywords relevant to your product or service. You can help in this by making sure that search engines see your site as a site that offers relevant content for those keywords.

You can optimize your site for search engine ranking in a number of ways, for example by using the keywords you just found in your site title, using those keywords in your content, and most of all by making sure your content is actually very relevant to those keywords. SEO is a broader topic, I will discuss it in another article.

You may also want to do keyword research to create a new name for a product or service, to find the best keywords for your paid ads, discovery or niche products, niche marketing …

As you become more familiar with what keyword research is, you will see that it gets deeper and a little more complicated; At that point, you will realize that you can benefit from using keyword research tools to make your keyword research faster, more productive, and more accurate.

In fact, keyword research, depending on your needs, extends to research for other factors.

– Competition on the website for those same keywords

– How well optimized (SEO) are these competitor sites for those same keywords

– Pay-per-click competition from advertisers paying for ad placement for those same keywords

– How many times a keyword has been searched per month

– Estimated amount of traffic you could receive if your site was optimized for those keywords and featured in the top 3 listings on search engine results pages.

– etc …

Good keyword research tools allow you to achieve more and faster