Before you start optimizing your site for the search engines, you should spend some time in figuring out exactly what keywords, or what keyphrases, you are going to target. Search engines are an excellent source of traffic, but in order to utilize them to their full potential, some effort is required.

Before starting any search engine optimization campaign it is important to ensure that you are targeting the correct set of keyword phrases for your business. Sometimes what might seem to be the right set of keyword phrases turn out to be the opposite. When searching for the right phrases for your business it is important to keep three things in mind: Relevance, Popularity and Competition.

The first speaks for itself and should be obvious to all. Keyword Relevance has to do with how much a keyword phrase relates to your products or services. If you rank well for a popular search phrase and receive a lot of traffic from it, this still doesn't help you if the traffic doesn't translate to sales or leads. For instance, let's say you've found a good niche phrase that is fairly popular and has a high KEI index - "free keyword ranking report". So you optimize for this keyword phrase, rank well, and receive more traffic. However, if your website doesn't offer a free keyword ranking report or have any information on how to receive a free keyword ranking report, these extra visitors will not actually convert to customers. It is important to remember not to get too caught up in the popularity and KEI of a keyword phrase. You must also think about keyword relevance when conducting your keyword research.

Keyword popularity refers to the number of people at any one time that may be searching for your keyword phrase. If your website is optimized well for a keyword phrase that a lot of people are searching for, more traffic will be brought to your site.

Keyword competition is an area that some newcomers to SEO fail to examine. When a particular keyword phrase is popular, this usually means that there are many other websites out there competing for top rankings of that phrase in the search engines. The number of competing websites is the number of results a search engine returns for a specific keyword query. Optimizing for a competitive keyword phrase can make it much more difficult for you to achieve successful search engine rankings for these phrases.

The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) is a qualitative measure of how easily it is to optimize for a particular keyword phrase. KEI is essentially a matter of 'supply and demand'. Ideally, we want to select keywords that are extremely popular but aren't very competitive. This would result in a very high KEI and take very little effort to achieve successful rankings.

By now, your list is probably pretty full of very competitive, single-word terms such as "MP3" or "books" or "computers" or whatever. Scratch them. This might sound harsh, but if you're a novice, you have no chance of achieving a top listing under such terms. Even many (dare I say most) professionals tend to avoid them, as they are extremely competitive. There are hundreds of thousands of sites targeting them and even with excellent search engine optimization skills, they are very tough to conquer. What you should do is to narrow it down a little. Think about different variations of these popular keywords. If you were originally thinking about the keyword "books", how about "buy used books online" or "antique bookstore"? These terms would be, not easy, but easier to rank well under. It is far better to be in the top 10 for a search term with medium usage than to rank 500th for a heavily used term. Select keyphrases that do get searched, but that aren't too competitive.

Choosing the right keyword phrases to target can be the deciding factor between a successful and unsuccessful search engine optimization campaign. When doing your research, remember to keep in mind your business goals and the three factors discussed above. Is it always easier to work with the market trends instead of against them.