How can I target and research my keywords?

Before optimizing your web site, you need to know what keywords your target group is using. Your keywords are the words and phrases that people might use to find your products, brands, services, or information, via Search engines.
You can probably develop a few ideas very quickly. If you run a fishing shop, keywords such as: "fish", "vacation", and "salmon" might be good ideas. In fact, a deep research into the topic of "fishing" would probably show more than 10,000 different keywords people use when they search for fishing information.
Does that mean you have to target all those keywords? No, absolutely not. You should use such research only as a good starting point. Use it to learn the search behavior of your audience. Find out what they call things, how they identify subjects, how precisely or broadly they generally search.
You may discover that the majority of searches for "fishing" come from people using combinations of "fishing" and a certain city, country, or region. Or you may verify that people search for "see-fishing" more than "lake-fishing".
And if your shop is based in Alaska and you sell local fishing trips, there no need to get high rankings on fishing trip brazil. And what will score better? Fishing or fishing trip Alaska? Someone looking for general information about fishing is less interested in your particular trip you organize in Alaska. But when someone is looking for Fishing trip Alaska you have especially what he needs! As second Keyword you can use the more common fishing trip try to convince the fishing trip seeker to do this trip in Alaska. The more specialist your keyword or Key phrase is the better are the click thru rates to your web site. See also the get visited section.
All this research should be used in the way you tailor your web pages and the way you write your text, titles and META-tags. If most people in your target group use the term "fishing trips" to describe your product, so should you.

Tip:
Your most important keywords will often include some of the following:
• Your company name, including synonyms and abbreviations
• All product and brand names that you feature on your web site
• Countries, regions, or cities you have an association with - often in combination with the one of the words above
• Relevant generic terms for your business, brands, or services (e.g. car, house or boat)
• Combinations of 2 and 3 keywords - many people search for phrases rather than single words

Tip: We recommend using the keyword tool in the SEO Effect to research keywords.