Internet marketing professionals like us at WSI subscribe to expensive tools to help us out with keyword research (as well as the great suite of tools that Google provides for free).   These are just what's needed for fine tuning a campaign or for brain storming.

However, this is very technical and can often be very product orientated.   Where this can go wrong is that it is putting the cart before the horse.   They assume that the searcher knows the solution to the problem.  Whereas we know that people frequently type questions into their search boxes.

So, someone looking for a solution for their migraine is more likely to search for “How do I cure a migraine” than “best migraine medicine”.  So optimizing for “best migraine medicine” will miss this searcher.  Also if this searcher does stumble across your site you are relying on their imagination to put their problem and your solution together to find the answer.  Other peoples' imagination is not something to be relied upon when making a business decision!

So before getting your SEO agency to delve into the data of keyword performance, do some simple research.   Ask everyone in the office and some friends and family “if you had a migraine and were looking for a cure on the Internet what would you type?”.  Take their ideas and go Google them yourself.  Look for the following:

• Are other websites answering this question directly?
• If Yahoo Answers is showing high up the ranking – read the threads
• Are other advertises buying Google Ads for this keyword?
• Which are the general themes:  if they are all herbal remedies and self-help, does your product have a good fit?

This way you will understand your niche.

Now go away and ask your SEO company to do some deeper keyword research and see if there is indeed enough traffic to warrant a sustained SEO campaign.

Once this is complete, sit together with your SEO copywriter and develop a content plan that incorporates searchers’ questions and explains how your product is the best solution to these questions.  Now you have strategy to rank highly on the search engines as well as persuade web searchers to buy your solutions and products.