Conducting Keyword Research

Keyword research is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.

Background Data US

Current data indicates that:

• 72.5% of the population of the United States is online ,
• there were 11.7 billion searches in the month of August 2008,
• the number of internet users who use search engines has increased from one third to 49% , fast catching the daily use of email by internet users (which has comparably increased from 52% to 60% over the same 6 year period).

Current data indicates that:

• There are nearly 1.5 BN people online worldwide (a penetration rate of 21.9%). This is an increase of 405% in the number of people online in December 2000.

[All the following data can be found on the InternetWorldStats.com website]

• The largest increases in terms of internet use by geographic area since 2000 can be seen in the Middle East [an increase of 1,276% since December 2000 to 42M], followed by Africa [1,131% to 51M].
• The countries with the highest internet penetration rate (all greater than 70% of their population) are: Greenland (92.3%), Netherlands (90.1%), Norway (87.7%), Iceland (84.8%), Canada (84.3%), New Zealand (80.5%), Australia (79.4%),Sweden (77.4%), Japan (73.8%), Portugal (72.9%), US (72.5%), Bermuda (72.1%),Luxembourg (71%), South Korea (70.7%).
• The countries with the largest number of people online (all above 30M) are: China (253M), US (220M), Japan (94M), India (60M), Germany (53M), Brazil (50M), UK (41M), France (36M), South Korea (35M), Italy (34M), Russia (32M).

In this highly competitive and growing global market place, for a company to understand what terminology, keywords and phrases their online target market is utilizing to search for their offering, it is imperative that the company conduct extensive keyword research.