There are a number of tools available to help you research and track potential keywords phrases to focus on. One of the first tools continues to be one of the most popular with online marketers; the Wordtracker Keyword research tool (www.wordtracker.com).

While the full-featured paid version of Wordtracker is extremely powerful, there is also a very useful free online version that you can use (freekeywords.wordtracker.com).

When you use the free keyword suggestion tool on the phrase “weight loss”, you’ll see the top 100 keyword phrases related to the weight loss market.

The Wordtracker results are meant to mirror Google search traffic, so according to this search, there are approximately 72,904 Google searches performed each day with the term “weight loss”. (Some industry experts believe that this data underestimates the volume of Google traffic, and that the actual volume may be several times the amount shown in Wordtracker.)

The most general terms are searched most often. In the example above, the term “weight loss” is itself searched about 14,500 times each day. With almost 100 million web pages relating to weight loss, there is a significant amount of competition for each of those 14,500 searches.

Your goal is to find keyword terms where you have a chance to get a top 10 search ranking for keyword terms and phrases is a relatively small number of competing websites. If you can find a keyword term or phrase that returns 10,000 web pages or less for the exact phrase, then you’ve found a good keyword term or phrase.

TIP:  Make sure to use quotation marks when doing keyword research.

If you find a keyword phrase that generates between 10,000 and 30,000 pages, you still have a good chance to get "above the fold" on Google's first page. Even if you find a keyword phrase that generates less than 100,000 competing pages, it can still make good sense to develop a website page around that keyword phrase.

Take a look at the Wordtracker results page. Review the list of terms and try to find a “well-grouped” collection of keyword phrases. Let's take "weight loss" for example.  With 754,000 on Google, the direct competition for the exact phrase “weight loss” is likely too great to reasonably address.

In general, the longer a keyword phrase is, the less competition there will be. Take a look at the following two examples:

“Does ABC weight loss system really work” shows 3170 results in Google

“Does ABC weight loss system work” shows 4680 results in Google

Also, check how the results for these keyword phrases fare in Google PageRank. Go to Google and search your keywords.  Then go to http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php (on another tab or write them down if you do not have the updated browser with different tabs) and enter your url for each of the first four to five results. After proving that you are a human (captcha verification) this tool will give you the pagerank of the site.  Look for keyword phrases where the top results have a PageRank of 4 or less. This means that with a little effort you’ll have a good chance to land a natural search results ranking in the top ten.

Using Wordtracker in combination with Google and a few other keyword research to build a list of potential keyword phrases. Wordtracker is great because you can use it to build your business, to target niche keywords and traffic, and to optimize your website for maximum results.