Many webmasters think of SEO as if it is something you have to do long term. First of all you do not have to optimize your website for a dozen keywords to get enough visitors. Some want to get top rankings quickly for all the keywords they can.
That is not an easy task to do if there is a lot of competition for those keywords.
You just have to optimize your website for one keyword only. It can be and is enough if you choose a keyword which gets a lot of traffic. In almost any niche, there are tons of keywords that receive exceptional traffic.
Ok, you may have just started with SEO, and you cannot go for that big keyword right from the start. Then choose only two which have not much competition but a lot of traffic still. This means you have to make good keyword research.
What is a keyword that receives an expectational number of traffic?
A keyword with 10,000 or more visitors a day.
What is a keyword that receives a lot of traffic?
A keyword with 300 or more visitors a day.
Aim for those keywords. Planning is required and very important. You can calculate how much money you can expect to make if you get the number one position for a keyword which gets 300 visitors a day.
Most websites conversion ratio is one sale every three hundred visitors. That is without hiring a copy writer. A decent website in other words makes will earn a sale a day if it gets 300 visitors a day.
This will help you find those keywords to make the amount of money you wish. Like I said this requires some thinking or planning, not just using a free keyword tool and picking up a bunch of looking good keywords.
Remember that you will be stuck with this keyword for a month or two maybe, optimizing your website for it. So it will not be easy then to switch to another keyword, you will have been getting all those backlinks with that keyword in the anchor text, now you have to start from scratch if you pick up a new keyword. I am not saying those backlinks will be useless.
They will still give your rankings a benefit.
You do keyword research only once, so it is good idea to do it properly. Then start optimizing your website knowing that you are going to get this or that amount of traffic once you achive top rankings. Knowing also you will make this or that amount of money with that traffic. You have a plan you can follow.
What keyword tools do you use?
This depends on your needs, your budget and how good you are in SEO. If it is difficult to find good keywords in your niche using a free keyword tool, you may want to test drive a paid tool.
However, with a free keyword tool it should be enough. Some mention finding those keywords that have no competition, which we can call them strange keywords. This is a good thing to do. Probably you need a paid tool to find these keywords. I do recommend doing this, because you can find some hidden gems.
So doing keyword research properly is very important. It is like you are researching the fastest way to get high rankings.