Keyword research is probably the most important aspect when trying to build a website that attracts targeted visitors for a certain product or service. Whether we are talking about long tail keywords or the most competitive one-word ones, without a proper research one business cannot survive (and expand) in the word-wide-web world.

Whenever we hear about keyword research we think about those so popular keyword research tools, from free ones like Google AdWords Tool to paid ones such as Market Samurai, however there are plenty of other methods for digging deeper and grab those words/phrases that might attract potential customers.

Here are two great ideas for your keyword research:

1.      Find related questions

Whether you are using forums or Q&A websites for this method, there are literally thousands of questions in every niche that could lead to potential customers. Say you are selling web design services, you should definitely check related forums, see what people are asking and simply build pages/blog posts that answer those questions. Although those might not get many searches (according to keyword tools), those are most of the times keywords that will bring you targeted visitors and prospects for your services.

2.      Offer a solution

This is quite easy: as per our above example, what problems do web design services solve? From creating a website for a business (or for affiliate marketers) to even partnerships with SEO companies, there are many answers that could translate into future business. List some solutions and start building related keywords ideas from those – you should end up with a nice list to build future content on.

Keyword research is probably the most important aspect when trying to build a website that attracts targeted visitors for a product or service. Whether we are talking about long tail keywords or the most competitive one-word ones, without a proper research one business cannot survive (and expand) in the word-wide-web world.

Whenever we hear about keyword research we think about those so popular keyword research tools, from free ones like Google AdWords Tool to paid ones such as Market Samurai, however there are plenty of other methods for digging deeper and grab those words/phrases that might attract potential customers.

Here are two great ideas for your keyword research:

1.      Find related questions

Whether you are using forums or Q&A websites for this method, there are literally thousands of questions in every niche that could lead to potential customers. Say you are selling web design services, you should definitely check related forums, see what people are asking and simply build pages/blog posts that answer those questions. Although those might not get many searches (according to keyword tools), those are most of the times keywords that will bring you targeted visitors and prospects for your services.

2.      Offer a solution

This is quite easy: as per our above example, what problems do web design services solve? From creating a website for a business (or for affiliate marketers) to even partnerships with SEO companies, there are many answers that could translate into future business. List some solutions and start building related keywords ideas from those – you should end up with a nice list to build future content on.

Many webmasters concentrate on just writing quality content (and this is not a bad thing at all) but forget about the basic principles of on-page and off-page SEO. Creating an interesting article based on a certain subject is not a sure-fire method for getting traffic to that very post.

Here are some easy step for getting more visitors to your blog posts and ranking those as high as possible in the search engine results:

1.      Keyword research

We cannot emphasise enough on this action. Say you want to write a blog post relating to “cheap widgets”; first thing is to actually research the keyword and find those low-hanging fruits with lower competing pages and searches. Maybe there are thousands of people searching for “cheap blue widgets in London”, you have just got a great long tail keyword that can actually rank fast. Top tip: do not forget to ALWAYS use exact searches in Google Keyword Tool.

2.        Title, description, H tags and ALT description

The 4 above places are a must! Once you have got a long tail keyword you should use it in your title, in your description, H tags and images’ ALT description. You can also use other long tail keywords in body/meta description and try to get as many visitors as possible for those related keywords.

3.      Do not stress about keyword density

Although many SEOs say you should have a keyword density around 2-5%, this isn’t something to be stressed about. Try to use the keywords at the beginning, middle and end of your article and you should be fine. Never try to stuff keywords or you might see the negative aspects of this practice in no time!

4.      Article length

Try to keep your articles’ length to over 500 words. Not only will they get faster indexation but you can  grab some extra-traffic for other long-tail keywords and also, Google loves content so having as much as possible will always be a positive thing.

5.      Link building

The easiest way for building  links to your newly launched blog posts are: social bookmarking and article marketing. Always get a few links to new blog posts after they have got indexed by the search engines.

Although many Internet marketers, SEO consultants and even companies that do all their SEO in-house are relying on tools like Google’s Keyword Tool when doing their keyword research, most of the times it seems that the software fails to deliver the real results, most of the times not even close to them.

We at WebCreationUK did a test for several months on an un-related website (we will not disclose the URL though) and the results are more than interesting. We will show you what results Google Webmaster Tools shows when compared to Google Keyword Tool (exact matches). Here are some of the examples (no AdWords Ads involved):

KW1 – Global Monthly Searches 110 ; Local Monthly Searches 91

Real stats – Impressions 330

KW2 – Global Monthly Searches 770; Local Monthly Searches 350

Real stats – Impressions 2,500

KW3 – Global Monthly Searches 770; Local Monthly Searches 440

Real stats – Impressions 1,900

These are only 3 keywords but the list is way bigger. Imagine that you avoid using a keyword due to its low volume of search when in fact it is getting maybe twice or even more volume, making it maybe a good keyword to go for.

Now, how can this turn into our advantage? Simple as possible: get all the keywords that have a good number of impressions/clicks, check their rankings, see where your website is in the SERPs for each and any keyword and try to improve them. You will notice a good flow of new visitors to your website once you start ranking higher for those very keywords.

Almost any successful website owner knows that long tail keywords are probably the best way of achieving targeted traffic and more potential customers for the services or products he promotes. However, it is not a very easy task to discover those long tail keywords that could bring both visits and that have less competitors than short ones.

From Google AdWords Keyword Tool to Market Samurai and many other keyword tools, webmasters are trying to discover the “goldmine” of keywords, forgetting that most of the times the answer could be exactly where you are less expecting it. So here are 3 places where you can easily spy on what other people are searching thus getting the exact keyword you need for your pages, articles and general promotion.

1. Google Wonder Wheel

Search for the term you are optimising your website for and click on Wonder Wheel. Google will reveal some related long-tail keywords, keywords that are in fact searched by people constantly. After you have created a list with those take a look on each of them using different competition/search-ability analysing methods. You will end up probably with a nice list to work upon.

2. Google Related Searches

Same as the above, Google reveals what people are searching related to the term you have used. Complete the keywords in your list analysis and competition analysis as above and start promoting them.

3. Using all letters after your keyword

Go to Google. Type in your keyword, without pressing enter. After you have submitted your keyword, try each letter of the alphabet as if would be the beginning of a new word (can be also numbers) and you should see some interesting results: for each letter after the keyword Google will display a new word, thus revealing another batch of long tail keywords.

From here on, things are easier than you might think. Just create optimised content and promote it.

One of the most difficult tasks when setting up a website is definitely keyword research. Yes, we all want to rank for those juicy keywords with hundreds of thousands of searches each month, one-two words keywords and keywords for if you are ranking for high the chances of getting rich in weeks are at highest levels.

However, most of the time we cannot achieve our goals and think we have failed due to many factors like low-budget or the wrong SEO company working for our website, when in fact the simplest thing you can do is to properly choose your keywords.

One of the biggest mistakes someone can do when choosing a keywords is to look at broad searches/month instead of exact searches. You might have a big surprise when switching from broad to exact, related to how many folks are really searching for that very phrase. Do this right from the start and do not invest in optimising for keywords that do not have high search volumes.

Keywords where competition is toughest: if you have chosen two great keywords and you need to choose from one of those, the next step is to check competitors for each keyword. How many backlinks they have, what is their SEO strategy, how old the websites are and so on.

Lastly, although laser-targeted keywords have very few searches, one thing is sure: those are most of the times buying keywords. Let’s take for example a keyword like “web design” which has literally hundreds of thousands of searches each day; now let’s compare it with “affordable web design firm in London”. Which one you believe is more suitable for increasing your sales? The example is just at a first sight, there are literally hundreds of industries and millions of keywords for each one that could definitely increase your customers/sales, you just have to mine deeper for those.