A good keyword strategy should be one of your first if not your first part to a good SEO plan. Defining what keywords you want to target is very crucial and should never be skipped. If you skip defining what keywords you want to target then you are just going to be shooting in the dark and have no real direction which will give you very low traffic or traffic that is not your target audience.

First we need to start by defining what our site theme is or is going to be so that we can define our target audience. So lets say for example our site sells paintings form that 1800s, that is still a pretty broad topic but we can work with. So now lets define certain items about out site.

1. We only sell paintings form the 1800’s
2. We only deal in European paintings
3. We will ship paintings anywhere
4. We purchase paintings
5. We do painting restoration

Now that we have defined out web site we need to come up with a list of keywords. When thinking about keywords for your web site you need to keep in mind that not everything thinks or searches the same way you do. so when thinking about keyword terms think about how you would search for your product, how an expert would search for your products, and how an average everyday Joe would search for your products. This will help you cover all of your basis in terms of search terms and phrases.

Now we need to actually make the list, so start writing down what you think some major search terms or phrases would be when the theme of your web site. Remember that search terms don’t have to be only one or two words; three or four words to totally acceptable when creating search phrases.

• 1800 European Painting
  • Landscape
    • 1800 European Landscape Paintings
    • 1800 European Country Side Paintings
  • Portrait
    • 1800 European Portraits
    • 1800 European Royalty Portraits
    • 1800 European Common Portraits
  • Houses
    • 1800 European House Paintings
    • 1800 European Castle Paintings
    • 1800 European City Paintings

I hope you will go a little bit further than I did on your list, I created the small list above just to give you an idea of how we can create good keywords phrases about our site. If you are a local business be sure to include some local search terms in your keyword phrases because you want to rank well for local searches as well as the global searches.

Now is where we being to do our research on the keyword phrases we just created. So take your keyword phrases and place them into Google, start with your most broad phrases and then work your way to the more specific ones. Be sure to take note of the highest ranking sites and see what keywords they are targeting for their site. You will need to read as much as you can about your competitors to get an accurate idea about how to take traffic from them and add it to you.

Now it is time to find out which of our long list of keywords will acutally help us. There are plenty of keyword tools that you can use but my personal favorite is the free Google AdWords keyword tool. Place each of your keyword phrases into Google’s tool and see which ones are searched the most and least. Go ahead and remove the ones that are searched the least from your list because it is not work your time to focus on those. Keep the ones that show a high volume of searches that are not very broad phrases, where the broad phrases may seem like they will give you more traffic they are much more competitive and will most likely not give you the targeted traffic you want to make a sale.

When you are finished you can use this list of keywords and phrases to help you with your Search Engine Optimization needs.