Keyword research is the most important aspect of SEO. If you target the wrong keywords, all your efforts will be for nothing.

What are keywords? Keywords (or search terms) are the words used by people when they search for information on the Internet using the search engines. When people are looking for web design services, for example, they might type in the words: "web design" into a search engine such as Google or MSN. The whole term "web design" is then seen as a 'keyword' (not just the word "web" or the word "design").

People might also type in "web page design". This is a different keyword. As one can imagine, there are millions of keywords! In July 2008 Google served 242 million searches a day (http://searchenginewatch.com/3630718) – most of which were unique terms.

That being said, it is important to note that keywords, or search terms, do tent to cluster together. In fact there is a very well-known statistical phenomenon that is popularly known as the 'long tail' that can be applied to the way that Internet searches are performed.

What is probably not well understood is that it is necessary to 'target' a keyword when doing SEO and Internet Marketing. Your website just cannot perform equally well in the search engines for all search terms. In other words, you would not expect your website to be displayed on the first page of Google if someone searches for the term 'make money' when your site sells wedding dresses, now would you? But in the wedding dress industry, if 'wedding dress' is a keyword that is searched for a lot, and does not have too much competition, then it is a good word to 'target' in SEO efforts. It is this 'targeting' that forms the bulk of SEO and Internet Marketing activities, and it is therefore vitally important to understand which keywords are the best ones to target.

This is why keyword research forms such an important basis of an SEO strategy.