Ideally before one word of your new website has been written, you should take some time to select the keywords and phrases most likely to bring visitors to your website from search engines.
Because Google is the most popular search engine with 65% market share start by opening Google and looking to see what and who comes up for your subject. Be careful here, remember you probably know your own business, niche or organisation much better than the average online visitor you are hoping to attract. The answer is to ask other people not as familiar with your subject what they would type into a search engine if they were looking for your type of niche. Get maybe a dozen key phrases not just single word search terms written down and try Google with these. Single word search terms will be too broad E.G If you are a business making hand made wooden toys for pre school age children, the keyword "Toys" on it's own will be too broad a search term, as you will then be competing online for every conceivable type of toy there is. To find your business narrow it down further, perhaps "Toys for toddlers" will work better for you.
So who searches for what and in what volume? When you type in a search phrase on Google, a number comes up which tells you how many results there are for that search term:
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,150,000 for toys for toddlers. (0.24 seconds)
Using the earlier example and searching using Google UK you will see there are a large number of results, don't worry these are not all your direct competitors. This is the number of places on the web where "Toys" and "Toddlers" are mentioned, but not specifically your exact niche.
Next let's use a free Google tool that is designed for selecting keywords and key phrases for advertising on Google, the Google Adwords keyword tool. Here is the link to it: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal
We can type the example key phrase into the tool and it will tell you how many Google searches there were for it in the preceding month, so let's try it. "Toys for toddlers" gave a local search Google UK figure of 9,900 in the preceding month. This is a reasonable number and one I would select if targeting this market.
You will also see that the Adwords tool also gives all the realted search terms to the one used in the example together with the number of searches in the preceding month. From this analysis combined with your key phrase list you compiled yourself and by asking others, you should have a place to start for your website.
