Original content from [INBOUND MARKETING] by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah

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The Internet is perhaps the most useful tool for online businesses today. Most large businesses have already developed a powerful online campaign; small businesses realize the power and benefits of SEO for their online presence, shop, or application. Actually businesses or companies flock to professional digital advertising agencies, or individual contractors. This can have an extremely large return on investment. For many, the most promising results come from great search engine optimization. Search engine optimization (SEO), involves many elements of a web site's design, the headers, the images alt tags, text links, the strong tag, articles that will "bait" links for you or that influence a site's position in the major search engine results for relevant keywords. Since many consumers put great trust in the top organic results (SERPs), placement on the first page of Google or Yahoo will provide credibility, and direct an incredible amount of relevant traffic to the website! Naturally and certainly, this results in an increasing number of conversions, the final goal of any business. 

First Steps - Make a list:

The first necessary piece of data is simply a list of relevant keywords. Find 1-2 relevant keywords here. After all, find keywords that related to your business's INDUSTRY or key product's TYPE will do, i.e. "Chocolate Cookie" but not just "Cookie". Along with this list should come with the monthly search volume. You will find that for some words, the volume can be hundred to millions searches. Export all of this data to a spreadsheet, using software such as Excel, for further analysis. This is the baseline data. Remember; eliminate unrelated, poorly phrased, or negative keywords from the list.

Narrow the list:

Next, focus on SEARCH VOLUME. Keep entries with the highest searches figure, as these should generate the most traffic. Choose 1-3 of keywords to act as candidates for SEO. Unfortunately, high monthly searches keywords are often sought after by many businesses. It may be very difficult to place on the first page of major search engines for such queries. This brings us to the next step, a slightly more involved strategy.

Assess the Competition:

The next step in the keyword research process is to identify the competitors for desired keywords, and assess how difficult it will be to rank above them in the major search engines. To begin, type a keyword candidate into a major search engine and observe the first page of results. These listings are the competitors for this keyword. Choose one URL from the list and analyze its search engine strength. The primary tool for this is Yahoo Site Explorer, please signup as Yahoo member first, we love Yahoo right? The simpler method is here: type "link:www.yourcompany.com" in the Google search (see live example of site analysis for Apple website). Use this feature to view the number of in-bound links for your competitors' website. Record this data in your keyword research spreadsheet. Do this for multiple URLs that appear on the first organic SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). This information will give a general sense of how difficult it is to rank above those URLs. It will take longer, if a website has tons of links, and a lot of work to overcome their position. For sites with fewer links, the internet business marketing competition is most likely less competitive. Such knowledge may influence final keyword choices for SEO. Only the site owner can decide how much effort and time he is willing to put in (or how much money to invest in SEO services), a decision that influences keyword choice.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Basic written for web designers or developers who need strait to the point solution

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