1. Know your potential customers. We can't tell you how many businesses we've met who simply pick keywords out of thin air. They don't talk to customers or hot prospects in order to determine what might be a useful set of keywords.

2. Start with core words. A core set of keywords - even if too broad - can stimulate creative thinking.

3. Look at industry. Examine industry trade group web sites and related newsletters to find potential keywords.

4. Study competitors. Some companies make a bigger deal of competitors' keywords than they should, but it's still a useful strategy. Invariably, a competitor will be using a strong keyword or phrase you don't want to miss. Often, however, they load their web sites with single keywords that aren't appropriate. If Internet users are seeking cookware, their search terms shouldn't be laundry-based words. Yet we came across that very example. Be careful which words you use.

This is a serious matter, can Google really deliver top quality search results for other countries? The answer so far is "sort of". In this article I will use Canada as an example of quality or lack of thereof, that is delivered by Google's search results.

Let's take a look at Canadian search results by Google.ca:

When you highlight "Canada" through Google search results and then start searching, you may be surprised at amount of companies that aren't really Canadian. All of this also applies for UK and other major markets as well...

In fact, many of "paid results" come from American companies. Now some would argue that this is to be expected, coming from American companies with large budgets but I would disagree because a lot of bulk of "Canadian specific" results are also American companies.

It is quite evident that this is a growing concern with business owners residing in different countries.

As an owner not from US, I would rather compete with companies that are more local than not, simply because results would then be relevant. Irrelevant results equal to poor results and less people take search results seriously when they keep sifting through poor quality results online.

For example; If you highlight "search in Canada" and search for "web design", top 2 results seem not to be from Canada. This is a serious issue. What if people click on "I'm feeling lucky", they are redirected to a company outside of Canada. The average person won't know what to think about that and may disregard searching through Canadian results any further.