Chris Anders - Internet Strategy Consultant

Keyword research is a fundamental precursor to any successful Search Engine Marketing Campaign. It essentially involves the identification of relevant keywords or phrases that people use to find the type of products or services you offer.

Keyword research also takes into account how frequently these terms are used by people searching the internet, the level of competition from other sites and whether other phrases or word combinations might achieve better results.

Keyword research essentially answers the following questions:

1. how do people actually search for organisations like ours and the services we offer?
2. what keywords do they use and what is the motivation behind a search for a particular term?
3. how many people currently search for these phrases and where are they?
4. what is the competition from other sites for these keywords?

Keyword research should be consider a mandatory activity for any organisation wishing to engage in either search engine optimisation or PPC schemes such as Google Adwords.  Sometimes preconceptions on how people search for services can be very wrong leading to wasted effort and expenditure.  It is thus essential that keyword analysis is a vigorous process and that you question assumptions in detail.