Websites that achieve high natural searches are highly dependent on using the best most relevant keywords.  In addition you must optimize each page of your website with keywords that are not too competitive yet generate targeted traffic to your website.

The process of finding these keywords is called keyword optimization.

Why is it important? 

Because using the right keywords attracts the viewers most interested in the items or services on your website. You will also achieve higher search engine ranking for your chosen keywords, saving you thousands of dollars in advertising.

It all starts, however, with the finding the most appropriate and relevant keywords pertaining to your product or services.

When selecting keywords you should select 1 perhaps 2 of the most relevant keywords for each page of your site. I suggest using no more than two keywords per page, preferably one.

Why?

Because search engines strive to deliver the most relevant pages for the search term entered. The more focused your page is for the search term, the more relevant the search engines will find your page. The more keywords you use, the less focused your page becomes.

How do you find keywords that your target audience will use?

- Think like your readers. Take yourself outside your site for a minute and think about how you would find the products or services you are selling.

- Use the Wordtracker Keyword Research tool and type in your most basic keyword. It will show you the variations of the search term and also the count of how many times that term was entered in the search engine.

- Think of phrases as opposed to one single word. If you sell clay pots, think of keywords such as painted clay pots, or clay flower pots, large clay pots, buy clay pots. Use descriptive words when brainstorming phrases.

- Ask your relatives, kids and friends what they would type in to find your products. You would be amazed at the great ideas that can be generated. For example, I asked a teenager once what he would type in to find shoes online and he said 'nice kicks'. As of this writing, Wordtracker shows a count of 155 searches a day for 'nice kicks'. I never would have found that keyword on my own.

- Use a thesaurus or Webster's dictionary to find similar words to your chosen keywords. Consider all forms of the word. For example, for the term supply there is supply, supplies, supplier, supplying. Thinking of all forms of the word help a great deal in brainstorming keyword ideas.

- Provide a search box on your website that allows your visitors to search your website.  Sites such as Freefind allow you to not only provide a site search engine for your website they will help you collect data on what keywords users are using. Once you've collected a good list of search terms you can use this to help you determine the best keywords.

You can also use your website server logs to gather information on the keywords that visitors use to find your website.

Once you've made a list of the best keywords and keyword phrases, you will need to determine which ones are the best.

Your challenge is to find keywords that have a high usage count but appear on the least amount of competing web pages.

 Wordtracker's 'Keyword Effectiveness Index' (KEI) will provide you with the number of times a keyword is used along with the number of competing web pages. The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition. This means a better chance for you in getting to the top of the search engines.

Finding the best keywords and keyword phrases is an important part of your marketing mix. Finding the best keywords and building your content around those keywords is your ticket to higher search engine ranking and less advertising costs.