There are two steps in the keyword and keyword phrase research process:

1. Do basic keyword research to determine if there IS a market. My 'ball-park' figure for a good market is around 50,000 searches per month.
   
   
2. Build a HUGE list of keywords that are RELEVANT to your site. The more keywords you find in your research, the more visitors you will attract to your site.

The keyword list you build can be used to attract traffic to niche-specific pages for keywords that show high demand and low competition.

A large keyword list is especially useful to attract traffic to your sites via pay per click search engines like Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), Googe Adwords and other PPC advertising venues.

For example, back in 1998 I plugged a keyword phrase into an Overture advertising campaign for my Sage-Hearts.com site. To this day, that phrase has no competitors.

Zip, zero, zilch... nada.

That little phrase drives at least 1,000 visitors to my site each and every month, and the phrase STILL costs me only a nickel a click as it was grandfathered by Overture.

With an conversion rate of 2%, I generate approximately 20 sales.

The average commission earned per sale on that particular program is $25.00.

Gross earnings are $500.00, minus the $50.00 I spent on advertising, which leaves me with $450.00 to spend on new shoes.

Spend a buck, make TEN! Woohoo!

I can't promise that you will find a 'magic keyword' like the one I talked about above, but it certainly doesn't hurt to try!

Use a combination of the keyword research tools listed below to research markets and to find little-used keywords and keyword phrases for your own sites.

Happy researching and Cheers,

Rosalind