Keyword research is, undoubtedly, a very important task when you start with SEO. If you’re targeting wrong keywords, you’re losing your time and money. So , the first step of an SEO campaign is to target profitable keywords that helps you get a kicking business.

Here are few steps for keyword research that I’d advice.

Step1- Keyword List Generation: There are many tools available out there. I like Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery and Google Adwords Keyword Research tool. Generate as many keywords as you can. Focus on keywords that are relevant to your niche. Don’t try to focus on too general keywords.

For example, if your website is related to skin care products, you should not target “Skin Care” as your keyword as it is highly competitive keyword and additionally, it may not deliver you sale. (A person who is searching for skin care may be interested in skin care articles, skin care books, skin care advice or anything and it is obvious that these searchers won’t be interested in your skin care products; so if you’re receiving traffic from them, they wont help you.)

So find keywords that helps! For our example, you can find keywords like

skin care cream
skin care products
skin care shop
skin diseases and medicine
skin care medicine
best skin care products
mens skin care products
organic skin care
professional skin care products
skin care cosmetics
beauty cream
beauty products

And so on…

Step2 - Traffic Estimation: After you have prepared list of relevant keywords, estimate traffic of those keywords. If you’re optimizing a website which has 3 search per month, it won’t make sense. Microsoft adCenter has developed a nice tool to estimate traffic of keywords, which can be downloaded from here. It is currently compatible with Excel 2007 only.

Step3 - Run PPC Campaign: If you’ve just started your website/business than to find profitable keywords, you can run PPC Campaigns. Don’t forget to track your campaign and find out keywords which convert. It is possible that you’ll find few keywords which won’t send you single order or business even after sending hundreds of clicks. Avoid optimizing those keywords.

After you find profitable keywords by running PPC, You’ll get an idea for which keywords, you should do SEO and optimize your website.