Keywords are at the base of any good online marketing strategy.  Keywords are what people use to find you so understanding the guidelines for effective keyword strategies is important.  Carrie Hill at Search Engine Watch posted a great article today called: “Small Business Guide to Choosing Keyword Phrases“.

The focus of her article was the all important Keyword Effectiveness Index which is simply a common sense approach to targeting keywords that aren’t going to be impossible to dominate. Weighing the pros and cons of a keyword based on competition and then deciding where to advertise.  Remembering that the best keywords are the keywords that have high volume, low competition and great return on investment “potential” (until proven) is important because you can easily show up with everyone else and hope for a miracle but it rarely works.

The key questions to ask yourself (and to get answered by using tools) are:

1. How much competition is there?
2. Is it so relevant to my site, page, product it’s scary?
3. Do my pages match the keywords I’m discovering? (if not, fix it)

One of my favorite sites for Keyword Research tools is KeywordCreation.com.  The tools listed include a handful that help figure out what your competition is doing, a handful to help you figure out the terms customers are using, and a handful to help you figure out where the money is.  Once you’ve built a few keyword lists and been able to optimize a keyword marketing plan you start to catch on to the fact that relevance is key! Overall, you as a business owner understand your business better than anyone else.  It’s a matter of not thinking so hard about online marketing and letting your business strategy kick in.