This is a hot topic that always comes up and there’s two ways of looking at this.

The first argument is who but Google could provide you with better information.  Wouldn’t Google provide you the best keywords and guidance?  Considering Google is going to make money from the ads you publish wouldn’t it make sense for Google to direct you to the proper keywords? In a perfect world yes this might be the perfect answer.

Then you can argue the opposite.  Why would Google want to provide entirely accurate search volume information?  Many claim that it’s in Google’s best interest to inflate search volumes because it encourages more sales.   Google wants to keep you guessing so that you try several different keywords and when they don’t payoff you always comeback to try again.

So what is the best way to find keywords?  There isn’t a perfect solution to this process but before you settle on a keyword do some general research to make sure it provides the search volume you are looking for.  Do a search for the keyword using both local and organic results.  What do you see?  Where does it place?

How did you find this post?  Did you click on a link from another website or did a search engine like Google serve the link?  If you answered neither then most likely you knew the domain name of the website.

Generally most people follow links to different websites.  If you have no links then expect no traffic and your website is simply wasting away.  Links are like roads and highways to your content.  So a good link will help drive traffic to your website.  Imagine if you had a link on a website like cnn.com.  If 2 million people a day visit that site and only 1% of those visitors clicked on your link then you would have 20,000 visitors on your website and a backlink has been created.  Why? Well the original link on cnn.com is going back to your website and referencing your content which in turn creates the backlink.