How do you research keywords and what tools do you use?

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There are many good (and free) tools available to research keywords around which to build articles, blogs and even discussion topics for MyLot. Keyword research is a very important part of search engine optimization, especially when you are looking for articles to write for a blog or for any of the article publishing sites, including Squidoo (where your lenses can be used as part of a promotion for your other sites ... but DO read the Terms and the Rules ... they have recently changed!) Here are just two (apart from my own wandering thesaurus mind!) that I use (note that none of these are referral links because they are all free facilities!). Note that this is not necessarily the logical order in which I would use them - it is just a collection: Google Insights: http://www.google.com/insights/search/# You can use Google Insights to see what terms (and related terms) appear to be rising in popularity and what terms are being used worldwide and which countries are most interested. This can help in targeting a market at particular countries. Very well worth playing around with! Results can be exported to CSV (Spreadsheet readable). SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/ This is a free tool which uses Wordtracker results. Again, it can export to CSV and can show you the frequencies with which certain terms are used every day. But it can also give you MUCH more information than that, because it has links to other Keyword tools and can, for example, show you at a click what the average CPC certain keywords and phrases are commanding in Adwords. If you are already using these two, please tell us how you use them and what you think of them; if you think others are better and, if so, what. If you aren't using them yet, please bookmark this discussion, give them a try and come back and report your first impressions ... for example: [i]* Are they too complicated? * Are you totally confused by keywords, anyway? * Do you think the whole subject simply doesn't apply to you? (and if not, why not!)[/i]