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What Is The Best Keyword Tool? - Your Own Brain!

What is the best keyword tool? - Your own brain. Too many people now assume that if they use a good keyword research tool then all of their hard work will be done for them.

Certainly you need to think like your target customer and what they might be interested in. This will also lead to 'spin off' products which computer based keyword tools will probably not find.

Nichebot is a great tool for keyword research and I use nothing else now, but if you cannot find your core keywords to start with, then all these tools are almost useless. There are plenty of other keyword research tools that target different keyword usage, such as ppc.

So yes, you must know your market to develop a feel for what might be searched for. Then you can dig deeper for those long tail keyword phrases that have little competition. Even if you only get 20 or so searches per day, the keyword might still be useful as a tag.

Personally, I look for keywords that have a search value of 70/day minimum and some competition. If there is no competition, you may have found a winner, but it is more likely that no one is making any money from that particular phrase because it does not correctly target your buyers.

If you are just starting and looking for broader trends before narrowing down, then use Google Trends. It is a free tool and when used correctly can supply useful metrics on a suitable niche market. You could also tie that in with Google Analytics as a another free resource for tracking on your site.

A good way to check what keywords are being searched on for your market is to put up a squidoo lens on the same market as your site and point the lens to your site.

Stick some good content on the lens, but make sure that it is different from the content on your site or the search engines will downgrade you because of duplication. You will need to change the content by at least 30%.

After a while, you will start to build up the metrics of a keyword list from squidoo because they tell you every keyword/s that is used to find your lens.

You are only allowed to use 40 tags (keywords) on a lens, so it is a good idea to frequently download them to a spreadsheet for analysis. If you have a popular lens then the number of keywords reported will rapidly exceed the forty, meaning that you need to be able to work out which ones are eventually leading to sales.

You must have some sort of tracking on your site then you will know when you get a visit from your own lens and the keyword used. If that keyword (or phrase) is used a few times, then include it as a tag on your site.

Just remember that if you are going to put tracking on a squidoo lens, then you can only use html code. Squidoo does not allow php or javascript due to high volumes of misuse in the past.

But tracking alone is only half the story. You also need to include testing to determine which keywords are generating the most profit.

Here is a simple example using the 'dog' market. Let's say that you have an article titled 'The Best Vets For Your Dog', but you also have the title 'Best Vets For Dogs'. The two keywords there are dog and dogs, but which title would give the best conversion.

A simple A/B split test would tell you which one to use. Then you could change 'vets' to 'vet' and test that. So then you would have a title containing the two top converting keywords. You might then try changing 'Best' for 'Finest' and so on.

Small changes like this will weed out the under-performing keywords and that will improve your profits.

To make life easy (and we all want that) I would recommend purchasing one of the combined track and test scripts that are currently available. They do vary in price from about $67 up to $1500 and the more expensive ones are not necessarily the best for the job.

Here is a quick check list for you to get going with your keyword research.

* Use your brain first,to decide on a niche market, with the help of tools like Google Trends and Nichebot.

* Drill down to find good search/competition keywords and work these into your copy/ads/tags or what ever you want them for.

* Then start to track your visitors and what keywords they use.

* Put in place a testing phase to ensure that you only use the very best converting keywords.

Do all of this and you will be way ahead of probably 95% of other internet marketers.