There are several things to consider when choosing keywords and phrases. The most important is to put yourself in the shoes of the type of visitor you want to attract. Make a list of what kind of keywords or phrases they are likely to search on. This requires you to separate yourself from your product, service or web site and think like the average Joe who might want to find you, but knows nothing about your site.
It's a good idea to ask friends or co-workers what they might type in to find your site, or even have them go to a search engine and tell them to try and find information on the topic your site happens to cover. Watch what words and phrases they use.
Important things you want to remember when picking keywords to target:
1. CONCEPTS: Include concept keywords such as "accounting software" if that's what you sell, but also try and be specific enough so that it's not too broad.
2. BRANDS: Include more specific brand names such as Quicken. If you offer services, then try to use service brand names when possible. Legally, you should put the ® reserved symbol or ™ trademark symbol after the names when mentioning them on the page.
3. COMPANY NAMES: If you offer products from a well-known company, include that company's name in your keywords.
4. YOUR NAME: Unless you are a well known company/organization such as Microsoft or Hewlett Packard, it's generally less important to emphasize your name as a keyword. You should, however, setup an "About My Company/Organization" page that does repeat your name many times so that someone searching for you will find that page.
5. COMMON WORDS: There are now so many pages and words indexed on the Web, that a search on many common words such as "software" or "Internet" are going to be completely ignored for that search by the engine! Therefore, most people have to search on two or three word phrases to find what they're looking for. Trying to be listed well on every phrase/keyword combination they might search for is next to impossible.
More coming in Part FOUR....