Keyword selection is not about making random guesses and popping a slew of words in your title tag. Rather, it should be one of the foundational elements of any search engine optimization campaign. All successful internet marketers will tell you that keyword research is a crucial aspect of your search engine optimization campaign.

There’s no two way about it. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords or key phrases, your customers, as well as the search engines, may never find you. It’s safe to say that if you’re targeting wrong keywords, you will be wasting all those time and effort you put into getting your site to rank for those keywords that you selected. You will also be putting valuable advertising dollars at risk. The end result: meaningless rankings and lost dollars.

Part of the problem is that marketers understand their own products perfectly. They know the product attributes and speak the language of solutions. Consumers on the other hand speak the language of problems. These two are often quite different, and if we cannot bridge this gap, then the chances of success for our web marketing efforts will be severely compromised.

It is critical for us to understand what goes on in consumers’ minds when they are performing online searches. Many marketers may like to think that because of their years’ experience in dealing with customers, they know how consumers act and think. But the truth is, online consumers generally use more concise words in their searches than they use in normal conversations. Experience provides useful starting materials for keyword research, but a keyword suggestion tool will help uncover hidden opportunities.

For any given product, there are so many terms in use – far more than we can come up with or remember. A keyword discovery tool will reveal the many related keywords with all their variants. For example, if you’re in the business of dog training, the keyword generator will probably help you uncover several other relevant key phrases that you may not have thought of, such as canine training, dog aggression training, obedience training, puppy obedience, and so on. Without proper keyword research, we’ll be missing out on huge opportunities to be there when consumers are searching for your product.

For my keyword SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I’ve tried several different keyword research software, but recently I came across one search tool that provides very quickly search volumes and the number of competitors for any given keyword. Based on these data, it computes a Keyword Effectiveness Index, which essentially ranks the effectiveness of each keyword. What impresses me is that it even helps you analyze the first page SERP (search engine results page) by providing the opportunity for you to view the advertising copy and, listen to this, even the landing pages of the competitors.

Useful information like this will put you in a better position to decide whether targeting that particular keyword will be worth your while. You may need to search for alternatives. The key is to focus on keywords or key phrases that generate high search volumes but low level of competition, meaning there are not many sites competing for the same key words or phrases.

Performing keyword research takes time and effort, but the importance of this exercise cannot be over-emphasized. Once done correctly, you will reap huge dividends down the road for your online campaign. A good keyword research tool will certainly help you perform this more efficiently and effectively.