Keyword research

How do you go about doing successful keyword research? What tools and programs are worth the money and time to learn and use?

I have been using KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker but I discovered I get very different results from both of them. Are either of these programs worth it? Which one do I trust?

Is the KEI measurement any good?

 

I use wordtracker and the overture tool. look in your log files and see what words people are arriving on now through natural results.

there's another service, but for the life of me I can't remeber hte name of teh site. That have traffic stats on 1,000s of site, upstream, downstream, etc. I would go there, enter in competitor sites, and see what words searchers were arriving on at them. hitsomethingorother.... damn.

 

After a disasterous keyword analysis, I have learnt a lot of lessons. So these are what I normally do for keyword research :

1. I start by use keyworddiscovery & nichebot together at the same time. This is to check that both should contain similar keywords. Nichebot to see how many competitions exist.

(Note for Keyword Research Newcomers)
Keep in mind that Overture terms are doesn't differentiate singular & plural, and normally put it in alphabetical order:

e.g -maybe people search for chinese acupuncture but overture could put the term as acupuncture chinese. If you target acupuncture chinese, you're already in the pit!
- people may search for kid toys but overture may put it as kid toy ( singular), if you believe and select the keyword, you might be in deep shit as well.
- overture group similar keyword together, so people may look for children toys but overture sometimes "said" that people search for kid toy eventhough hardly no one use it. It lumps kid and children together)

Why? because it's a PPC model - it really is not a keyword research tool. So do not believe overture.

2. If it's good (both WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery & (probably)Overture list the same keyword & not much competitions), I double check at Google Suggest to verify that people actually use that term and Google Adwords Keyword to get other valuable suggestion from Google - to use in the page for onpage optimization.

3. If I want to see if I'm having a nice important keyword and will be rich if listed prominently, I checked the term at Overture Bid or Google Adwords.

If you really want to see all the keyword research tools availlable in the net and how good they are, read the review at this site http://www.keywordworkshop.com/

Call me paranoia, but I had very very bad failure because I didn't take much time to verify. I had learnt my lesson and this is what I do from that moment on. Took me ages to find one good phrase but I had found certain great ones and are building content for it now.

Good luck man!

 

I'm trying to figure out the topic for my next site. And I want to find one which I can actually get listed in the top 20 or better. My current sites I feel are in a too competive areas.

 

KEI is somewhat important but I don't really compute for it, just try to estimate if a kw is worth taking.

 

Hitwise, that's it. Our company has an account.