Picking the Best Keywords for Your Site:

When Billy Batson yelled the magic word "Shazam!" he turned into Captain Marvel. The net has magic words, too. Pick the right magic words for your site and visitors will flock from all over the net.

We call them keywords. Some research says that 80 percent of all online transactions begin with a keyword search.

For a word or phrase to be magic for you it must meet two tests. It must be a word or phrase that accurately portrays your site. And it must be a word or phrase that people are already searching for.

What's your site all about?

Many of the articles on picking keywords skip this part. Don't do that. It's essential for you to describe your site accurately before you use the many tools that can help you find what people are searching for.

Start by writing down the words and phrases that describe your site and why people should visit it. Don't look at your site first, just list the words and phrases. Ask friends for a similar list.

What are people searching for?

To get started on this, visit the most most popular free keyword tools on the net. It's called Good Keywords.

When you get there you'll find a box where you can enter search terms and phrases. Do that for the words and phrases on your list.

For each word or phrase you put into the box, you'll get a list with two pieces of information on each line. One piece will be a word or phrase similar to the one you entered. The other will be the number of times that word or phrase was actually searched for in a recent month.

Make note of any word or phrase that's been searched for at least two thousand times but less than fifty thousand times.

Words and phrases with two thousand or less searches aren't popular enough to generate much traffic. On the other hand, fifty thousand searches or more signifies a word or phrase where there's already tons of competition.

The Overture Keyword Selector tool is the most popular keyword tool on the net, in part because it's free - or used to be. Overture recently discontinued support for this free tool and there is no word yet on if they are going to bring it back. So that leaves paid keyword tools you may want to use.

Wordtracker is a popular tool. It's available by subscription. Subscriptions are for a day, a week or a year, so there should be one to fit your budget.

The advantage of Wordtracker is that it not only tells you more than just what people search for. It will also tell you how many competing sites use those keywords. There's a free trial that you can use to see if this is a tool for you.

The other site that many Search Engine Optimization people like is called Keyword Discovery. This is also a subscription product with monthly and yearly options. There is a free trial available. It has a slightly broader list of features than Wordtracker.

Both of the paid tools deliver value by helping you select and use keywords. Tools called "keyword spinners" help you find variants of words you've identified. Other tools will help you determine which keywords and phrases will work best and then use them effectively.

Do you need to change the copy on your site?

Once you've done all this analysis, you face an important decision. Should you change the copy on your site? Compare your site's copy with the words you know are magic. Re-write as needed.