Keywords and keyword phrases are what an average potential customer uses on a search engine to look for a product, service or just a content that a website provides. There are several factors that make up a SEM (i.e. Search Engine Marketing). First, you must have a quality website with a plenty of unique relevant content. Other aspects are submitting website to search engines, building backlinks, optimizing the content (see Tips for webmaster make SEO Successful Website), interlinking web pages and possibly the most important factor - choosing the right keywords.

Choosing the right keywords and keyword phrases is the first and the most important step on a way to a successful website and improved search engine rankings. The keyword factor is the one that will decide whether your website promotion campaign will be a success or a miserable fail. Here is a small step by step guide describing a process of keyword selection plus few helpful tips and ideas.

Keyword Analysis Or Keyword Research

Before you move on and do anything else, you should have at least a broad idea about your keywords. To start with, you’ll need at least one keyword called also a primary keyword. This should be very specific. For example, if you are trying to sell laptops of some particular model or brand - let’s say Toshiba, your primary keyword should be

Toshiba laptop. A study conducted by one of the major search engines revealed that more than 65% of searches consist of a keyword phrase rather than a single keyword. Thus your primary keyword shouldn’t be just a single word, it should consist of at least two words.

Once you know the primary keyword, visit the following websites, type it in and and you’ll get a collection of highly searched related keywords.

Wordtracker
Google Keyword Tool

Spy On Your Competitors

Visit your competitors’ sites and check out their pages (title, h1 and meta tags) to see which keywords they are using. List down their keywords and keyword phrases. Now you should have a decent bunch of the keywords most commonly used for your type of business.

Make Your Own List

You have the list of competitors’ keywords as well as keywords suggested by various online tools. Now it’s a time to write down your own keywords. Try to choose the most related ones. You might also include your company’s name and/or city. Add plurals and variations of the keywords. Spell the most important ones in both American and British English.

Read The Mind Of Potential Visitors

Imagine you are a potential visitor or client. Open up a search engine and type in keywords from top of your head. Eventually, you might ask few friends to do the same. Add the suggested keywords to the list.

Narrow Your List

At this point, you should already have around 30 relevant keywords written down on a sheet of paper. The problem is that optimizing a webpage for so many keywords is extremely difficult if not impossible.

Read the list and try to underline or highlight the most important keywords and keyword phrases. Go through the highlighted keywords and again - pick the best ones. Repeat this process until your list is cut down to no more than 4-5 keywords. Use these top four or five keywords on your homepage. You can use the remaining keywords on other pages of your website.

Be Flexible

Always be prepared to change or update your keywords. Pay attention to the feedback received from visitors to your site, customers, clients and lastly but not least website logs. Website logs can provide exact information on which keywords are successful and which are not. This is pretty helpful when modifying your keyword selection