Search Volumes
The first thing you want to know is – is there anyone searching for this keyword? If so, how many people? If not, then there is no point to continue with your research and it’s time to pick a new keyword. Next, you want to find as many related keywords to your main keyword as you can. Look at keywords with medium volumes.

A specific keyword phrase with medium volume and lower competition has a better chance of ranking high AND of converting a visitor into a customer. I use the Google Keyword Tool for all of the above. Since Google has about 60% of the search engine market share they have the best data out there (besides it’s free).

Competition
The next step is to assess the competition. You can type the keyword or keyword phrase into Google to see how many sites have some variation of the keyword on their sites.

This is what I do… I prefer to target the exact keyword phrase to see who pops up on the first page. I do this by entering “keyword phrase” quotes around my keyword. Or I like to use allintitle: “keyword phrase” to see how many people are optimizing the title tag with the keyword phrase.

Basic Analysis
Do I have a chance to be number one? To do this I analyze title tags, page rank, and backlinks. I look at whether or not the site has my exact keyword phrase in the title first, then check to see what the page rank is. A strong page rank is 5 and up.

I then look at the number of quality backlinks from the Yahoo Site Explorer.  If a web page does not have the exact keyword phrase in the title, the page rank is under 5, and there are not many authority backlinks – then I have a pretty good chance ranking high with the keyword phrase.

For allintitle, anything under 10K is usually very good. After taking this information into consideration, I will either go for the keyword or pick another.

Now find 30 or more keyword phrases that meet the criteria and build your blog posts around those keywords. Get backlinks to your blog on a consistent basis and you will soon increase your search engine traffic.

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