As a website owner, you've undoubtedly heard that keyword research is important. To be honest, the importance of proper keyword research cannot be understated -- it wields a great deal of power. Proper keyword research can help you focus your on-page SEO campaigns so that you attract visitors who convert. For your off-page search marketing campaigns, it can show you keywords than you can rank for, even in competitive keyword markets. Keyword research even plays a role in PPC marketing campaigns -- it can help you save money by lowering your cost-per-click, and may be able to point out keywords that convert better than others do. So, now that you know some of the reasons why keyword research is important, how can you use it to your greatest advantage?

Know your customers and market

In order to effectively research keywords that pertain to your market, you need to know your customers, how they think, and how they will search for what you have to offer. While you may be able to glean some insight from your competition, there are no guarantees that they are doing things right themselves. So, your best course of action is to get to know your audience, and think like they do.

What this does is allows you to come up with keyword ideas that you wouldn't automatically think about, and potential keywords that some keyword research tools wouldn't give you. As an example, if you operate a landscaping-tips website, you have a barrage of terms that are related to your website -- nursery, garden, lawn, grass, flowers, weeds, crabgrass, etc. Incorporate those terms into your keyword research to see if you can find something that has value for your marketing efforts -- don't rely on keyword research tools, especially those of the free variety, to do all of your legwork for you.

Use your server logs for keyword ideas

While you can't really use this on a brand new website, once you start receiving search engine traffic -- pay attention to which keywords people are using to find your website. More likely than not, you'll start to see patterns of keywords showing up in your server logs -- once you see these patterns, dig into that keyword market a little bit with your favorite keyword-research tool.

Many website owners overlook this tactic, and it's a shame. Your server logs can provide better information than any paid keyword research tool ever could, so long as you use them effectively.

Test everything, and tweak when necessary

Initial keyword research is not an exact science -- it is largely guesswork based on fixed metrics with varying degrees of accuracy. For best results, you should incorporate a third-party analytics program that will show you which keywords send you visitors who take a desired action on your website. While your server logs may be able to give you some insight here, very few pre-installed analytics applications allow you to follow your visitors' movements from entry to exit -- usually you have to install a free third-party application, or even invest in one. However, if you are running a for-profit website, analyzing your website's visitors, how they find your website, and which types of visitors convert, is just as important as keyword research.

Once you've identified keywords that lead to a positive end-result on your website, capitalize on that and head back to your favorite keyword research tool to see if you can find more keyphrases to target so that you can increase your conversions, or earnings, even more.

Keyword research can be one of the most valuable tools in your online-marketing arsenal. It doesn't matter if you use a free keyword tool, or you pay for one -- if you start out with compressive research, follow it up with paying attention and testing your results, you'll be miles ahead of many of your competitors, and you'll have the results to prove it.