We talk with our clients about their search engine optimisation and the 20 keywords we use as a benchmark when beginning their campaing. A lot of clients seem to get very fixed and stuck on this. They then want to start rattling off many keywords and throw around a useful phrases. This is generally in our first meeting before we are at implementation stage.

Then when we get together in a brain storming session before we present back the key word analysis and they tend to freeze up. Kind of like doing a briefing session with a client after the pitch presentation. All these great ideas and words that were thrown around in our initial meeting just seem to disappear.

I believe keyword analysis is very similar to writing a creative brief for a clients 12 month campaign to launch a new product or service. To be really successful you need to push yourself, put your creative cap on and think that little bit harder and further outside the square than competitors. It’s about building up a theme and pushing general thoughts beyond the norm.

The idea is to start with seed list and generate extensions from there. The better your keyword seed list, the better your keyword research and the greater your ability to generate a comprehensive keyword portfolio. But many people give little attention to developing a really great seed list. If you just do the obvious, you'll end up with pretty obvious results - just like everyone else.

You want to get outstanding results, and to do this you have to apply creativity and hard work to that all important first step. The seed list is like coming up with that ‘single minded proposition’ before going concept stage. All will evolve from this.

While a lot of SEO companies claim to be doing keyword research you may hear that fewer people seem to be able to find excellent niche phrase keywords.