When it comes to identifying all relevant keywords, should we attempt to do it ourselves or is it preferable to hire an experienced company or freelancers to perform this mission?

A number of related issues go into the answer to that core question. Among the most important of those are these:

1. How fully you understand finding the keywords pertinent to your niche and those that are closely related to your niche

2. The various software tools that are available to your company

3. Familiarity with using those keyword research tools

4. Your knowledge concerning determining which keywords are actually beneficial from a business perspective

5. Your budget

Glancing at those five, notice that they boil down to how much you have studied the process of keyword research and whether the outsourcing alternative is within your financial resources. Let me address each of those in a bit more detail.

What You Must Know

Identifying relevant keywords and phrases is as important as any other part of your new business. In fact, it is more important than most of your planning. Your list will form the basis of all of your search engine optimization efforts, your advertising campaigns (PPC and others), your copywriting and your article marketing efforts (as well as your other content syndication). In other words, without a good foundation of keyword research, all other aspects of your marketing will suffer.

There are many tools available online. Some are free to use, such as Google’s tool; others are not. You must be willing and able to use a mix of these resources in order to develop the most comprehensive list. You must study the keyword research software options.

Most of the tools are relatively easy to use, but the interpretation of your results can be difficult unless you have experience in doing so. Each keyword that you discover will not have the same value to you as every other keyword, and a high volume of searches for a certain keyword does not necessarily make that keyword of greater importance to you than another term or phrase for which there may be substantially fewer searches.

Budget

I believe that even if your funds are limited, keyword research is so important that, if you are not capable of conducting and interpreting the study, this is a place to spend those precious financial resources. The expense of outsourcing keyword research is relatively small when you consider the potential return on that investment. It is especially useful if the professionals that you hire also provide a competition analysis and include advice regarding how to compete with the established businesses in your market.

Sometimes, although not always, researching keywords is part of an overall search engine optimization (SEO) package. These contracts are considerably more expensive. If you choose to go this route (contracting for an SEO package), make sure you understand exactly how thorough your SEO company will be.

It is possible to handle all of this on your own, if you are willing to take the time and invest the money in learning how to do it the correct way. Of course, you must also plan to invest in some of the software tools, as well.

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