If you have budget to burn on search engine marketing (SEM), analyzing site log files for highly converting keywords is the most popular approach to research. It’s also favored by companies with thinner budgets. Sifting through the same log files for frequent keywords is a favorite, as well.

The latest research from MarketingSherpa shows that 85 percent of companies with SEM budgets of above $25,000 a year look for highly converting keywords in their log files, with 54 percent of companies with SEM budgets of $10,000 and down using the same method. Fifty-four percent of both the big and small companies looked for frequent keywords in log files, and both chose internal site search analysis (46 percent and 30 percent, respectively) as the #3 technique.

Competitor site analysis and competitive tools were considerably less popular, particularly with companies that didn’t have large SEM budgets. And, social semantic mining is still in its infancy.

How do you do keyword research? Leave a comment, and let us know!

[Source: MarketingSherpa]