In the world of search engine marketing, or pay per click marketing, the actual keyword itself plays an extremely important role. In fact, few would argue against the keyword being the most vital part of search engine marketing on the whole. As such, it is not surprising that most experts agree that keyword research is absolutely essential to planning a successful search marketing campaign.

Search engine marketing, or pay per click marketing, works on the basis of your ads appearing for selected keywords that you opt to bid for. As you can control exactly which keywords your ads will appear for, it is the usual strategy to narrow the list down as much as possible to get the most targeted clicks. However, doing so would require a certain set of data and information that you can work with in order to discover the true money keywords, or ones that are the most highly profitable. The keyword research needed for this can be quite difficult but is absolutely vital.

When performing your keyword research, there are generally 3 major factors that you will want to keep a look out for. The first is the search volume. Then, you want to take note of the advertising competition for the keyword. Finally, always make it a point to see if the keyword you are bidding for indicates strong buyer intention.

Usually, keywords with high search volumes and high buyer intention will be much more expensive. The trend these days when doing keyword research is to simply go for those keywords with a lower search volume but just as solid buyer intention. The strategy behind this is to grab as many of these low competition and high buyer intention keywords as possible to generate an obscene Return On Investment.

There are many tools available online which can help you perform your keyword research. Although most of the better ones are paid tools, there is still one very powerful free tool available online. The Google keyword tool is free to use and can extract much of the data required for you to do basic keyword research. In addition, it is a good starting point for those looking to familiarize themselves with the process of keyword research.

Keyword research is probably the most important aspect of a successful search engine marketing campaign.