When exploring good keyword choices there are several steps one must consider. The most important step is putting your self in the shoes of the type of customer you want to target. Just make a list of the keywords or phrases you think that customer would enter into a search engine or directory when searching for your company or site. A good tool is WordTracker.com which will help you brainstorm different key phrases. Ask friends and associates which words they would use to search for your site on the internet, if they were looking for a site similar to yours.

Brands -

If a brand applies, include more specific brand names that are applicable to your site or type of business. If you offer a service, then try to offer service brand names when ever possible. Legally, you should put a registered trademark () or trademark () symbol after the names when ever mentioning trademarked names on the page.

Concepts -

Include concept type keywords. An example would be "Athletic Gear" Since this would be what a sports company might be selling.

Company Names -

If your site offers a product from a well known company with brand recognition, include that company name in your keyword. Rid on the popularity of that company, why not? You're selling their product, correct? If that company has a good reputation and brand loyalty then this would only help in adding consumer confidence in your site even more.

Quality -

Your keywords may only bring up poor quality type web sites that your core audience may have no interest in anyway. Try to focus on words that will bring in quality visitors to your site who will stay long enough to search your site for information regarding your product or service. Unqualified visits are not only a waste of your visitor's time but also a waste of your time. You wouldn't want to be barraged with unqualified emails regarding your product if it's not what your site is trying to sell.

Your Company Name

Unless your company has a well known brand name such as Nike or Ford Motors, it's generally less important to emphasize the company name as a keyword. A go around for this is to create an "About Us" page that focuses on optimizing your company name several times as the keyword on that page. This way if someone searches for your company name it would still come up as a relevant search result.

Target Phrases not Words -

With over a billion pages on the web and millions added each day, it's virtually impossible to achieve to rankings for a common words such as "electronics", "web", "food" etc. Instead, try to focus on target phrases of between two and four words in length.

Test Your Keywords -

Try to see how many web sites match your keywords or phrases before and after you launch your web site. Obviously the few matches found the easier it will be to obtain high rankings. With a proper strategy your site could be one near the top of that search. There may be phrases that are much easier to achieve a good ranking on than more common words or phrases. Some finding those obscure phrases and using this strategy can gain your site unexpected traffic.

Case Sensitivity -

If a user types in the word "Web," many engines will search for "Web" with an uppercase "W" only. If your page has only "Web" in lowercase "w" in it, it won't be found. On the other hand, if a user searches for "web" many engines will search for it in lowercase and uppercase forms. There fore it helps to have some of your keywords in uppercase or starting with an uppercase letter if the user should search that way. The easiest way to do this is in the title of the page, in Meta tags and at the beginning of sentences. Some engines are not case sensitive like Google at this time. The easiest way to test this is to input your keyword or phrase into different search engines and see if the exact same search results come up.

Bad Spelling -

Some times bad spelling is a good thing. Search for obvious spelling errors and grammatical mistakes people are likely to make and then incorporate them into your pages to pick up unexpected traffic. Also, product names can have a multitude of variations so focus on those too. For example, Ford may have "Ford Motor," "Ford Vehicles," "Ford Auto," or "Ford Cars" etc.

Implement these search engine optimization strategies and you will boost your traffic with higher rankings