So what's next step?

It's time to develop your "master keyword list" which you will use to craft your webpages. Theseare words or phrases you would like to get ranked high in search engine's for and get free targeted traffic that this will bring to your website.

It is not enough to simply "pluck" words from air and start writing your web pages. You need to carefully select which words and phrases to target.

Food for thought:

What if there are already 10 billion web pages about your chosen keyword(s)?

Do you think a small business owner can compete with large companies who invest millions of dollars into their SEO strategies for highly competitive, high traffic keywords?

Obviously answer is no but there is a bright side to equation if you are willing to invest time into researching your keyword phrases carefully. You will want to choose "niche" keywords that offer a combination of high traffic and low competition.

This of course is easier said than done but it can be accomplished as long as you use some of help that is available on internet.

Here are a couple of first steps, tips and tools you can use to put together a list of niche keywords for website topic that you have developed.

1. Keyword Brainstorming and Research

Think of throwing out a "wide net" here and try to write down as many keywords and phrases (consisting of 2-4 words) that are related to your Website Concept as you can.

Take each one of these words/phrases and visit:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type first keyword phrase into "Get suggestions for:" box and hit search button.

This will return you a list of words and phrases that are similiar to your keyword phrase and also provide you with number of searches for each of these results on Yahoo-Overture network for month.

Copy all of keyword phrases that you think best suit your site concept along with search data into a text file or spreadsheet. Save this file as your "master keyword list".

Note: Some of results will be totally unrelated to your site concept you do not need to copy these into your "master keyword list".

Repeat this process for all of keyword phrases that you initially brainstormed. By end of this process you should have a "master keyword list" of several hundred or thousand words and phrases.

Google provides a free keyword research tool as well but does not provide search statistics that Yahoo-Overture does. Augment your keyword list with any results that you find relevant using this tool.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

2. Refine Your Keyword List Part 1

We need to shorten your keyword list to a tightly targeted and highly profitable subset of your master keyword list. These are going to be words we use when crafting our web pages for search engines.

Start by performing searches for each keyword phrase in your master keyword list at:

http://www.google.com

Google will tell you total number of sites it has indexed for keyword phrase that you are searching for. Copy this number into your master keyword list for each keyword phrase.

You will now have data for number of searches on Yahoo-Overture network for month and number of competing websites for each keyword phrase in your list.

Think of these numbers as supply(websites) and demand(# of searches). Finding supply/demand number for each keyword phrase will help you decide which one's you want to target.

Firstly - what is SEO? Well - its short for Search Engine Optimization, and its process of tuning up your web site so that it ranks better on search engines.

Why is that important? - well think of your web site as a book. It is sitting in very large library called Internet, and only people that know about it are friends and current business acquaintances. They know title of site and where it sits on shelf.

What you are trying to do through SEO is to get your site listed in equivalent of Internet catalog. That way people that are not intimately acquainted with who you are and what you sell will find you…..

Not only that - you are also trying to get your site listed at top of index for a particular subject. There are millions of sites out there on every conceivable subject. If you sell widgets, then it won’t do you very much good if your site is 1543th listed under ‘widgets’. It would be like having a Yellow page advertisement where your business is listed in very small print at back of book!