It is a fact that few web search surfers will click beyond the first two to three pages of search results looking for what they need. If they do not find it within the first few pages of search results they will either search again using a different search engine or they will search on slightly different search terms.

The goal of search engine optimization is about creating a web site that reaches the first page of the search results for the particular keywords or keyword phrases you are targeting. Search engine optimization or SEO is becoming more and more important as the competition increases for top placement among on the search engines. Hundreds, if not thousands, of new web sites are being added to the World Wide Web on a daily basis and they are all competing for top placement.

Search engine optimization does not have to be complicated or elusive. In fact, you are probably better off staying away from some of the more questionable search engine optimization strategies and sticking to the basics. The foundation of basic search engine optimization is to weave relevant keywords into your web site throughout your internal and external links, the URL addresses of each individual page, and most importantly, content.

You can significantly increase the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts by carefully choosing the right keywords.

The most important part of search engine optimization is choosing the right keywords and keyword phrases to use in optimizing your web site. You need to know what keywords web search surfers are searching for when searching for your products or services. Once you have a list of popular search terms you then need to determine how much competition there is for each particular term and possible choose keywords where you have a realistic chance of being competitive.

For example, let us assume your keyword is “search engine optimization” You may find that this term is very competitive. In fact, at the time of this article, there were 83,600,000 search results returned on a search using “search engine optimization.” While you certainly want to optimize your site for this keyword you should also seek less competitive keywords. For example, at the time of this article, if you were you to search Google on the phrase “search engine optimization strategies” you would return approximately 29,600,000 results. This is certainly going to be less competitive. There are likely going to be hundreds more keyword alternatives using the phrase search engine optimization. The question you may have is how do you do research on what keyword phrases are best to use.

There are some good tools available on the Internet for doing keyword research for your search engine optimization purposes.

Yahoo Search Marketing is an excellent tool that is available for free. This particular search engine optimization tool s located at the following URL address.

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/index.php

To get started simply go to the box near the middle of the page and Enter a keyword to see how many searches were done on that keyword within the last month. Not only will you receive the number of searches for that particular search term but also all of the possible alternatives. Simply by paying attention to the number of searches done on a particular term you can have a pretty good idea of what kind of competition exists for each term. It is generally a good idea to target keywords or keyword phrases that have less than 50,000 searches.

Another excellent tool for doing keyword research is available at Wordtracker.com Wordtracker is not free but is probably one of the best keyword analysis tools available on the Internet. If you are serious about search engine optimization you will want to check out Wordtracker.

Choosing the right keywords is the foundation of effective search engine optimization and will be the key to getting your site to the top.