Keyword research is the core of every successful campaign. Sure you can have a niche, but a niche is only as good as the keywords you can drum up within that niche.

A keyword can be any term that someone types into a search when they are looking to find something. Everyone searches with a different intention so it is important that you understand how to research keywords so that you aim to attract people that serve your purpose.

You are typically looking for a search that is initiated by someone looking to:

(1) Solve a problem
(2) Buy something
(3) Learn about something

As a business, you are looking to solve a problem. You are looking to help people out and you are looking to create a following through your presence. You can do this if you understand keywords and understand the flow of relevance.

Understanding the THREE Types of Keywords

In order to understand the process of finding keywords, you need to understand the 3 types of keywords and what sort of audiences they attract. So what I have done is broken down these three types of keywords and provided you with some examples of each type of these keywords.

1. Solve a problem keywords
   
   Everybody has problems. If I think about it, in any given day I run into problems in my life, whether it be with my computer, my online business, my health, my cooking, or my vehicle in which I am doing a search on Google to find an answer for. You are probably no different. We all use search engines to find solutions to our problems and this opens up a good deal of opportunity to marketers.
   
   These are typically "how to" or "question" based keywords. To find these keywords you can use your favorite keyword tool or you can use Google Instant as I outlined within the Audiences section.
   
   Here are some examples of "solve a problem" type keywords:
   
   -what is the best way to whiten teeth
   -how to fix the red ring of death
   -how to find a babysitter
   -where is the best place to live in california
   -why do cats purr
   
   
2. Buy Something keywords
   
   People go online to shop. People go online to buy. People go on to find the cheapest prices. And people go online to get product and company reviews.
   
   These are prime time keywords to leverage and take advantage of within your campaigns. But how do you come up with buy search terms? Well, the most obvious techniques would be to target the "buy" and "purchase" keywords.
   
   Here are some examples:
   
   -buy car batteries online
   -buy ebooks for kindle
   -purchase scrapbook supplies
   -purchase twitter followers
   
   I also put product and review related keywords into the buy category simply because someone looking for reviews or comparisons on a particular product or looking in general for a particular product, is typically very close to buying.
   
   Examples of this would be:
   
   -wealthy affiliate review
   -compare kindle fire vs apple iPad
   -samsung laptop review
   -the best version of ipad
   
   Buy and Product types keywords are all great and should be utilized within all of your campaigns, regardless of the niche.
   
   
3. Learn something keywords
   
   This essentially includes the rest of the keywords out there. Searches that people are doing to learn something, to educate, to advance their knowledge, to gossip, or simply to kill time. These search terms can still be very targeted, but the purpose of YOU as the marketer, should be to inform, build a reputation and relationship with your visitors (after you get traffic from the keyword), and to offer relevant content.
   
   Remember, instant sales rarely happen, so your goal should also be to create a following, engage your audience, and build relationships. The learn type keywords are essential for doing this.
   
   Here are a few examples:
   
   -valentines day history
   -best wordpress plugins
   -learn guitar songs online
   
   Remember, there are millions of keywords out there (if not billions). With a little research, you are going to be able to reveal an endless trail of relevant keywords within any niche.

Determining the Quality of a Keyword

The next step logic step is to determine whether a keyword is a "keeper" or not. Some keywords are simply going to be a waste of your time if they are too competitive (for SEO) and are too broad (for PPC). Because of this, I have created you a couple of simple checklists, one for SEO and one for PPC. You can use these to gauge the quality of a keyword.

A Checklist for SEO Keywords:

• Under 400 quoted results (use the quoted results check in the WA keyword tool). This gives you the true number of pages you are competing with. The closer to 0 the better, I typically aim for keywords that are lower than 300 as they are usually quite easy to get ranked under.
• Gets some monthly searches. Again use the WA keyword tool to determine traffic. When choosing a keyword, I just aim for one that gets traffic. Ideally the higher the traffic the better, but the fact of the matter is, it is all about getting ranked. It is far better to get ranked on the 1st page in Google for a keyword that gets 50 searches per month is WAY better than getting a ranking on the 3rd page under a keyword that gets 10,000 searches per month.
• Relevant to your niche. There is little point in getting ranked unless you can in some tie the content into the theme of your site. Keep your target keywords relevant.

A Check List for PPC Keywords:

When researching keywords for PPC, you have to pay a bit less attention to the competition and more attention to the relevance. Where competing pages is the best gauge with SEO (because it is free), relevant traffic to your offer is king with PPC. When you are paying for your traffic you want to make sure that you are getting the most bang for your buck and you do this through relevance marketing.

Here are the criteria you should follow with your PPC keyword research:

• Relevant to your ad. Your keyword should be within your ad headline and description.
• Relevant to the destination landing page. The exact keywords within a PPC campaign should be on the landing page. This relevance leads to conversions. If your keyword is "build a potato gun", then your landing page that you send your visitors to should have this exact term within the headline and content.
• Relevant to what you are promoting. The keyword needs to be relevant to the product you are promoting.
• Longer tailed keywords convert better. Aim for search terms that are 3 words in length. For example, "fat diet" is not so good. "Low fat diet" is better. "Low fat diet plan" is even better..."best low fat diet plan" is EVEN better. The longer the search term, the more targeted it becomes.
• Low CPC. Although cost is very important, you should focus on relevance rather than cost. There are a lot of low cost keywords out there that are too broad, and conversely there are a lot of expensive but relevant keywords out there that convert very highly. You only need to bid what you can afford, but typically the more relevant the keyword, the less the competition and the lower the cost anyway.