The majority of people researching keywords usually fire up their keyword tools and follow everyone else down the same keyword path, but Im going to show you a few things to do before you even go online.

1. Firstly grab a pen and paper and jot down the kind of keywords you would use if you were looking for the particular product or service youre planning to sell or promote. When youve jotted them all down, ask other people you know what they would use, (you maybe surprised you could uncover a gem that no-one else is using.)

2. If your primary keyword is long there maybe a chance that a lot of people are spelling it incorrectly (its been estimated that 10% or more of keywords are incorrectly typed in), so dont lose out on this either. A very good free tool to use for finding misspellings is Good Keywords youll find it just fire it up and itll give you combinations you never thought of.

3. Dont forget also to include people using your particular keyword but using a (.com, .net,U.S.A, website, help, tip, group, blog etc...) at the end.

4. As youre looking over your list, dont think only of using single keywords, but come up with word combinations with your keyword in them (for example the keyword Loanwould become --- looking for a loan or need a loan or home improvement loan, etc..). (Good keywords tool is also great for finding combinations.) Youll find that these people using these combinations are a more targeted to your service or product because they know what they want.

5. Be on the look out for products or services similar to yours use their names as keywords, and also people linked to these products. The people looking these keywords in the search engines closely linked to you and may visit your site for a comparison.

After these 5 steps youll should find yourself with a long list of keywords before youve even used your research tool, who knows you may have uncovered some keyword gems that no one else is using.