Just like all forms of business, SEO requires research before execution. You need to know the landscape and know you enemy before you take them on, that’s where these tools come in.

Not only will they save you loads of time checking out your competition and keywords but they will also help you learn more about competitors than snooping around there contact page and source code.

In the first part of this guide we will look at some of the keyword research tool available online and give you a few links to add to your bookmarks.

If you have approached SEO or PPC keyword research before you will know there is a myriad of options on the market for researching keywords, there are also nearly as many differing opinions about which ones you should use or not use.

I used these tools to choose keyword for some of the products already plugged into MoreNiche, including the WassOnline Poker and Casino Community.

The first resource you need as part of your keyword research? A good spreadsheet program that can read comma delaminated files (CSV). Most of you can use Microsoft Excel but for those who don’t have it you can use the Google Docs Spreadsheet. You can then paste lists in, edit them and save them once your done.

The second most important resource you need for keyword research in common sense. Tools and robots are still a fairly new technology and they do make mistakes. Always approach keyword research with people in mind, what would you type to find that product or service, what order would you put the words in?

I recommend you stick to free keyword tools most of the time. A selection of the paid tools are luxuries not essentials. On top of that you will find that many even offer free trials you can use temporarily and decide if you like them or not.

Always start with Google’s own keyword tool, it will give you a great idea of the best base keywords for your campaign. It will also give you good suggestions for related keywords as long as you keep the synonyms option ticked.

You can also use it to analyse a competitor’s site by using the “Website Content” option on the left of the page. This will give you a good idea what a competitor is targeting with their copy or landing pages.

This function can also be handy if you have began work on a whole new industry and don’t really know where to start with keywords.

The tool also has many other uses such as estimating search volume in different months of the year and find out the average CPC for you PPC uses. Open the displayed columns drop down to explore all your options.

After finding a good selection of keywords from Googles’ tool I usually move on to some different tools to fine tune my keywords. The first stop is Aaron Walls free to use keyword tool. Most of his tools are definitely worth checking out but for now we are going to concentrate on the keyword tool he provides.

Enter one of your base keywords and the tool will kick back suggestions containing the keyword you entered as well as estimated search volumes from each of the major search engines.

The important word to note here is estimated. These are not exact numbers and should not be treated as quantitative stats. They are also based on impressions which means it contains the errors such as misspellings, refreshes and people who don’t click, unfortunately nearly all keyword tools fall into this trap.

Using the SEOBook tool will provide you with a whole host of longer tailed keywords that are perfect for affiliate marketing and you will have a much better chance of ranking for than the major or base keyword you began with.

Additional Links

• Regional version of the SEOBook tool if you are not targeting an international market.
• Free 7 Day WordTracker trial.

We’ll continue to look at essential SEO tools in our next post and specifically target competitor analysis tools.