• Make an initial list of all the keywords you think people might find your website with

These keywords should be a short list of what your website is trying to promote and other words related to your industry. You need to use your imagination and think of words which people will search to find your business online.

• Request your customers to make a list of all the keywords they would try to find you with

The keywords generated from the perspective of a customer may be totally surprising as very often an average customer does not speak the same language that we do.

• Yet another great way to gather keywords is to see what words are being used by competitors

Type one of your keywords into the search box of the search engine of your choice to determine the sites with the top search engine placement for this word. View the source code of your competitor’s page and check their Meta Keywords tag. It is probably best that you check out the top five search engine results.

• It would also be good to identify the keywords that people used in search engines to access your site

To do so, check out the “Entrance Keywords” report in Google Analytics. I find this report very useful as it shows the keywords used by users to come directly to that page from a search engine.

• Once you have prepared an initial list, you’ll want to scan through your site to see how it has used the keywords that you have already chosen

You might even find ideas for additional keywords this way. You must look for specialized words or “phrases” that will deliver qualified traffic.

• After accumulating enough words and phrases, you will need to find out the popularity of each potential keyword

There are three main tools available online to assist you in doing the keyword research, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and the Google Search Based Keyword Tool.  To use these tools, type in the keyword that you want to research and the tools will display other relevant keywords. You can use these suggestions to add keywords to your list. Doubts prevail on the accuracy of the data presented by these tools.  However the data it offers is better than having no data at all.

• From the list of possible keywords, you need to identify the relevant words to the site

You would not want to choose a keyword which not many people search for. However, at the same time, you would not want to choose a keyword which is too competitive.

It would be wiser to avoid the generic keywords since it is going to be extremely difficult to optimize for them. Try to pick keywords that are specific. For example if you are a freelancer based in New Orleans, your ideal keywords would be freelancer New Orleans or web development services New Orleans. Going for the generic freelancer or web development keywords is not going to be beneficial.

After you have gone through your list and taken off words that are not relevant or that your website does not have sufficient content for, you should have a shorter and more relevant list of keywords. Place the keywords strategically in the title, meta tags and content of your website.

Most of the people do not do much research when coining keywords for their website. So just by doing the necessary keyword research and getting some insight into what keywords are being used by people online will help you go a long way in choosing the right keywords and matching your content with what people are looking for. It gives you a very definite advantage over those websites that have not done any optimization.