A keyword list can grow to mammoth proportions before you know it and then you’re left staring at a bunch of words, wondering which ones will provide the biggest return for you if and when you use them in an online marketing campaign.

Some marketers use what’s called KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) to figure this out. It was originally created by Sumantra Roy and it’s fairly easy to use for your own online marketing campaigns.

First, you have to brainstorm all of the words and phrases that are relevant to your website’s products or services. KEI generally takes long-tail keywords into effect since the competition for broad keywords is too great.

KEI examines the number of searches for a keyword phrase against the number of search results. The tools that find your KEI for you will spit out a ranking for that keyword phrase and the higher the KEI, the better your chances of ranking higher in the search engines for it.

Some people rely heavily on KEI but you have to use some human common sense, too. This is because KEI doesn’t take into consideration what type of quality those competitor sites have in regards to content. There may be many competitors with low SEO strategies in place, or only a handful of competitors but those who happen to have massive pulling potential in the SERPs.

The common sense comes into play when you start evaluating the keywords and phrases on your list against the motivation of your reader. For instance, a keyword phrase with the word “free” in it might return high KEI statistical data, but you know that because it’s someone searching for a freebie, the likelihood of them whipping out their wallets and paying for your products or services is diminished.

You’ll want to use keywords with qualifiers in them. For example, instead of using the keyword phrase, “Internet marketing guide,” you might get a more targeted buyer if you add certain words in it, such as “buy Internet marketing guide,” or “best Internet marketing guide.”

Typically, long-tail keywords with modifiers added to the mix will help you rank higher and make more money with the content than if you try to dominate early on using broad keywords that don’t tell you much about why your visitor is using the phrase.

You can also take the tedious route and do various campaigns by cloaking your links using different keyword phrases and seeing which ones get the best results in clickthroughs and sales. Just make sure you don’t start randomly using keyword phrases because you want to focus your efforts on those that will help you profit.

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Finding Profitable Keywords

Keyword lists can get very messy – especially the larger they get. You’ll want to compile a massive list of keywords for your niche marketing needs, and then organize them so that you can access them and put them to good use whenever you’re working on tasks.

So there are two parts to your keyword maintenance. Well, three if you consider the compilation and gathering portion a part of its own. Once you have the keywords compiled, you want to first clean the list, and then organize it for future use.

Your keywords might be gathered from multiple sources – like your own analytical tool or several free and paid keyword tools. So first, you’ll want to use a keyword cleaning tool to remove duplicates.

Your keyword cleaner can also make your keyword list alphanumeric for you. It can take out numbers and remove bad keywords that aren’t proper for a marketing campaign (such as those that contain the word free). It can also extract any phrases that contain bad words in them.

Alphanumeric keyword lists will help you get rid of anything with a hyphen or other symbol in it. It takes out periods and commas as well. With some keyword search tools, the results will include the search volume. A keyword cleaner removes those for you. Some of the keyword list cleaning tools will remove capitalization, too.

You can organize your keyword lists with a tool, too. If you’re using Pay Per Click search engine marketing, you can use exact or broad match keywords. Let the tool take a single list and deliver the extra results fully formatted for you so you can just cut and paste it into action.

You may want to group your keywords with modifying words like “best” or “buy.” Some list cleaning tools will help clump those particular words that you specify into groups for specific niche marketing campaigns you plan to launch.

Depending on the niche, you may want to organize your keyword list into group according to age, gender or location. Depending on the list cleaning tool you use, it can do all of the work for you.

Some keyword list cleaning tools use a tree-like branch function to organize your keywords and phrases. For example, let’s say you had a pet website. It could group the keywords according to animals first (birds, cats, dogs) and then branch out within each keyword for more precise phrase (buy a bird bath, cat clawing toys, dog training guide).

You can even use multiple keyword list cleaning tools if you find certain aspects you like among many of them. Organization will help you dominate in a niche easier than if you randomly pick and choose a word or phrase to use in your online campaigns.

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Clean Up Your Keyword List

Keywords used to be used for one major purpose – to stuff a web page so full that Google and other search engines considered them the most relevant to a particular topic. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Keyword research is going to change dramatically in 2010 in a way that will help marketers capitalize on trends more than they have been. To date, most keyword research tools have been a bit lagging in results.

But now, developers are coming out with real time trend data for keywords. Google Trends, for example, is updated daily. And now you can access Hot Topics and get an hourly snapshot of what topics are most being investigated by the public.

You can periodically log into these free tools to see what topics or content is relevant or can be connected to your own niche site. Then create an AdWords campaign or blog about it or Tweet something to get that current flood of traffic diverted to your own website.

I predict that you’re going to find more free keyword tools that are almost as competitive as the paid versions. Developers will make their money elsewhere with the tool. For instance, Wordstream just launched two free keyword research tools (Keyword Niche Finder and Keyword Grouper) that search for, build and clean your lists for you.

In 2010, Google and other search engines will be looking for ways to counter keyword spam. They’re going to have future functions that weed out spammers and try to connect searchers to relevant content they really want.

Keywords will also be delivered via Google using the Real Time Search function, which will run side by side with the older results and will include information from social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Somehow I have a feeling spammers will find a way to capitalize on that, too.

You’ll be using your keywords and phrases – dominating with long-tail phrases as usual – in more places online in 2010. Aside from using them on web pages, in AdWords campaigns, and on typical social networking sites like Squidoo, you’ll also consider using them more in video marketing (which many marketers fail to do) and on mobile advertising networks, which are on the rise.

Whatever methods you use, you’ll want to make sure you continually build your keyword list, clean it for duplicates and irrelevant phrases, and then put them to use for you instead of letting them sit on your hard drive.

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Keyword Research 2010