Keyword research and selection is an important part of SEO copywriting. While keywords/phrases shouldn’t be so important that you miss out on writing copy that interests and engages your readers, optimizing your copy using thorough keyword research does have its benefits.

1) Find a keyword selection tool

A keyword selection tool will help you find the best keyword selections for a specific word or phrase. Enter a word or phrase in the search engine and it will bring up several of the most popular keyword/phrase results to choose from. Overture, Word Tracker and Keyword Discovery are popular keyword tracking tools.

2) Go for low competition in your keyword research

When you are launching a website you are in competition with thousands of other websites that are already established. Keyword research can help. When using a search engine tool, choose appropriate keywords with the lowest competition level. These keywords/phrases will help you get higher search engine rankings faster.

3) Narrowing down your keyword choices

After researching keywords, you might end up with hundreds of possibilities. You’ll need to narrow down your choices to the ones that can provide the fastest search engine results and return on investment. Again, these will be the keywords with the lowest competition levels with the highest searched phrases.

Technorati Tags: SEO, seo copywriting, writing for the web, Allison Nazarian, web copy, search engine marketing, keyword research

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Yvonne Perry of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services and wanted to share some of what we discussed.

What inspired or motivated you to write this new eBook to help authors with online book promotion?

I’m always looking for ways to re-purpose my writing and time spent in marketing research. If I write a media release, it will probably be refashioned into an article or whittled down into a blog post. Book Marketing in the Digital Age Online Promotion Made Easy is a compilation of the material I crammed into an hour-long lecture I gave at Nashville Writers Meetup Group when I presented to the group earlier this year, plus everything I presented in a three-hour intensive workshop at the Tennessee Writers Alliance 3rd Annual Conference; and it includes the most recent research I’ve done on SEO and social marketing.

What is the most effective book marketing tool on the Internet?

Had you asked me that one year ago, I would have said blogging, and while that is still somewhat true, I have to admit that social networking is the best tool for helping authors promote their books online.

Social networking includes interacting or socializing with a number of people in a public chat-like setting except there is no live chat room. It retains the flavor of an email going back and forth the dialog ending at any time but a message being delivered. I’m referring to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Ning, Yahoo groups, and such online places where people share friendship and information. Twitter only allows 140 characters per post, so writers have to learn to be concise. That’s a good exercise to practice when one needs to tighten their writing.

Yvonne launched an e-book that targets getting visitors to your site and other great tools to accelerate on-line book promotions. I have found it to be an invaluable tool and believe you will as well. You can purchase the e-book here. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: promoting an e-book, seo, seo copywriting, search engine marketing, e-book marketing, Yvonne Perry, Allison Nazarian, social network, social media