2. Check Backlinks, PR and The Competition Of Each Site
These figures tell you whether you have chances to rank high with your business. Backlinks are the main figure, i.e. your site must have more or better backlinks than the site, which you want to beat. PR is the Google figure, which is usable but not accurate. The number of keyword results in the result you can have by typing quotes around your term and if the figure you will get is lower than 10,000 you have a winner.
3. Build A Keyword Matrix
First your business keywords must be long tail ones and highly related ones. The keyword set can contain both low and high demand keywords and you can start by typing some general keyword into your tool. Then add some words in front and after that term and you will get a nice list of terms. Then do the competition research.
4. Use a Keyword List
First, put all the keywords into your keyword list. Most article directories accept long keyword list. Then put your main keyword into the headline, teaser, many times into the body of the text and hyperlinked into the Author Box.
Use your secondary keywords at least once in the copy. You can pick the main keyword so that it includes all the other ones, i.e. the main keyword is the longest long tail keyword. This way your headline keyword includes all the other keywords, which helps your article to rank high on many result pages.
It is effective to use long keyword list with many keywords, because the keyword software figures are not accurate, so in this way you can guarantee that your business gets the biggest exposure.
The keyword research is very important. When you follow the development of your rankings, you will get a better understanding of which search terms respond to your efforts and which are non-working ones.