In a free conference training on promoting your business via article marketing, the topic of targeted keyword research came up. Since I am relatively new in the industry of internet marketing, I was not sure what this meant so I set out do my own research and this is the basic information that I came up with.

A simple keyword research refers to the act of just doing research on the internet to find general information on a variety of topics. However, a targeted keyword research goes the extra mile of finding specific information to a specific topic or niche. For example, a search for “used cars” would yield a very generalized result while “Honda used cars” narrows it down to a specific brand. A step further, “used Honda cars in New Jersey” yields even a more specific/targeted result.

Now in applying this to a business, a targeted keyword research is when the business owner searches for the actual terms that people apply into search engines when conducting a search relating to the particular business niche. The idea here is that if potential customer does not search for a particular keyword or phrase that business owner would have a hard time trying to drive traffic to their site.
So a word of advice here, you have to choose targeted keywords that are being searched for, in other to be found or find what people are searching for and tailor your keywords accordingly.

The more specific you are on your niche/market, the more you will attract the right people to you.

In doing further research, I came to find out that targeted keyword research could be broken down into various types. The most important divisions I found were short tail keyword and long tail key word research. Short tail keywords are the ones which include one or two words and have very high search volumes; these are the most difficult ones to rank for because it is such a general non specific topic. Long tail keywords usually include three or more words and have relatively lower search volumes, but they can have a higher conversion rate, because people doing these searches are ready to make an investment right away. They are not just surfing the web.

Now that we know the different types of keyword phrases and the differences between them, how do we know which keyword phrases to focus on.

The Google AdWords Tool is the best method for researching keyword volumes for a particular month in the country of your choosing, and there can’t be a more reliable source since this is the search engine where you want to get that top ranking. This is information is free, simply search for the Google AdWords tool and do your research on the keywords you want to use.

So what is its relevance in Network Marketing? Well huge! As you may have imagined. Do you know that according to the Internet World Statistics, 77.4% of the North American population were online as at June 2010 and over 11 billion searches was done in August 2008? Can you imagine what the numbers could be with this economy. Huge! Therefore, it is imperative that targeted keyword research is built into your article marketing strategies.