What do you look for in keyword research to develop a niche? Well, it depends on your goals, but primarily I would recommend looking at three key criteria when you are looking at developing a new niche.

1. Search Volume - How many searches are conducting for a particular topic each month? You want to look at this across all major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). You also want to look for your top 10 keywords. What is the monthly search volume on your most important keywords? Higher is better.
2. Competition - What is your competition like for those keywords? High search volume is often not enough. If you have a moderately high search volume and low competition for a couple of your keywords, that’s better than high search volume and high competition. Lower competition is always better as it means you can exploit the opportunities more.
3. Income Opportunities - How many ways can you make money in that niche? If you just have one way of making money, that will limit your opportunities. But if you can branch out and make money in five or ten different ways then you’ll have a lot more ways to exploit the niche.

In each of these criteria, keyword research is very helpful. Very valuable. Keyword research is the most important part of the monetization process. Spend a considerable amount of time in this area and make sure you are looking at all of the right keyword opportunities.

One way to brand yourself and ensure that you give yourself an edge over your competition by telling your potential customers what your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is right off the bat is to use the correct keywords. USP is Unique Selling Proposition. What distinguishes you from the competition? You can right to the heart of that with your keywords before you ever start your search engine optimization efforts. The key is in the proper keyword research and keyword selection.

You need to analyze your competition’s marketing and see what they are doing first. If your competition has a particular keyword wrapped up and you know it will be difficult to overtake them, try instead to find a keyword that they aren’t doing so well on. Brand yourself for that keyword and dominate the search market for it instead. But how can you identify those keywords?

Understand that search habits change every 3-6 months. What’s hot today may not be hot tomorrow and will likely not be popular next year. So it’s important to examine and re-examine your keyword list on a regular basis. When you see unique opportunities to capture a keyword in your niche, take it, because if you don’t someone else will. But keyword research is the key to finding good opportunities so make sure you do the proper research and take advantage of the opportunities.

Keyword modification is a useful concept if you plan to make the maximum use of your keyword management for SEO. The key to modifying your keywords properly is to take your primary keyword and use it in its multiple variations. For instance, if your primary keyword is “ski vacation”, there are a number of ways that you can utilize this phrase other than using that specific phrase as it is. You can pluralize it (ski vacations), turn it into a verb (ski vacationing, or vacation skiing), or split it up with words in between (ski while on vacation).

Keyword modification, however, is not just simply using the modified phrases on the same page with your primary keyword and there is more to it than simply adding new pages to your static website. It is a particularly useful technique for bloggers who write about a topic every day. You likely have a list of keywords related to your topic, and you should. If your keyword list contains 100 key phrases and each of them has 10 different variations that are potentially helpful for you then you’ve just expanded your keyword list to 1,000. Your list, however, is likely larger than 100. If your list has 300 useful keywords on it then you can turn that list into a list of 3,000 just by thinking up useful variations.

That’s not to say you have to use every keyword variation you can think of. But it helps to know that you can use the variations when you need them. Search engine optimization is not all about using the exact phrase every time you include a keyword phrase in your content. It is usually best to write in a natural language sort of way and to include your keyword phrases as necessary to make the language flow well for human readers.

Search engine optimization is a constant process. It never ends. And only has a beginning because, well, don’t all things have beginnings?

Sarcasm aside, you know you need keywords and you know you should employ them intelligently, but do you know that you should review your keywords from time to time to see which ones are the most effective? Search patterns change. Search behavior changes. What is popular today may not be popular tomorrow, next week, or next year. That’s why it is important to monitor your referrer logs and see what it is that people are searching for to find your website. You should also monitor search trends in your niche and see what it is searchers are looking for right now.

But how often?

I’d say it’s a good idea to review your referrer logs with an in-depth analysis to see what keywords people are finding your site for and to identify new opportunities at least every three to six months. You should monitor search trends and respond to them monthly. By reviewing your keyword list every so often you can ensure that you are on top of the latest trends in your niche and identify the opportunities in a timely manner so that you can capitalize on them at the right moment.

MSN (or soon to be known BING) has been making a small comeback lately. The company once thought of as a joke (and still are by many) in the search space is actually making itself more competitive. They may never be true competitor with Google, but one tool that I find to be very promising is the Search Funnel tool.

With search funnels you can see which search queries people follow up initial search queries with. This is very helpful. If you are building a poetry site, for instance, you can type the word “poetry” into MSNs search funnel tool and see which queries people follow up a search for poetry with. You’ll see that 9.48% of the searchers search for “poems” after searching for “poetry”. 4.26% search for “love poems”.

Conduct the same test with “search engine optimization” you’ll see that only 1.01% of searchers follow up with a search for “seo” but that 5.05% follow up with a search for “india seo”.

This could be a helpful tool in a number of ways. While you can’t tell why people are searching for what they are searching for, you can use the information to better hone the SEO on your website. Why not use “india seo” as a secondary keyword if you know you have a large potential audience in that region? Secondly, you could use those follow-up queries as primary keywords and build new pages around them. I bet your competition hasn’t thought of that. But you can.

Sometimes it’s nice just to dream. A recent article claimed that artificial intelligence is capable of picking better keywords than humans. I don’t think so. I mean, I DO think so if artificial intelligence is something that I thought were possible. But I’m not so sure that is, other than in those old science fiction movies, I mean.

I suppose there may be a time in the future when computers can think better than humans. There are some computers that can beat humans at playing chess. But we’re talking about average humans and above average computers. Still, I think there’s something to be said for the human touch.

Human beings are social animals. That means we like to interact with each other. And as long as we enjoy each other’s company and interacting with other humans, it doesn’t matter how good a computer is at something. There will always be a market for human-oriented businesses. Even in selecting keywords for your search engine optimization and search marketing campaigns.

Many search engine optimization experts talk about something called keyword density. Supposedly, if you put just enough keywords into your content it’s like swallowing a magic pill. Instant rankings. The only thing is, it doesn’t work that way.

Because the search engines have so many different factors for ranking websites for certain keywords, it is difficult to predict just which factor will be the favored one on any given day. It is much better to put your keywords into the right places and not worry about the right amounts. When it comes right down to it anyway, you can have too much and you can have too little. Why spend all your time guessing which is which?

I’m here to say that you can have just the right amount of keyword density and not get ranked for you important keywords. That’s because factors like domain age, inbound link relevance, domain keyword optimization, and h tags on someone else’s web page can trump your keyword density.

Webmasters should spend more time learning the ins and outs of optimization and quit guessing density patterns. That’s the old way of doing things and keyword density hasn’t mattered for about five years. The smarter and more sophisticated the search engines become in their approach to ranking information, the less keyword density matters. Natural language optimization has almost killed the keyword density discussion anyway. Another couple of years and there won’t even be a slight chance of resurrection. Let keyword density take care of itself.

One of the best things about using Google AdWords in the past has been its ability to help webmasters discover new keywords and optimize their web pages better for the keywords already on their list. A new feature of the Google AdWords keyword tool is that it can do the same thing for webmasters with a local bent.

Use the keyword tool the same as you’ve always done (if you used it at all), but pay attention to the column for “Local Search Volume”. If you see any trends for local search then you can capitalize on those.

One of the biggest potentials this tool offers is for national advertisers and webmasters who also geotarget their services at the local level. You can use the tool to optimize your pay per click advertising campaigns as well as your on site search engine optimization. This tool has the potential to help you identify those searches that do well locally but not so much nationally. You can then target your search marketing efforts to the right geotarget markets without affecting your national campaigns. That’s pretty powerful stuff.

If you are a user of an analytics package, and you should be, then you can use it to help you better optimize your website. With just one simple tool inside your analytics program you can get a better handle on how visitors are finding your website and use that information to better optimize it for future search.

Take a look at your keywords list, the list that shows you which keywords people are using to find your website. If they fall within your niche then you are doing well. It doesn’t mean you can’t do better. Do you see keywords for which you don’t pages built? If so then why you build web pages for your site around those keywords?

If you see keywords on your top keywords list that make no sense for your website then you might not be optimizing your well enough. You will always see strange phrases so don’t freak out if you see an odd keyword. But your top 10 keywords should be keywords that make sense for your niche and for your business.

Another tool you can use if your referrer log. Visit a few of the sites that are referring traffic to you. Are they competitors or sites within your niche? Scour them for related keywords. See any that missed? Now build pages on your site for those keywords as part of your on site search engine optimization efforts.

Aaron Wall hit a long tail home run with this little paragraph in a big blog post on Seth Godin and search engine optimization:

There is little point in trying to rank for a big money keyword right out of the gate. Smart SEOs generally insist on ensuring you use relevant keyword modifiers and alternative word forms. Why? Longtail keywords have less competition, are easier to rank for, rank quicker, and are more likely to convert (since they are more targeted).

Most of us know by now that long tail keywords perform better for new websites because it’s too difficult to rank for the big keywords right out of the starting gate. Instead of going for the major phrases that everyone else in your niche is going for, drill down to the key phrases that most of your competitors aren’t gunning for because there aren’t that many searches for those phrases.

So what if a certain key phrase only gets 35 searches per month? Target 100 of those phrases and you’ll have 3,500 unique opportunities to be found for the content that your competitors aren’t targeting. Target 200 and that’s 7,000 opportunities. Would you rather have 7,000 opportunities to be found today by people looking for a business like yours or aim at a target as large as 1,000,000 with no hope of hitting until until next year? Go for the long tail gold today. Tomorrow will have its own rewards.

If you want a quick, free method to conduct the keyword research part of your on site search engine optimization for your existing website, I’ve got the perfect solution and you don’t have to go far.

It’s a two step process:

1. Google AdWords External Tool - First, go to the Google AdWords External Keyword Research Tool. Click on Website Content and enter your URL. Be sure to check the box for “Include other pages on my site linked from this URL” so that it covers your entire website”. Now click the “Get keyword ideas” button. Before moving on to the next step, hand select the best keywords for the next stage of development for your website.
2. Google AdWords Search-Based Keyword Tool - Next, go to the Google AdWords Search-Based Keyword Tool. Enter your URL again. Below the Website box where it says “With words or phrases”, copy and paste the most relevant keywords from the External Tool list into the box and click the “Find keywords” button.”

Now you should have a good list of competitive keywords related to your best keywords. Some of those keywords returned won’t be relevant. But I like this method of keyword research because the Google Search-Based Keyword Tool will return results based on actual searches and tell you what the pay per click competitiveness of those keywords is. That will be very important if you plan to do any advertising, but it’s also important for designing your website for search.

You know that the inbound link building of a long term search engine optimization strategy is important. You know that anchor text is important. But how do you find out which anchor text is the most important?

All in all, a general mix of anchor text is best. You don’t want all of your inbound links to say the same thing. But how do you determine which links and which anchor text will serve you best? It’s called keyword research.

There are various methods for conducting keyword research. Here are some of the more popular ways that you can find the right anchor text for your website:

• Keyword Research Tool - There are a number of keyword research tools and you should use at least one of them. The drawback to many keyword research tools is they don’t tell you what keywords are best for you. Even if you can ascertain some value for your keywords from the tool, that value is an estimate for the keyword’s general value and not for the specific value that it will bring to your website.
• Referrer Logs - Look at your referrer logs and see what keywords people are finding your site with. Are they searching for words and phrases that you didn’t think about and finding you? Are those keywords and phrases important to you? If not, you might need to re-optimize your website. But if those keywords and phrases are a good match for your site and niche then you may hit gold with some of those pages. Check to see if those high traffic pages and the popular words and phrases in your referrer logs will make good anchor text.
• Moment of Opportunity - Sometimes, the popularity of search terms can’t be predicted. A current event may catapult a certain topic into the spotlight and all of a sudden people start searching for it. If you see a spike in certain search terms that fit your niche then you can use those search terms as anchor text to lead people back to your website. Just be sure that you act fast and you answer their questions once they arrive on your site.
• Supply-Side Optimization - You can create your own important search terms. If you are carving out a new niche or providing information on a topic that no one else is touching on then there may not be keywords and phrases already in use that will work for you. Perform some searches for the keywords that you are trying to target. If nothing comes up you can create the search field for those words and phrases.
• Pay Per Click Advertising - PPC is perhaps the most underutilized keyword research tool there is. But its effectiveness is astounding. It does cost, which is why many companies don’t use it for research. Pick a keyword, run an ad, and see what kind of response you get. Does your keyword get a lot of click throughs? Is it profitable? If so, use it as anchor text.
• Competitive Research - Find out what the competition is doing. Are they capitalizing on words and phrases you aren’t using? Don’t be afraid to learn from the other guy.

These six methods of keyword research can often turn up gems of profit for your anchor text. What other ways do you have of determining strong anchor text for you inbound links?

Bill Slawski from SEO By The Sea .com asks some good questions.

One of my favorite ones is this:

If you own a web site, and have a site search on your site, do you look at what people are searching for and how they are searching, to try to understand better what they might be trying to find on your site?

Site Search is a great way to find out how people use your website, but it’s also a key clue as to what they may want to see on your site. By allowing users to search your website you can see what they search for that they don’t find. If you get a lot of queries for a tpic that you don’t cover then you can use that information to serve the niche and build pages on those popular queries that you aren’t currently fulfilling.

Another way you can use Site Search is to refine your current information offerings. If you get a lot of queries for a keyword phrase that is similar to one that you’re targeting, but not exact, then you can use that information to build another landing page for the similar search query.

Many website owners have found out that Site Search is one of their best optimization and keyword research tools. You can use it too!

Every once in a while I read Aaron Wall’s SEObook.com and see a post that he’s probably done hundreds of times before, namely, that new sites gain better search engine traction by targeting long tail keywords. He makes a convincing case.

Here’s the spoiler: At the end his little ditty he says …

This site does not rank well for SEO just because I decided to target that keyword, but because we helped create many paths into this site…which helped to build the authority of the site…which helps it rank better for the core keywords.

I think this is a very fine nuance. It isn’t a matter of long tail vs. core keywords. It’s really always both. But the long tail keywords are the moneymakers for new sites. The core keywords are simply competitive phrases for which you don’t have a snowball’s chance until you gain in several algorithmic channels like age domain, domain authority, et. al. While you are building your site’s authority it is prudent to focus on the keywords that will afford you the most opportunities to profit, and those keywords are most often going to be long tail keywords. The good news is you don’t have to target just the long tail and ignore the core within your keyword research and search engine optimization strategy. You can target both - just know where your beginning base is.

Some of you may be aware that Google AdWords has a couple of free keyword research tools. Both tools are handy for PPC and for search engine optimization. You can use them even if you don’t have any active PPC campaigns or even if you are not planning to start any. You can use the tools for your search engine marketing and optimization campaigns and improve your performance drastically. But when should you use each tool?

The Google AdWords External Tool is a good place to start your research. It’s free so performing your initial keyword research is fairly simple. There are two ways to use it, primarily.

You can use the external tool to search for related keywords or you can have it analyze your website and return relevant keywords. Either way is OK and you can even do both. The nice thing about the external keyword tool is the breadth of information it returns. What you should be interested in the advertiser competition meter and the average search volume field. If you are running PPC campaigns based on your keyword research then use the dropdown menu for showing which fields to display and show all fields. If you are using the tool simply for SEO purposes then you don’t CPC and ad position fields so stick with the default.

Use the external field to input several of your known keyword phrases and try to find related phrases that you can capitalize on.

After playing around with the external tool, you may want to go to Google’s search-based keyword research tool. This tool returns information based on actual searches. Just like the external tool, you can use this tool to search your website for key phrases or to search for related key phrases. But there are a couple of drill down tools that the search-based tool is good for. Because of that it is great for narrowing in on your most important keywords.

No. 1, if you want to search your website for the best keywords, do it for each individual page separately. You are not looking for sitewide keywords here. You are looking for specific keywords that are relevant to a specific landing page. Also, you can type in one or two primary keywords and get a list of related keywords with some great information attached such as how many monthly searches have been made for that term, what is your level of competition, and a suggested bid for PPC campaigns. Now, that last one is important even if you are using the tool for search engine optimization and not for PPC.

Use this tool to discover which of your keywords are the most valuable and focus on those. By using this double-edged approach to keyword research using Google’s free keyword research tools, you can achieve an excellent search engine optimization campaign based on real data.