Do you perform your keyword research in the classic way?  Do you keep trying to rank for high volume keywords even though you are the new kid on the block?

Since the real goal of your website is to create conversions to make sales, not to be the highest listing on a high volume keyword that may or may not make sales – then maybe you need to pay attention here.

One of the biggest mistakes that new online entrepreneurs and established business makes is trying to achieve a high search engine ranking for a high volume keyword, even though there are long established internet real estate owners planted in the top positions.

You may have made this mistake yourself, I know I did… trying to rank for a word or phrase where the true intent of the person searching doesn’t really match the true intent of your business site:

1. Create Leads
2. Create Sales

So let’s get to the root of the problem.  First, does the method you use to do keyword research go anything like this…

1. Brainstorm a bunch of keywords you think are related to your niche product
2. Review the number of searches each month in the search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo
3. Select those with the highest search volume related to your search
4. Include some using the product name or a branded phrase

These steps above will get you to more focused keywords and keyword phrases.  It’s true.  And if you are doing them, that’s a good start.

And if you are doing these, then it’s time to take the next step.  You need to analyze your results closer.  StomperNet always tells you to test your keywords.  Then let the testing determine which convert.  If a keyword converts, and gets you on the first page, that is where you want to be.

The StomperNet way is to take your likely converting keyword and run and adwords ppc campaign and chart the results.  For an established business with an advertising budget, this is a great method.

For someone trying to create a business from nothing, this could get very expensive – fast – particularly if you never use adwords or PPC advertising.

But you do have other resources to help you so you can put to work key things like…

• The internal keyword searches done on your blog.  Did you know you can track this?
• The keywords you didn’t know you optimized for.  You can track this too!
• The keywords your competitors are using.  Yes, you can find this just as easy (though beware, some of your competitors aren’t so smart about choosing their keywords)

On my blogs, I use a free tool called CyStats.  The plugin site is in German, so you may just want to go to the WordPress.org download for this.  It gives you a quick insight of your keyword phrases bringing you traffic, both from internal searches and organic search engine results.  It saves you from having to log into your cPanel.  Like any addon (including Google Analytics) it isn’t as accurate as your cPanel tools.

You can also use StatPress SEO Solution (it’s homepage is in German also, so English speakers just go to WordPress.org).

These are my two favorites.  But if you don’t use a blog (and even if you do), and you use cPanel hosting (which I hope you do), then just go to your cPanel, log in, and choose the Logs section and there are normally two traffic evaluation tools there.

Go to www.example.com/cpanel (replace example with your domain) and log in

Scroll down to the Logs section and use either Webalizer or Awstats.  I personally prefer Awstats.

To see your competitors keywords, just get the free copy of PPC WebSpy like I’ve told you before, or go to KeywordSpy and get a sampling there.

There is a paid version, and it is much more comprehensive, but the free version, combined with other free tools is very effective.  The main difference is, the paid version is complete data, and faster to use since you don’t need to go hopping to other tools.

This is true for both Keyword Spy and PPC WebSpy.  You, at least, need to add these to your free tools to use regularly when evaluating your keywords and where to go next.

Another great source I found about advancing your keyword research to the next level is by Damien Bianchi at Search Engine Land.  Visit him now to put another twist on putting an end to traditional keyword research.

I hope this is helpful… let me know your thoughts.  Your comments are welcome (your spam is not).

- Wayne Sharer