The importance of the keywords:

Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain. Choose the right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket. Therefore, think long and hard on what keywords people are likely to use to find you. Make lists of keywords and then combine them into two or three word phrases.

For example, you rarely want to target a single keyword since with the billions of words indexed on the Web now, generally one word simply won't cut it. People learn quickly that if they type in "real estate" or "properties" that they get listings for real estate from all over the world! It would be nice if you popped up there on those extremely broad keywords, however, a better use of your time is to PAIR the generic keyword with something more specific. You might get lucky and rank well on just real estate since it's in your page too, but if not, at least you'll rank well on "Boston real estate", which will be far less difficult to achieve a top 10 or top 20 listing for. These keywords will also bring you far more qualified prospects. 

The commercial software we use is designed to monitor your rankings on a broad array of keywords and doorway pages very quickly. However the makers of the commercial software package expressed are continually dismayed by people trying to monitor their positions on keywords that people are highly unlikely to use. For example, a well-meaning customer sent a list of his keywords for the "cheap airfares" that his company sold. His list went something like this:

• cheapflights
• "cheap flights"
• quote
• discounted
• airfares

The word "cheap" alone does nothing to target their audience. It has to be paired with other words like "flights" or "airline reservations" to have any meaning. It's the same with "quote" and "discounted" -- too broad. Pair them with one or two other words. Statistically, most people search for two to three word phrases to avoid getting back too many unrelated matches. Keep this in mind when you design your pages!

Don't worry about there not being enough top 10 slots where you can achieve a high ranking. True, there are some keywords that are very competitive. And if you find that no matter what you do, you can't get in that top 10 spot for that word or phrase, just be creative! There are SO MANY other keywords and keyword combinations where you can achieve a Top 10 ranking. It's really NOT very difficult at all! Once you tap into some phrases people are searching on to find your type of site, you'll have tapped into a continuous stream of free advertising for your web site which sure beats paying out thousands of dollars or more a month in banner ads. 

For example, if you don't achieve a good ranking on "cheap airfares," keep trying, but also be creative and target "inexpensive airfares" too. See, it's all about thinking like your customer or clientele - and it's really pretty easy to find a keyword combination that you can dominate in the search engines. You'll often find that there are more people searching for these other phrases than were searching for the first phrase you thought of. In marketing, this is called carving out your niche. 

If you're Microsoft, you can afford to fight over who has the best "Browser software." But, for the rest of us, we know we can't always fight the big boys. So instead, what savvy marketers do is to identify a "niche" that few others are targeting and go after it. We've created pages for other web sites where we posted a doorway page that has remained in the Top 10 for six to ten months in a row. Other slots may change more often, but that's why you have our services to help you stay on top of your rank under ALL the important keywords and keyword combinations. Good management is the key to achieving a range of good rankings, each of which will bring you scores of new visitors…if you choose the proper keywords that is.

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Additional Information:

There are several things to consider when choosing keywords and phrases. The most important is to put yourself in the shoes of the type of visitor you want to attract. Make a list of what kind of keywords or phrases they are likely to search on. This requires you to separate yourself from your product, service or web site and think like the average Joe who might want to find you, but knows nothing about your site. 
It's a good idea to ask friends or co-workers what they might type in to find your site, or even have them go to a search engine and tell them to try and find information on the topic your site happens to cover. Watch what words and phrases they use.

Important things you want to remember when picking keywords to target:

1. CONCEPTS: Include concept keywords such as "accounting software" if that's what you sell, but also try and be specific enough so that it's not too broad.
2. BRANDS: Include more specific brand names such as Quicken. If you offer services, then try to use service brand names when possible. Legally, you should put the ® reserved symbol or ™ trademark symbol after the names when mentioning them on the page. 
3. COMPANY NAMES: If you offer products from a well-known company, include that company's name in your keywords.
4. YOUR NAME: Unless you are a well known company/organization such as Microsoft or Hewlett Packard, it's generally less important to emphasize your name as a keyword. You should, however, setup an "About My Company/Organization" page that does repeat your name many times so that someone searching for you will find that page. 
5. COMMON WORDS: There are now so many pages and words indexed on the Web, that a search on many common words such as "software" or "Internet" are going to be completely ignored for that search by the engine! Therefore, most people have to search on two or three word phrases to find what they're looking for. Trying to be listed well on every phrase/keyword combination they might search for is next to impossible. However, WebPosition lets you target and monitor many more keywords than could be managed by hand.
6. TEST KEYWORDS: Ideally, before you even start a new Internet Web site (or even after), you should see how many other pages match the keywords people would likely search on to find you. The fewer matches found for your search, the easier it will be to get your name up near the top. Also important are the quality of the matches that appear. Your keywords may only bring up a lot of garbage that your potential audience would have no interest in anyway. Therefore, with the proper strategy, you could be the only site of your type that appears near the top of that search. This strategy can gain you unexpected traffic.
7. PHRASES: As mentioned, many people will likely use multiple-word phrases to find you--particularly when single words do not provide adequate scope for the search. The syntax for this varies by engine, but phrases are generally searched for surrounded by quotes. Therefore, make a list of 2-3 word phrases people are likely to search for. When placing keywords on your page, make sure you always include them in a phrase that the visitor might use. Keep the important words chained together in sentences on the page. If the user searches on "KEYWORD1" AND "KEYWORD2" then you only have to have the words in the same proximity on the page. If, however, they search on "KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2" along with the surrounding quotes, then the words MUST be together on your page, preferably multiple times to find a match. Therefore, it's a good idea to create a Mission to monitor your position for both "baseball cards" and just baseball cards as an example. Optimizing your page for phrase searches can do wonders in helping people find you. However, because of the many combinations it's traditionally been an impossible task without a tool like WebPosition to help you monitor your results. It's often difficult to rank well for popular keywords. However, few sites make serious efforts to optimize for common phrases leaving you with great opportunities to increase your traffic!Sidenote: Several Web site log programs will now tell you which keyword/phrase a user typed in a search engine to find you. This is often helpful in understanding which positions are pulling the best.
8. CASE-SENSITIVITY: If the user types the word Baseball then most engines will search for "Baseball" with an uppercase "B" ONLY. If your page has only "baseball" in it, you'll not be found! On the other hand, if they search for "baseball" and your page has "Baseball" on it, most engines default to finding words of any case when the keyword used was in all lower case. Therefore, it pays to make sure you have at least some of the keywords in uppercase or starting with an uppercase letter if the user might search that way. The easiest place to do this is in the title of the page, in meta tags, and at the beginning of sentences.
9. BAD SPELLING CAN BE GOOD: Search engines don't have spell checkers. Also, product names can have slight variations. For example, MicroLogic has a product called Info Select. However, people could easily search on MicroLogic, Micro Logic, Infoselect, or Info Select. Look for obvious mistakes people are likely to make and then incorporate some of them into one of your pages in some way to pick up traffic you'd otherwise miss.