Before you optimize your website or buy pay-per-click (PPC) traffic, you should perform “keyword due diligence”.

That means you must check to see that Internet users are actually searching for information on your product or topic using the same keywords you assume they would use.

When I tell this to people, they often pooh-pooh it. “It’s not necessary for us to do keyword research,” they tell me. “We know our industry; we know our products; and we know what words they would search on.”

To which I say: Oh, really?

With the Internet, there is no need to guess at which keywords are the right ones. There are software tools that can tell you exactly how many Google searches were performed on your keywords this month.

Often, the keywords used most often are not the ones you picked. In addition, small variations in keywords can make a big difference in results.

For instance, I need to optimize a website for people looking to buy and maintain an aquarium.

It seems obvious that the keyword to optimize the home page for would be “aquarium”, right?

And when I used WordTracker to check, sure enough there were 823,000 searches on the term “aquarium” on Google.

But, there were 11.1 million searches on Google on the term “aquariums” which is the plural of aquarium and has an “s” at the end.

This result tells me that I should optimize the home page copy on the word “aquariums” and not just “aquarium”.

I would never have known this had I not done my due diligence and checked the actual search volumes myself.

Of what use is keyword due diligence? There are at least 3 online marketing activities that can benefit from keyword research and discovery.

The first, as already noted, is search engine optimization. Each page on the website should be optimized for keywords relating to its topic. These should be the keywords that get the most search activity.

The second online marketing activity related to keyword due diligence is pay-per-click advertising. Even a good PPC ad will generate mediocre sales results if you bid on the wrong keywords.

The third keyword-related online marketing activity is determining the feasibility of new products.

Example: you decide to write and sell an e-book on how to set up your first aquarium. You think fish-keeping is a very popular hobby, but you aren’t sure.

But even if you were sure that fish-keeping is popular, that doesn’t mean the book will sell. Remember, we are not selling in a bookstore; we are selling on the Internet.

So for a product to be successful, potential buyers must be searching the Internet for information relating to it.

My rule of thumb is that the keyword must have at least 100,000 searches a month on Google to be successful online. “Aquariums” with 11.1 million and “aquarium” with 823,000 both pass with flying colors.

There’s another way to do your keyword due diligence. It’s to spy on your competitors and see what keywords their websites are optimized on. But don’t worry, it’s perfectly legal.

Here’s how to do it: You can see what keywords your competitors are using by reading the source codes on their website. “Source code” is the programming language used to build their websites.

In optimized websites, the source code for the pages includes keyword lists in areas of the code called meta tags. The most important meta tags to check are the title tag, description tag, and keywords tag.

Failure to put strategic keywords in the title tag can result in pages being poorly ranked. The title tag can be a maximum of 95 characters including spaces, but ideally no longer than 6 or 7 words. The description tag should be a maximum of 220 characters with spaces.

To find the keywords contained in the meta tags of your competitor, go to his home page. Click “view” and then choose “source.” A window will appear displaying the page’s source code with the meta tags clearly labeled as headline, title, description, and keywords.

In minutes, you can know all the keywords your competitors have optimized their sites for. You can then use WordTracker or another keyword research and discovery tool to find out how much these terms are searched.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

You’ve probably got a nice-sized keyword list for your site, right? And you’re likely already planning to build backlinks, write content, publish articles and stomp on the competition.

But what if all your hard work is based on terrible keywords?

It’s like building a mansion on top of a crumbling foundation! No matter how good things look on the outside, even the most beautiful sites with the best content won’t do nearly as well in the search engines unless they’re built on solid, reliable keywords.

The reason I’m telling you this, is because last week, I discovered a really helpful software tool called Stealth Keyword Competition Analyzer. Keyword research is influential to your search engine rankings and you won’t want to take it lightly.

I’m not saying your current keywords are ‘terrible’. From the minute I used the software and in all likelihood for your own case, I know you will discover even better keywords and key phrases.

I never would have known that if it weren’t for Stealth Keyword Competition Analyzer!

For under $40, it’s an absolute steal, and the kind of program you WANT in your marketing tool belt. It makes keyword research and checking out the competition so seamless and simple. There’s no excuse for you NOT to plug that list of keywords right into it, and let SKCA do all the hard work for you automatically.

How much are you willing to pay for a solid keyword research software?

While you think about this question, may I introduce SerpAttacks. This software allows you to:

1) Find highly searched keywords with very less competition so you can rank and earn faster.

2) Find highly searched keywords and analyze search engine competitions on certain location.

3) Discover how much advertisers are paying for that keyword and how many are competing.

4) Unveil and analyze how many people are searching for your keyword and discover if the trend is going up your down.

5) Discover high-value domain names.

6) Discover highly profitable affiliate products to promote by digging Amazon and Clickbank.

7) Check and monitor your rank across different search engines from different locations.

8) Check the websites that are linking to you or check your competitor’s backlinks so you have an idea where you will put your links.

9) Analyze your website’s weak points for on-page SEO.

Did I tell you it’s free and not a shareware of any kind?

I just discovered this amazing keyword suggestion tool you must see this immediately…

You can instantly uncover 100s or 1000s of keywords from Google, Google Product Search, Yahoo, Bing and even Amazon search.

Using Keyword Prodigy gives you a huge advantage over your competitors because you can find keywords they don’t even know exist so you can steal their traffic, leads and sales from them!

Here’s what you can do with Keyword Prodigy:

- Get keyword suggestions from search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing.

- Get more suggestions from Google Product Search and Amazon.

- Target keywords by country.

- Use the “Go deep” option to get even more keyword suggestions.

- Find untapped niches and sub-niches to promote your products or services.

- Create SEO focused pages around low competition long-tail keywords.

- Use keyword suggestions to find placement targeting URLs.

- Find 1000′s of negative keywords resulting in huge PPC savings each month.

- Use keyword suggestions to find ideas for untapped domain names.

- Create massive keyword lists for PPC campaigns.

- Copy the keyword suggestion research results found to the clipboard.

- Export the results to a CSV file (for Excel).

You’ll love it. Check it out now!

Big news! Yahoo! has launched its version of Google Insights, or at least certain features resemble the latter. Yahoo! Search Clues allows you to search for a keyword and see the demographics of the people searching for the keyword. It also allows you to see other keywords that are searched for by the same people.

Here’s a great article at Search Engine Land discussing this.

Your concerns are not unfounded if you think the playing field has become flat since every marketer and keyword researcher has access to the one biggest keyword source, the Google Keyword AdWord Tool.

Here is one keyword goldmine that presents results in a different but more qualified manner. The creator behind this service is said to receive 40,000 visitors in 1 day from 1 YouTube video as a result of selecting the best keywords for tagging. Watch this video to see how he did it.

Most marketers may think Keyword AdWord Tool is the only one, if not the best, keyword research tool around. However, the general public is unaware of more hidden keywords that are easier to rank. These keywords come from come from the “Top 10 suggestions” of Google, Yahoo and Bing, and you have a new keyword software called Keywords Magnet to consolidate these untapped keywords in one single interface so you can view them at a glance and use them to generate money-making websites.

Keywords Magnet can even search Amazon, AOL, Ask.com and YouTube if you choose to. Watch the demo video to see how it works.

* Supports 10 major search engines

* Supports more than 102 countries

* Detailed Keyword analyzing

* Detailed competition analyzing

* High speed searches; up to 35 keywords per second

* Multiple language option

* Different levels of search deep

* Export keywords to CSV file, spin keywords, and copy to clipboard and more…

There’s this very convenient software you ought to subscribe a free membership to, and you can grab Master Resell Rights to it.

The How To Seeker software goes beyond keyword research into the realm of content research. So you have your range of keywords and phrases, what’s next?

Plug those keywords into the How To Seeker engine and you get instantaneous search results from multiple sites like:

1) how-to articles from Google Blog Search, Google News, Bing and Yahoo! Answers

2) threads containing your keywords from forums

3) PDF files from PDF directories

4) more related content from video sites, social bookmarking sites and other Web 2.0 sites

Every information is at your fingertips and it truly cut short your time at locating content for your own use.

You have to experience it for yourself and if you like, purchase the self-hosted version with Master Resell Rights (very cheaply) and get IM Seeker with MRR too! How’s that for a “2 for the price of 1″ offer?

Whoever gives away a $10,000 custom programmed software for FREE is truly insane…

Don’t tell that to Ryan Deiss.

Oops, did I mention someone?

Ryan had his new Cherry Picker software coded for one thing and one thing only…to show him the easiest spots on Google to get FREE traffic. And man does it work!

Ryan even added a 40-page report explaining how the software works and the system he uses behind it to get 20X more FREE traffic than you can buy at any price.

This software will tell you more about your market and your competitors in 2 minutes than a team of researchers could. You better grab it while it’s in BETA and still free.

Keyword Snatcher is a unique keyword research software that does not tabulate popular keywords based on the search volumes recorded in AdWord Keyword Tool. Instead, the popular keywords come from “Top 10 suggestions” (see below). The advantage is you can mine a whole different set of keywords not readily found in AdWord Keyword Tool. Plus the software also searches through Yahoo! and Bing too.

Watch the intro video to find out how it works.