Many seasoned site owners treat online keyword research as an important regular task in developing their sites. In order to do this properly though, it’s important to first understand what keywords are, why research is important and how it’s done.

Defining Keywords and Research

More often than not, keywords aren’t single standalone words. They’re phrases that are related to the topics or niches of websites or blogs.

Not all site owners believe they need keywords so they don’t go into research. Those who do put value on them typically create lists of related keywords to use on their sites. The process followed to build these lists is known as keyword research.

For many site owners, research starts even before they pick and buy domain names. It then becomes a continuous activity before writing articles for posts and pages.

Why it’s Done

From my perspective, I like conducting research because it is one way to find related topics to blog about. For a lot of other webmasters however, research is done so they can find related phrases that can help increase search engine visibility.

Inserting keywords in certain sections in a blog post helps search engines find out what it’s all about. To a certain extent, the use of keywords is one factor that search engines consider to determine whether a site, web page or blog post turns up in search engine results pages for a particular search phrase. Because keywords can potentially be used to manipulate search engine results, there are general guidelines for their proper use and placement.

If the explanation above doesn’t make sense to you now, don’t worry. The section on SEO will explain keywords in greater detail.

How is Research Conducted

There is no single set way to do research. Different gurus have different methods. In general though, the task ideally focuses on looking for phrases that:

• have some profit potential (profitable)
• are searched by a good number of people (good traffic)
• aren’t already used on a lot of other aged, frequently linked to pages (little competition)

You can follow the same basic steps outlined in the section on niche market research for evaluating traffic, assessing competition and determining profitability to come up with a list of possible keywords that are related to your topic. Set these aside for when you’re ready to buy a domain or start writing posts.