Beginner Guide to Keyword Research

What is keyword research? 

Keyword research' is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search. Search engine optimization professionals research keywords in order to achieve better rankings in search engines.

What is a long tail keyword?

Long tail keywords are three and four keyword phrases which are very specific to whatever you are providing. You see, whenever a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for exactly what they are actually going to get.

How to Research Keywords

Use Google's AdWords Keyword Planner tool for SEO keyword research. It not only suggests keywords and provides estimated search volume but also predicts the cost of running paid campaigns for these terms. To determine the volume for a particular keyword, be sure to set the Match Type to [Exact] and look under Local Monthly Searches. Remember that these represent total searches. Depending on your ranking and click-through rate, the actual number of visitors you achieve for these keywords will usually be much lower.

Use the Keyword Planner to choose any terms on your list that have way too little (or way too much) search volume. Before you delete anything, check out their trend history and projections in Google Trends. You can see whether some low-volume terms might actually be something you should invest in now and reap the benefits for later.

Or perhaps you're just looking at a list of terms that is way too unwieldy, and you have to narrow it down somehow Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upward, and are thus worth more of your focus.

It's beautiful to deal with keywords that have 4,000 searches a day, or even 400 searches a day, but in reality, these popular search terms actually make up less than 30% of the searches performed on the web. The remaining 70% lie in what's called the "long tail" of search. The long tail contains hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be conducted a few times in any given day, but, when taken together, comprise the majority of the world's search volume.

Search marketers have learned is that long tail keywords often convert better, because they catch people later in the buying/conversion cycle. A person searching for "car" is probably browsing, and not ready to buy. On the other hand, someone searching for "best price on used Toyota Rush 2010" practically has their wallet out!

Understanding the search demand curve is critical. To the right we've included a sample keyword demand curve, illustrating the small number of queries sending larger amounts of traffic alongside the volume of less-searched terms and phrases that bring the bulk of our search referrals.