Choosing keywords for your website is one of the most difficult and important problems a website owner faces. Your designer can't do it for you. Your copywriter can't do it for you. You have to do it yourself, possibly with some help from the marketing department.
Your mission is to create a list of the phrases potential customers (or visitors) will use at search engines and directories to find your website, then use them to get more traffic from search engines.
Not just any phrases will do! The phrases your competitors are using aren't necessarily the best. You need to be able to describe your website (and business) using terms other people are using and your competitors aren't fighting over. These are the terms that will bring you the most visitors for the least amount of effort.
How do you find these jackpot phrases? By guessing? (I've tried that. It can work, but guessing right is like winning the lottery.)
Let's start with guessing. Guessing means putting yourself in your target market's shoes and determining what keyword phrases they would use to find a website like yours. You could ask them, if you've got the time or budget; otherwise, guessing is a good way to start.
Now you should make a list of potential keywords. Visit your friendly neighborhood Thesaurus for more. The more you have, the better chance you have of finding a winner nobody else has thought of.
For more ideas, check out my other article, "How to Choose Keywords Right." Don't just look for words that describe your business. Look for words associated with your business that you may be able to write articles about.
Search for the phrases you have listed with your favorite search engine. When competitors' sites come up, visit them. View the Source of their website and look at what keywords they're using in their meta tags. (While you're at it, look through their website for other ideas you can use.)
Take note how many results the search engine gives you for each keyword phrase, and how relevant the results seem to be. Are the terms in the Titles of the results? In the descriptions?
The key phrases that result in the fewest relevant results could be gold mines. These are the terms your competitors are ignoring. Are the people you want most to visit your website ignoring them as well?
Chances are, if you've thought of a term, other people will too. The ignored terms probably aren't the most popular on the internet, but if you have top rankings in 100 moderately popular keyword phrases, you'll get a lot more visitors than a website ranked 35 for a wildly popular keyword phrase. Getting (and keeping) those 100 top rankings will probably turn out to be easier, too!
Choosing keywords is not about finding words to describe your website. It's about finding words that people can and will use to find your website.
Right about now you your mission may seem impossible - and this doesn't even consider what you'll have to do to get top rankings with the keyword phrases you choose! Well, break it down into steps, and schedule a little work each day.
Brainstorm one day, visit the Thesaurus another. Search one phrase a day, and visit one or two competitors. Then change one page a day, adding (or changing) keywords and optimizing the page for search engines using the new terms.