Here are the steps you need to take in your online marketing campaign. Some of the steps can be performed in any order while others should be performed in the proper order stated. I’ll let you know when it’s OK to veer into a different direction or rearrange the order.

• Competitive research – Start with understanding where your competition is and what they are up to. Someone was in your space before you. Find out who they are and what they’ve done and are doing.
• Keyword research – You should include keyword research along with competitive research, but it does extend beyond competitive intelligence. You want study the competition’s keywords, but you also want to do your own independent research.
• Pay Per Click – PPC advertising will be your first test of your keywords. It’s fast and gets you the information you need quickly, plus you can drive instant sales with PPC.
• Search engine optimization – Next, take what you’ve learned from your competitive research, keyword research, and PPC and build a solid SEO campaign. You can do SEO before PPC, but I recommend performing PPC first so you can us it to test your keywords.
• Social media marketing – You want to save your social media campaign for later in the game. It’s a lower threshold type of marketing. It’s good for branding and building relationships, but you want to get your SEO and PPC going first so that you can use them to test your keywords and strategies.
• Video marketing – With videos, you can market with them before social media or after. It makes little difference, but you don’t want to start your video marketing campaign before SEO or PPC.
• Link building – Other forms of marketing like articles, blogs, and link building efforts are ongoing. Start them as soon you get your SEO campaign going and don’t ever stop.

Of course, even if you’re just building your website then keyword research is in order.

First, study your competition. What are they doing? Write down any keywords you find on your competition’s websites. Analyze those keywords with regard to your differences and similarities to your competition. Does anything stick out?

That should help you narrow down your keywords to a niche that you fill within your industry. Now look for some synonyms. Using a tool like Google’s keyword research tool, enter your keywords and look for related keywords that might help you.

Now search for those keywords in Google and Bing and see what the competition is like. Are there a lot of websites targeting those keywords? That can be both good and bad. It’s bad because the more websites targeting those keywords the tougher your competition; it’s good because if there are a lot of websites targeting a keyword then it’s because that keyword is valuable.

After you’ve done all your keyword research, pick the ones that are best for your business. Those are the keywords that you’d expect a searcher to type into Google’s search box when they are trying to find the products and services you offer.

Don’t cut corners on keyword research. It’s an important part of your online marketing plan.

It is permissible to steal your competitors’ keywords. When you start your keyword research, one of the first things that you should do is visit the websites of your key competitors and take a look at their meta tags. Don’t just look at the home page either. Look at all of their important pages and make a list of the keywords on each page.

You won’t necessarily use every keyword your competitors use. You probably will use some they aren’t using. But by surveying the keywords that your competition is using, you can better judge how you should approach your niche and which keywords are important. It’s a very simple competitive intelligence maneuver and one that many new Internet marketers often overlook.

What I like about this tool is you can search for keywords by descriptive phrase or by associating your research with a website. If your website is already built and you want to see if there are any keywords you may not be targeting then you can check the Website content box and generate your list of keywords specifically for a website you own.

Otherwise, you can enter your keywords and phrases, check the synonym box and filter for words you don’t want to use. When you click the “Get keyword ideas” box, the keyword research tool will generate your list of keywords based on what you enter in the words and phrases box above. Then you can play around with the data by measuring the keywords and phrases against each other in three columns:

• Advertiser competition
• Local search volume
• Global monthly search volume

This tool is useful if you are running AdWords campaigns or if you are just conducting initial keyword research. I highly recommend it as a free tool.