Whichever way you look at it, SEO always starts with keywords.  Almost everyone does one of two things – either they make heavy use of the most popular keywords for their market sector, or they try and identify the keywords that nobody else is using.

Think about it – by their very nature, successful keywords will attract more and more attention.  There will be hot contests going on for ranking using the top five words in a given market.  But what about words ranked, say, six to ten, or eleven to twenty?  Quite often, by looking at these words, you can realise some real benefits.

Research has shown more than once that the search volumes for the top five terms in a market are lower than the search volumes for all the lower ranked words combined.  Here’s a method to follow:

1.  Rank the keywords - you’ll already have this (hopefully) for your market sector.  If you haven’t, then Google’s Keyword Tool is the place to go.

2.  Find the major players in the market, and cross-reference them with the keywords.  When you find a company featuring high up on certain keywords, but lower ranked on others, then it’s clear which keywords they are investing time and effort into chasing.

3.  Find the little guys – the niche listings – some of whom will be specialising on the less popular keywords.  Check out their sites and see if they are making an effort, and you can assess the competition you are likely to face.

4.  Go for it! You should now have identified some areas where the big players are not interested, the niche players are not particularly numerous or active, and where a bit of targeted effort on your part can reap rich rewards.