You have chosen your niche in the web and created your site. It is up and running and waiting for you to make it popular. For this to happen though you need to rank well in keyword searches but don’t know exactly where to start when it comes to researching and choosing keywords.

Before you start searching and to set a basis for comparison you should create yourself an Excel spread sheet to record what you find in your keyword research. You will need to list your possible keyword choices as you find them in the left column of the sheet and start to record the key statistics that you discover against each keyword combination.

Now check out the Google Adwords Keyword Tool for some great keyword choices relevant to your site. The Keyword Tool provides you access to easy search capabilities that will enable you to quickly choose some great keyword options to look in to. As an example, if your focus is on dating websites in Canada then choose a keyword combination like “dating sites in Canada”. Now go and type this keyword combination into the tool with the search location as Canada. Take note of the monthly global and local search figures and slot these away in a spread sheet.

Now take your keyword combination and type it directly into a Canadian Google search. What I want you to find is the number just under the search field that will say something like “10,200,000”. Record this number in your spread sheet with an appropriate heading. Next take the same keyword combination and prefix it with “allintitle”. All up your search will then look like “allintitle:dating sites in Canada”. What this does is search for sites that have this keyword combination in their page titles, which is an important part of fundamental search engine optimisation strategy. The number you will now see will be much lower and be around “6,120”. Once again record this figure in your spread sheet.

Now go grab some more relevant keyword combinations from the Keyword Tool and run through the above steps to populate the same data for each keyword. You are now starting to forge a baseline for yourself that you can use to make insightful and strategic decisions in your keyword choices. What you are looking for at this stage is a combination that returns a high Global Search figure, but one that isn’t over represented in the “allintitle” figure. Additionally if the local monthly hits are strong then your chance of attracting traffic will be better.

Now begins the painstaking work of seeding your keywords into content and distributing it throughout the internet, thus creating your valuable backlinks. While you are diligently growing your keyword specific backlinks it is important to know how to keep an eye on their performance. It is a good idea to report and track your keyword successes and failures on a regular basis. To do this you simply need to watch your keyword search and traffic percentage figures through your own website admin reporting portal. Add these figures into your spread sheet and track this important data monthly. Doing this quickly provides you with an idea of which keywords are giving you the greatest return and will enable you to perfect you overall keyword seeding strategy.

My name is Dave Steffens and I am a webmaster and active blogger. I provide advice on dating, SEO and technical marketing. Datingonlinecanada.ca provides singles chat rooms and is just one of the excellent free dating sites in Canada