If you aspire to be number 1 on Google then you must do research as this is critical to any business. You must know what the competition is doing. You must know what your selected market sector is doing. Discover the patterns and trends, or lack of them, to guide your marketing activities.

Previously in my career, I was recruited from Deloitte for a VP role with a B2B software startup company in Silicon Valley. At Tradeum later acquired by VerticalNet, we focused on collecting and providing large amounts of business critical information for over 50 different vertical market sectors and sub-sectors. It was difficult to collect and maintain this information and the cost for businesses to access it was high. At that time, search and keyword analysis was in its infancy.

Today, there are sites that can be accessed at low to no cost that provide the keywords that are being used to search for something. They will tell you how many searches there are for various keywords and this will provide a sense of several things.

One learning is that if there are a sufficient number of searches (in the 300,000 to 500,000 range) using a keyword, you will know that it is a viable market as people are searching for something using the discovered keywords.

Another insight is that if the number of searches for a keyword exceeds 600,000 to 1M then you will know that while you are in a viable market there is a lot of competition in this market and it will cost more in terms of time and money to have a high page ranking for the keywords.

One additional takeaway from this keyword discovery is that if the number of searches is significantly less than 300,000 but there are more than 1,000 to 2,000 searches, you can conclude that these keyword(s) are popular and that there is interest in the market represented by the keyword(s).

You should focus your marketing efforts on these words as it will be easier to string together some keywords so that you can be on the top page of the Google search results.

You want to discover keywords or phrases with good volume of searches and low competition.

This will help validate your business offering, help with positioning your offering so that it can be found by your target customers, and help in differentiating you from your competition.

In addition, you will want to use the discovered keywords or phrases throughout the body of your content, where appropriate. There is a guideline that says to be sure your copy is keyword loaded however you do not want to be gratuitous or extreme.

Many Internet Marketers know that leads will most likely buy from you if you speak the language of the customer. By placing the discovered keywords or phrases in the copy of the ad, the article, and ultimately the content on the website, you will be using the language of the target market.

In order to create and maintain a website that has a lot of visitors you will need not just 20-30 keywords but hundreds. Many successful online companies discover and use thousands of keywords and phrases.

Here is a tip for you to do early in your efforts to become an Internet Marketing professional.

Discover what business critical information is available about the keywords you have selected to better understand, target, and convert your leads to customers. Use tools like MicroNiche Finder, Wordtracker, & Nichebot to collect and collate this information and look for patterns, trends, or fluctuations that might have an impact on your business over a 3, 6, or 12 month time period.

Using these keywords and phrases in the descriptions of your site and text pages is referred to as On-Page SEO. You must perform this activity so that your site and content is optimized for the Search Engines. The words and phrases that your customers are using to find you are added to the titles, descriptions, and text pages. This helps a Google search query to easily find you, serve up your site, and improve the ranking of where your content is displayed on the pages of search results.

The Off-Page SEO activities are associated with having other Internet users and sites creating interest and buzz on the Internet about your site and content. The more links, the more implied interest and buzz about the content and a higher Page Ranking in the Search Engines.

Here are four simple steps to get you started.

1 Select a word or phrase that is common and appropriate to your business.

2 Discover words that are related to the initial word

3 Use keyword tools to generate many more relevant keywords

4 Frequently monitor keyword usage based on counts in keyword tools and adjust periodically

Effective collection, collation, and analysis of keywords and efficient usage of discovered keywords for your business and product niches, enable you to have many page 1 listings on the relevant search result pages.

Remember, the riches are in the niches!

In order to help you, I will continue to post (on this blog site) tips and techniques I have obtained and learned from My Go-To-Market Partners as I became a Digital Entrepreneur and built aspenIbiz, my online business, along with my various Web 2.0 properties and affiliate web sites. Together, these tips will provide a traffic formula that will improve your ranking and drive qualified leads to your web site.

Be sure and read aspenIbiz blog that has more posts about my Internet Marketing business and learn how to be savvy with your money, like the insiders, at aspenIbiz the Conspiracy For Your Money blog.