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Internet marketing and search engine optimization hinge on knowing what keyword or keywords web search surfers are searching for on the web. By doing extensive keyword analysis you can zero in on the best keyword terms to use when setting up pay per click advertising, writing keyword articles, and optimizing web pages.

Not only is it necessary to know what keywords are searched for the most but also how many times particular keywords have been searched. There are a number of effective tools available for keyword analysis and keyword suggestion.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo has an excellent tool for helping webmasters and Internet marketers determine what keywords people are searching for on a monthly basis. This tool, located at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php>http://searc hmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php is powered by Yahoo Search Marketing that was previously known as Overture.

Wordtracker

One of the more popular tools for doing keyword research is Wordtracker. WordTracker can be found at http://www.wordtracker.com/>http://www.wordtracker.com/. Keyword results provided by Wordtracker are compiled from Dogpile and Metacrawler. Wordtracker is not free but with the ability to do targeted keyword research the results can quickly pay for the software.

Once you have done some preliminary research you will need to decide which keywords or keyword phrases to target in your Internet marketing campaign. It is best to choose keywords that have a good amount of traffic without too much competition for placement.

For example, let's say you are marketing a variety of photography books and you search on photography only to find that it had more than 1,000,000 searches last month. The competition for placement with this keyword is probably going to be pretty tough. Try researching on more targeted phrases such as nature photography, landscape photography, photography books, etc.

You will likely find that these terms have less monthly searches and much less competition. There will be a lower search to competition ratio. Generally, a keyword with 30,000 to 50,000 monthly searches is going to be one that you can compete for in terms of placement and being found on the search engines. Instead of spinning your wheels marketing for those who are searching for photography instead create multiple campaigns that market to more targeted keyword phrases.

You can evaluate the search to competition ratio by taking the number of searchs of a particular keyword and dividing by the number of web site which return for that keyword when searched. The higher the number the better. For example, if you have a keyword that is searched for 100 times in a month and when you search on that keyword you return 1000 results then the ratio is 100/1000 or 0.10. If you have a keyword that is searched for 100 times but there are 10,000 search return results then the ratio goes down to 0.01. The larger the ratio the better in terms of your ability to be competitive.

Finding the best keywords to use in your web site promotion is vital to effectively driving targeted traffic to your web site. Take the time to find out what people are searching for and your efforts will pay off in terms of traffic and sales conversion.

About the author:

Brian Pratt is a 47 year old New Zealander with over 10 years internet experience. He owns a Plug-In Profit site at http://www.bestrealincome.com. If you would like to build your own home based business, be sure to visit his site. You can contact him at brian@bestrealincome.com