step involves looking at the back links of the web sites you chose in the previous step. Once again, it is Google to the rescue. For every site that you have selected, enter the it into the Google search like this:

link:mycompetitor.com

This will give you a list of the web sites that have links to your competitors web site. You will need to visit each of these web sites to find out what text was used for the links that go to your competitors web site. Keep track of all the links using an spreadsheet. This will tell you what keywords your competitor is using for off-page SEO optimization. You need to do this for each web site that you found in the previous step. The more links a web site has for a specific keyword, the harder they are goin

One of the biggest decisions that someone has to make when developing a new web site for the first time is what keywords they should optimize the site for. This is not a simple question to answer, even though it might seem like no big deal. When you are trying to get a high search engine ranking for a specific keyword, nothing is more important than choosing the right ones for your site.

The firs step in choosing the right keywords is to brainstorm. Most of the time this can be done in a few minutes. If you need a place to start, think about the topic of your web site. For this example we are going to assume that you are making a web site about 'tattoos'. This will be your base keyword for your keyword research.

Once you have your keyword, you need to do some research to find related keywords that you might want to optimize your site for. One of the greatest, and free, keyword research tools can be found at Overture, which now belongs to Yahoo. Just type in your base keyword and it will return several related keywords along with the number of times those keywords have been searched for in the Overture search engine during the last month.

Now that you have some related keywords and some search statistics, you can go on to step two. In this step you need to take each keyword that you got from Overture and run it through Google . You have to run the search a specific way or you will not get the data you really need. Here is an example of the search you would run for the keyword 'tattoos':

allintitle:"tattoos"

This search will show you the number of competitive results for the keyword 'tattoos'. These results actually have the word 'tattoos' in the title of their web pages. Any good SEO expert will tell you that you need to put the keywords you are trying to optimize for in the title of your web page. Take the number of results and divide it by the number of searches that you got in the first step. If this number is less than 1.0, there are not enough web sites out there to fill the demand for this keyword. In other words, you have found a starving market. Repeat this process for each keyword that you find.

Once you have a list of several good keywords, you can move on to the next step. This requires another trip to Google. Again, enter the keywords into Google - this time without the 'allintitle' that was mentioned above. For every keyword, take the top five results and look at the source code for these pages. You need to evaluate how well the page is optimized for the keyword you typed in. If the keyword shows up in the title, meta tags, description, h1, h2, bold, italics, and underline tags then this page is well optimized for this keyword. If this is not the case, or one of these components is missing, then you can definitely optimize your site better than this one. Now, do the same thing for the top five results for each keyword you selected, keeping track of which keywords and sites are going to be easiest to out perform with on-page SEO.

The final step involves looking at the back links of the web sites you chose in the previous step. Once again, it is Google to the rescue. For every site that you have selected, enter the it into the Google search like this:

link:mycompetitor.com

This will give you a list of the web sites that have links to your competitors web site. You will need to visit each of these web sites to find out what text was used for the links that go to your competitors web site. Keep track of all the links using an spreadsheet. This will tell you what keywords your competitor is using for off-page SEO optimization. You need to do this for each web site that you found in the previous step. The more links a web site has for a specific keyword, the harder they are going

you need to do some research to find related keywords that you might want to optimize your site for. One of the greatest, and free, keyword research tools can be found at Overture, which now belongs to Yahoo. Just type in your base keyword and it will return several related keywords along with the number of times those keywords have been searched for in the Overture search engine during the last month.

Now that you have some related keywords and some search statistics, you can go on to step two. In this step you need to take each keyword that you got from Overture and run it through Google . You have to run the search a specific way or you will not get the data you really need. Here is an example of the search you would run for the keyword 'tattoos':

allintitle:"tattoos"

This search will show you the number of competitive results for the keyword 'tattoos'. These results actually have the word 'tattoos' in the title of their web pages. Any good SEO expert will tell you that you need to put the keywords you are trying to optimize for in the title of your web page. Take the number of results and divide it by the number of searches that you got in the first step. If this number is less than 1.0, there are not enough web sites out there to fill the demand for this keyword. In other words, you have found a starving market. Repeat this process for each keyword that you find.

Once you have a list of several good keywords, you can move on to the next step. This requires another trip to Google. Again, enter the keywords into Google - this time without the 'allintitle' that was mentioned above. For every keyword, take the top five results and look at the source code for these pages. You need to evaluate how well the page is optimized for the keyword you typed in. If the keyword shows up in the title, meta tags, description, h1, h2, bold, italics, and underline tags then this page is well optimized for this keyword. If this is not the case, or one of these components is missing, then you can definitely optimize your site better than this one. Now, do the same thing for the top five results for each keyword you selected, keeping track of which keywords and sites are going to be easiest to out perform with on-page SEO.

The final step involves looking at the back links of the web sites you chose in the previous step. Once again, it is Google to the rescue. For every site that you have selected, enter the it into the Google search like this:

link:mycompetitor.com

This will give you a list of the web sites that have links to your competitors web site. You will need to visit each of these web sites to find out what text was used for the links that go to your competitors web site. Keep track of all the links using an spreadsheet. This will tell you what keywords your competitor is using for off-page SEO optimization. You need to do this for each web site that you found in the previous step. The more links a web site has for a specific keyword, the harder they are goin

os':

allintitle:"tattoos"

This search will show you the number of competitive results for the keyword 'tattoos'. These results actually have the word 'tattoos' in the title of their web pages. Any good SEO expert will tell you that you need to put the keywords you are trying to optimize for in the title of your web page. Take the number of results and divide it by the number of searches that you got in the first step. If this number is less than 1.0, there are not enough web sites out there to fill the demand for this keyword. In other words, you have found a starving market. Repeat this process for each keyword that you find.

Once you have a list of several good keywords, you can move on to the next step. This requires another trip to Google. Again, enter the keywords into Google - this time without the 'allintitle' that was mentioned above. For every keyword, take the top five results and look at the source code for these pages. You need to evaluate how well the page is optimized for the keyword you typed in. If the keyword shows up in the title, meta tags, description, h1, h2, bold, italics, and underline tags then this page is well optimized for this keyword. If this is not the case, or one of these components is missing, then you can definitely optimize your site better than this one. Now, do the same thing for the top five results for each keyword you selected, keeping track of which keywords and sites are going to be easiest to out perform with on-page SEO.

The final step involves looking at the back links of the web sites you chose in the previous step. Once again, it is Google to the rescue. For every site that you have selected, enter the it into the Google search like this:

link:mycompetitor.com

This will give you a list of the web sites that have links to your competitors web site. You will need to visit each of these web sites to find out what text was used for the links that go to your competitors web site. Keep track of all the links using an spreadsheet. This will tell you what keywords your competitor is using for off-page SEO optimization. You need to do this for each web site that you found in the previous step. The more links a web site has for a specific keyword, the harder they are goin

to Google. Again, enter the keywords into Google - this time without the 'allintitle' that was mentioned above. For every keyword, take the top five results and look at the source code for these pages. You need to evaluate how well the page is optimized for the keyword you typed in. If the keyword shows up in the title, meta tags, description, h1, h2, bold, italics, and underline tags then this page is well optimized for this keyword. If this is not the case, or one of these components is missing, then you can definitely optimize your site better than this one. Now, do the same thing for the top five results for each keyword you selected, keeping track of which keywords and sites are going to be easiest to out perform with on-page SEO.

The final step involves looking at the back links of the web sites you chose in the previous step. Once again, it is Google to the rescue. For every site that you have selected, enter the it into the Google search like this:

link:mycompetitor.com

This will give you a list of the web sites that have links to your competitors web site. You will need to visit each of these web sites to find out what text was used for the links that go to your competitors web site. Keep track of all the links using an spreadsheet. This will tell you what keywords your competitor is using for off-page SEO optimization. You need to do this for each web site that you found in the previous step. The more links a web site has for a specific keyword, the harder they are goin

step involves looking at the back links of the web sites you chose in the previous step. Once again, it is Google to the rescue. For every site that you have selected, enter the it into the Google search like this:

link:mycompetitor.com

This will give you a list of the web sites that have links to your competitors web site. You will need to visit each of these web sites to find out what text was used for the links that go to your competitors web site. Keep track of all the links using an spreadsheet. This will tell you what keywords your competitor is using for off-page SEO optimization. You need to do this for each web site that you found in the previous step. The more links a web site has for a specific keyword, the harder they are going to be to out-rank.

By this point you should now have a good idea of which keywords are going to be easy to optimize for and which will not. If this sound like a lot of work to you, you are correct. This is a ton of work and most people will not do it, they have a business to run.