Keyword research is essential to any search engine optimization campaign. Without discovering the keywords that your target audience is using to search on the major search engines, any SEO efforts will be fruitless. Don’t just guess what you think they are searching on, use keyword research tools that can give you numbers. By getting an idea of the search terms’ respective popularity, you will be able to focus your efforts, and drive more qualified traffic to your website.

There are several tools out there that can be used to measure a keywords search volume. They will give you different numbers, and take from different databases of search queries. Ultimately, the accuracy of the reports is not that important. The value of these keyword tools is in the comparison of the keywords’ search volume. As long as you know that one term is receiving more searches than another, you know what to base your SEO campaign around.

So don’t worry too much about which tool your using, just make sure your using a tool to research keywords. The act of keyword research is one of the most neglected aspects of any SEO campaign. Do you due diligence, and do your keyword research.

Currently my favorite keyword research tool is Keyword Discovery. It is extremely user friendly, fast and reliable.