Many people don't stop to think about the extent to which your website and your business live and die by the key words you choose to "theme" your site around.  After all, the search engines categorize sites by their content, and that content, in turn, is driven by key words.

What do people search for, when using a search engine or directory?  Key words, of course, and key phrases, which are simply strings of key words in combination. The key words and phrases that people are searching for should be the central "theme" of your website and your pages. And to the extent that you can identify search terms that are getting frequent use, but for which there are relatively few high quality relevant pages, you have found a "niche".

Doing keyword research can be a tedious process, especially if you are starting from scratch. You can do something like going to the Google Zeitgeist to see what people are searching for, or can use a tool like Wordtracker to spot search trends and cross-check for existing content that might compete with your pages.

Fortunately, the past few years have seen an outpouring of great software tools that can make your life much easier when doing keyword research for generating adsense sites or creating adwords campaigns. These tools will semi-automate the process of building large, themed key word lists, and also streamline the process of niche identification.

I'll be reviewing some of the best here … the likes of Keyword Elite, Keyword Domination, Keyword Companion, and Wordtracker, to name a few.  Check the additional posts in this category for those and other product reviews. 

 

 

 

 

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