Keyword research is thee MOST important step in search engine optimization and can be the most annoying at the same time.

As I mentioned last week in the SEO Journey I was going to show you exactly step-by-step instructions on how to get your SEO game up by using one of my websites. Sport Intro is an introduction to sports: history / rules / leagues / etc.

Step One: Keyword Research

This is the part where you have a website in mind and you can visualize it but how do you want to bring in the traffic with organic content? There are hundreds (thousands) of tools out there for you to use.

I will be optimizing the NBA page – the idea is to not talk about the history of the sport (as that’s already done) rather the history of the NBA. So, I will start searching for “NBA History”

I prefer to check out Aaron Walls SEO Book Keyword research tools and WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool. There are few other sites I use but I keep them under my belt. Then what I will do is also look under Google Adwords / Trends.

*click here for all of those csv documents: rough format*

Google AdWords In Action

Step Two: Analyze Data

This step is where you basically combine EVERYTHING you found on your keywords from all the various tools/sites.

*A side note: if you are going to be in SEO you better be proficient in some type of Excel program so you can organize all your data*

Once all the information is combined then you need to analyze it. “NBA History” is the term I started with but that is pretty generic. If you click on the picture above I have organize the data from lowest to highest (long tail terms to short tail).

You never…NEVER really want to go after those short term keywords unless you are generating thousands of in-bound links and are leading site in the niche. The long tail keywords, if optimized correctly, will get you not only generate you good quality traffic but will keep the traffic consistent for long periods of time.

Step Three: Prep Your Data

It’s one thing to have the data and know exactly what keywords you are going to go after – it is another to actually start that process. As you already see I’ve started from “NBA History” to the franchise history and top players in the league and so on.

Coming up will be the implementation to the content