There aren't many topics which have been covered as broadly online as keyword research.
Everyone seems prepared to spread his or her idea about how it has to be done, but the truth is that most of these folks are simply passing on a strategy that they have been taught by another person.
And the the fact is that most of these people have over complicated the issue and in some cases are plain incorrect.
You are going to hear people telling you to do research into things such as the amount of competitor websites, the title levels of competition, anchor-text competitors and a whole number of additional information.
And even though this could offer you a good overview of the potential competition you will deal with, ultimately it can be really deceiving.
Whenever you're considering keywords and attempting to get the ones that have lower competition there's a single thing you have to keep in mind.
Roughly 90% of men and women will not go past the first page in the search results once they have carried out a Google search.
So you're not competing against two million competing websites, or 30,000 web sites that have this search term inside the title tag.
You're competing against the ten results which sit on the front page of Google for the keyword.
if you believe that you can do a better job in your of your web optimization than these websites, you will have a strong candidate.
When the front page of Google is loaded with pages which have massive authority as well as countless good quality backlinks, then it really doesn't matter if there are just 5000 competing pages - the ten that are at the very top will likely be extremely hard to dislodge.
So any time you are doing your keyword research what you need to do is forget about all of the expensive keyword applications on the market for just a minute, and get back to fundamentals.
Type your search term into Google just like you had been doing a search yourself - do not put the search term in quotations or use intricate search strings.
Simply look at exactly what a typical person would find if they performed this very same search.
Now start looking at the webpages which appear towards the top.
Do these appear to be excellent pages or does it look like they're of very low quality and might easily be replaced by a far better website optimized by yourself.
Now there are definitely keyword tools available which have the functionality to help you to quickly evaluate these top ten websites, however when you are getting started with this approach to keyword research it's wise to get this done manually to begin with to help you completely understand the process.
After you appreciate the value in doing it this way you are able to move on to discovering the right programs to help you streamline this method so that you can check a number of search phrases quickly and assess whether you are going to be able to quickly get your website to this first page.