Finding keywords for your website is extremely important. Having the best keywords on your web pages is crucial for its ability to attract visitors. No less! So pay close attention to this little "keyword tutorial"!
In essence, keywords are words or phrases people put into a search engine when searching for some sort of information. If you have that keyword (phrase) on a page of yours, Google might return that page on its search result pages so that your link might get clicked and you receive a visitor.
How to Find Keywords
Finding keywords is easy enough for any topic. However, you should aim for the best keywords - those that have high demand (number of searches, search volume) and low competition (not too many websites aiming for the same keyword).
Let's say you have chosen "guitar music" as your business theme and name of your website (from which you are going to sell your products). Then "guitar music" might be your main keyword on your home page.
Now make a search for "guitar music" in Google Keyword Research Tool. To get a true view of the demand for that keyword, choose the "Exact" or "Phrase" option. There is high demand for "guitar music", as you can see. Do the same in the ordinary Google search engine with the exact search term: allintitle: "guitar music" (more about this type of search query here: How to Find Your Niche ).
There is a lot of competition for "guitar music", so finding keywords that less websites are optimizing for is now what you will want Google help you with (using the keyword research tool and search engine ).
You will find a lot of narrower "guitar music" related keywords - like "acoustic guitar music" or "steel guitar music" - that you might want to use as your business concept.
However, your home page will naturally have a broader theme than the other pages of your website, and it follows that the main keyword of your home page will have more demand (search volume) and higher competition than the keywords of your other pages. So "guitar music" could be your business theme and home page, and "acoustic guitar music" a level 2 page (refer to Plan Your Website Structure to learn about levels and how to structure your website).
Of course you will create more pages (as many as possible) in order to cover different topics and promote as many different products or services as you can. For each new page you will be finding keywords to fit the topic of the page. You would for instance create a page about "acoustic guitar sheet music" and find the best possible main keyword for that page (using Google as explained above).
It's most important to create new pages for different products or services, instead of listing lots of products on a looong page. There are at least two resons for this:
1) Search engines won't crawl long pages all the way down, and
2) You can optimize each page individually according to its topic (product) with relevant keywords, among other things, so that those pages will be found much easier by the search engines.
You will use the best keyword (phrase) you can find as your main keyword for a page. As mentioned before, a good keyword has relatively high demand and low competition, and it must of course be highly related to the page's topic (ideally it should tell exactly what the page is about).
Your main keyword for a page should be used the following places:
•As the page's file name
•In the title tag of the page
•In the meta description tag
•In the top headline
•In the body content of the page (several times)
In addition the main keyword for your home page also should reflect your domain name.
Secondary Keywords
So far we have been talking about the main, or specific keyword of a page, however your pages also need secondary keywords. These secondary keywords help attracting the search engines' attention and should be scattered throughout the content. It's important that the text flows naturally, though, so avoid constructing "weird" sentences that will annoy the reader.
Secondary keywords will often have lower demand and competition than the main keywords. Use variables of the main keyword, synonyms, related words and more. As usual, go to Google and let "him" support your efforts finding keywords. Pick keywords that are relevant to the topic of the page and that flows easily and naturally into the text.
Put much time and effort into keyword research to find your keywords and use them on the web pages as explained above. Keyword research and content writing should go hand in hand.
Refer to Finding a Domain Name to learn how to use your best keywords in your domain name.
You certainly will need a good keyword research tool to help you find the best keywords for your web pages. Here are a couple of free tools:
Google Keyword Research Tool (online)
Good Keywords (software - free download)
Unfortunately, the best tools are not free. However, having the optimal keywords on your pages is so important that you should consider investing in a paid, quality keyword tool. It will pay off in the long run. One of the best tools on the market is Wordtracker. Another good (and more affordable) keyword tool is Keyword Elite.
Also, the online business service Site Build It! has a very good keyword researcher included in their service (they call it "Brainstormer"). That service is so much more than a keyword tool, though - it provides absolutely everything you need to get your online business started.