5 Steps for Effective Keyword Research

As you begin learning more and more about pay per click advertising there is one message that should resonate throughout the learning process: keyword research is crucial to the success and/or failure of any PPC campaign. What this means for you is that you should take your time and make sure you do a bang up job on the keyword research for your campaign. The following tips should help you do just that.

Know Your Product

There is nothing that can replace first hand knowledge of the products you are attempting to sale when it comes to figuring out how to sell them and who to sell them to. That is what keywords are about. Making the sale and knowing your audience. You must learn as much as you can about the benefits, flaws, and features of the products you are selling and use this knowledge to come up with a list of creative keywords that will help you make the sales you seek.

Know What Your Customers Need

A wise Internet marketer once said that successful Internet marketers are genuinely interested in helping people solve their problems. Know what your customers need and find the keywords that offer the solution to their problems. What are they looking for? What are they asking the search engines to help them find? Knowing what they are looking for and what they need will give you an excellent start for your keyword research.

Check Out the Competition

Take a look at the websites your competition has up and running. What keywords are they addressing? How many websites have you found working with those same keywords and phrases? This may seem like a small step in the right direction but it can bring big results. Know which keywords your competitors are targeting and you can discover some gems of your own.

Eliminate Keywords That are Saturated

Some keywords have a great deal of competition already. It is a good idea to eliminate those from your list of potential keywords. You should also make use of various free tools available online to eliminate keywords that are not searched as often as you think they should be. These keywords may have low competition but they will also be difficult to make real money from due to the lack of an audience. What you want to keep are those keywords and phrases that get a fair amount of search volume while maintaining a low amount of competition. Eliminate the rest and build your campaign around these gems.

Decide Which Keywords are PPC Worthy

Now is the difficult task of going through, finding out the costs of various keywords, and deciding which keywords you are going to promote through pay per click advertising. Consider your budget and the amount of time you need to begin seeing a profit before you decide which keywords are most likely to bring in the results you're waiting for.

Do these things and you should have a well rounded list of keywords that have the potential to be effective and profitable.