Wait, Before you fire up that keyword tool!

The majority of people researching keywords usually fire up their keyword tools and follow everyone else down the same keyword path, but I'm going to show you a few things to do before you even go online. 1. Firstly grab a pen and paper and jot down the kind of keywords you would use if you were looking for the particular product or service you're planning to sell or promote. When you've jotted them all down, ask other people you know what they would use, (you maybe surprised you could uncover a gem that no-one else is using.) 2. If your primary keyword is long there maybe a chance that a lot of people are spelling it incorrectly (it's been estimated that 10% or more of keywords are incorrectly typed in), so don't lose out on this either. A very good free tool to use for finding misspellings is "Good Keywords" you'll find it just fire it up and it'll give you combinations you never thought of. 3. Don't forget also to include people using your particular keyword but using a (.com, .net,U.S.A, website, help, tip, group, blog etc...) at the end. 4. As you're looking over your list, don't think only of using single keywords, but come up with word combinations with your keyword in them (for example the keyword "Loan"would become --- "looking for a loan" or "need a loan" or "home improvement loan", etc..). ("Good keywords" tool is also great for finding combinations.) You'll find that these people using these combinations are a more targeted to your service or product because they know what they want. 5. Be on the look out for products or services similar to yours use their names as keywords, and also people linked to these products. The people looking these keywords in the search engines closely linked to you and may visit your site for a comparison. After these 5 steps you'll should find yourself with a long list of keywords before you've even used your research tool, who knows you may have uncovered some keyword gems that no one else is using.