If your new to the internet marketing world, you might not understand how vitally important choosing the right keywords for your website is. Most people who put up a website (designers included) don't realize that the right keywords on your website will improve your search engine rankability.

When a person goes to a search engine like Google or others, they type in a word or phrase that they want information on. This is what we call a keyword. For instance if the person was looking to buy a new golf club, he might type in 'golf clubs' or 'golf shop' or another variation. So if you were a golf store you would want to have those and other related keywords within your site.

So what if you understand the importance of keywords but don't do any keyword research? Instead you simply think about your product or service and come up with keywords that you think people will search for? At first this might sound like a good idea but in reality you risk losing many potential customers.

What do you think happens if you pick a bunch of words or phrases that people aren't actually searching for? Or you don't think of all the hundreds of other keywords that relate to your product or service and therefore lose potential clients?

You might have the best of intentions when thinking of your own keywords, but it's better to do a thorough keyword search before beginning any website project.

There are a few different places that you can perform these keyword searches.

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a great online tool found at www.wordtracker.com. You can sign up for a free trial to test it out. This is the most thorough keyword research tool that I have found. You can easily find several thousand related keywords in one search.

I created a free ebook that you can download that will help walk you through all the steps of doing an in depth keyword research with Wordtracker.

Overture

Overture is actually a paid per click advertising center, but they do offer a keyword search tool if you can find it.

They like to move it around a lot so it doesn't get too abused. As of this article you can find it by going to www.overture.com then clicking on 'advertiser center' in the top right corner. Then under the tools table on the right click on 'keyword selector tool'.

This tool is similar to the one at wordtracker but does not give you as in depth a search nor as many options. It is still good though to use different resources so that your making sure to get all the related keywords you possibly can.

Teoma

Teoma is an often overlooked place to also gather keywords. It is actually a search engine of its own, but has a cool little feature that can help you choose more keywords.

When you type in a word or phrase to search it also gives you two sections on the right hand side that can help you out.

The first is 'refine' which shows related keywords to your search that you might also want to search on. These are extra keywords. You can keep clicking on the keywords in this section with each new page offering more related searches.

The second section is called 'resources' which provides websites that have gatheres links on your specific search topic. This is great to see what kind of competition you got going and check out what works and what doesn't.

So there you go, three ways to conduct a really thorough keyword research.

About the Author:
Leah West is the owner of West Marketing and Design, providing complete search engine optimized website design and internet marketing services for your small business success.