There's no way you can find all the good keywords in one brainstorming session.

There are some creative methods you can use to expand your primary keywords list. Basically, it's about understanding your potential clients: how much they know about your business, how they speak, how they may come to you. Use the following as a guideline.

1. Benefits vs. Features

When people search on Google (or any search engine), they actually define what they need or what they wish for. It is possible that your best performing keywords will express the benefits, and not the features of your product / service. There's an old saying: you don't sell drill presses, you sell holes.

Sometimes features become so popular that in the mind of your customers they are the benefits. Probably people would rather search for “air conditioning” than “cool my room”.

Identifying the actual benefits of your product is important. This way you'll cover a higher share of your target market, at low costs.

2. Misspellings

You'll be surprised how many times people misspell search phrases/words (about 10% — that's over 10 million/day!). The reason they do this doesn't matter. They may be in a hurry or simply don't know the correct spelling. Either way, they won't repeat the search. Most of the times, they'll be pleased with the first page of results the search engine generates.

Misspellings could represent a serious percent of your potential deals. If you don't want to lose them, add to your keyword list at least the most common ones. You can use The Misspelled Keywords Software made by Rod Beckwith, or if you use Site Build It you have a built-in tool that helps.

3. Word Stemming and Variations

Google and its competitors try to make our search experience as relevant as possible. Among other advantages, when a user types a keyword in the search box, the search engine returns results that contain all the derivations of that word. If you search for “fish”, you'll get results containing “fishing”, “fisherman” and so on.

Search engines also take into acount plurals, derivatives and other variations of the word. Include all of those in your keyword list.

4. Synonyms & Acronyms

Synonyms and acronyms are also good traffic sources for your website. A synonim is another word to express the same notion. An acronym is formed by the initials of a multiword term. For example, we say “pay per click” but we also say PPC and both terms are correct. People search in a language of their own that can depend on the region they live in, their age, culture, education level, mood, inspiration or who knows what else.

We can't think of another way to describe keywords research but as a permanent state of alert. Your inspiration may come even from the way you tend to search for products you know nothing, or very little about. But most of all, inspiration comes when you try to communicate to your customers. If you already have such a system (newsletter, blog, forum etc.) you can proceed to some steady research in this area.

If you are serious about keyword research, the best tool you can use (by far) is WordTracker.

5. Nouns, Brands, Product Names and Domains

Suppose you sell skates. And you want to advertise through AdWords™. Have you ever thought of keywords like Nancy Kerrigan or Michelle Kwan? Not that these keywords would necessary be good performers. But they are certainly being searched and nobody ever thought to bet on them. But we bet you could think of a way to do that.

In a similar way you could think about betting on brands, product names and domains. There are product names that become the product itself like Xerox did, and if you produce copiers maybe it's a good ideea to include it as a keyword (but not as a single word keyword).

Many people use the Google search bar instead of using the address bar when they want to type a URL. Why does this happen? We can't exactly tell. It could be they don't remember the exact address, or they're just speculating. In this case, a domain name is just a normal keyword, and you should consider including it as such.

6. Brainstorming for Related Topics

Related topics are always a way to reach your potential customers. A skater is not only looking for skates, but also for proper nutrition, supplements, training equipment, etc.

7. Word Spaces and Hyphenation

When it comes to these criteria, there may be more ways of typing the same keyphrase. You can say “coffee-machine” but also “coffee machine” and there are folks that just type “coffeemachine”. We know this process seems difficult and somehow boring but the more keywords you cover the more people you reach.

Let's see now how to increase your CTR.