How do you go about doing your seo keyword research? Do you have your own system or set of steps that you follow? Let me share with you my own tried and tested keyword research and may it help you with optimizing your own website.

Step number one for me is to have a complete understanding of what my website stands for or what it is all about. You might say that it is a very easy thing and that your site's topic should be very obvious to you and to other people. But the truth of the matter is that it is not a simple thing to do. Not all website owners fully understands what the overall topic of their website is, especially if their site contains so many pages with varying themes or topics. Naturally it would be harder to say that your website is just about one topic. So why is this important? It's because keyword research and search engine optimization is more effective and easier to do if you are working with only a handful of keywords.

After that what I would do is to open up the tool that I would use for my keyword research. For this I usually utilize the free keyword research tool that Google provides us. Of course you can use any other keyword tool as there are many such tools, both proprietary and free. However, if you ask me it is better to use just one tool, or two at the most, when conducting your keyword research. This is because it will simply the whole process for you and you will not have to evaluate a great amount of information. And I only deal with long tail keywords as the broad keywords are often harder to compete in.

So which of the data should you focus on? I put great importance on the monthly search volume results. I know that it is not the exact figures, but merely estimates. However it is the closest thing that you can get in an exact search data. I only select a keyword with just a few thousands of search volumes and with just a little amount of competition when I search for it in Google.

It is best to use just one single theme or topic in your keyword research and search engine optimizing for your website. This will help to keep your thoughts and ideas laser-focused for more effectiveness. With just one theme, it will be a lot easier for the search engines to identify which category or niche your website should belong and for which keywords should your site be ranking.

You are probably wondering how many keywords I usually get? It actually varies from one website to another and it often depends on the number of pages of the website. The reason for this is that I usually use just one or two keywords on every page. Still this also helps me stay focused with my seo campaign.

There are other essential steps that you must know when it comes to keyword research for seo, but the techniques stated above should be a good start for you. Do not over complicate your research process and find your own ways on how to simplify it. And keep your main keywords to a minimum so you will not get easily confused.