Internet marketing and search engine optimization hinge on

knowing what keyword or keywords web search surfers are

searching for on the web. By doing extensive keyword analysis

you can zero in on the best keyword terms to use when setting

up pay per click advertising, writing keyword articles, and

optimizing web pages.

Not only is it necessary to know what keywords are searched for

the most but also how many times particular keywords have been

searched. There are a number of effective tools available for

keyword analysis and keyword suggestion.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo has an excellent tool for helping webmasters and Internet

marketers determine what keywords people are searching for on a

monthly basis. This tool, located at

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php is powered by

Yahoo Search Marketing that was previously known as Overture.

Wordtracker

One of the more popular tools for doing keyword research is

Wordtracker.

WordTracker can be found at http://www.wordtracker.com/.

Keyword results provided by Wordtracker are compiled from

Dogpile and Metacrawler. Wordtracker is not free but with the

ability to do targeted keyword research the results can quickly

pay for the software.

Once you have done some preliminary research you will need to

decide which keywords or keyword phrases to target in your

Internet marketing campaign. It is best to choose keywords that

have a good amount of traffic without too much competition for

placement.

For example, let’s say you are marketing a variety of

photography books and you search on photography only to find

that it had more than 1,000,000 searches last month. The

competition for placement with this keyword is probably going

to be pretty tough. Try researching on more targeted phrases

such as nature photography, landscape photography, photography

books, etc.

You will likely find that these terms have less monthly

searches and much less competition. There will be a lower

search to competition ratio. Generally, a keyword with 30,000

to 50,000 monthly searches is going to be one that you can

compete for in terms of placement and being found on the search

engines. Instead of spinning your wheels marketing for those who

are searching for photography instead create multiple campaigns

that market to more targeted keyword phrases.

You can evaluate the search to competition ratio by taking the

number of searchs of a particular keyword and dividing by the

number of web site which return for that keyword when searched.

The higher the number the better. For example, if you have a

keyword that is searched for 100 times in a month and when you

search on that keyword you return 1000 results then the ratio

is 100/1000 or 0.10. If you have a keyword that is searched for

100 times but there are 10,000 search return results then the

ratio goes down to 0.01. The larger the ratio the better in

terms of your ability to be competitive.

Finding the best keywords to use in your web site promotion is

vital to effectively driving targeted traffic to your web site.

Take the time to find out what people are searching for and your

efforts will pay off in terms of traffic and sales conversion.