What is a Good Keyword -- How To Find Them

This is aimed at the new folks but some of you old pros might be able to improve upon what I have to say.

First, you should know that a keyword is whatever you type into Google to search. So it is usually a phrase and not a single word.

If you pick a keyword that no one is search for it may be easy to get it on page one of Google but no one will find it.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the phrase you thought of is a good keyword. I use to do that all the time. Bzzt, wrong move.

If you are writing for SEO then you should check to make sure the keyword you are trying to target actually has searches.

To do that, you need a Google AdWords account and then use their keyword tool here.

I usually look for keywords with at least 2000 searches per month. Don't find enough, try going "short tail." Start removing words from the phrase and you might find something close to what you had in mind that is perfect.

After you do that though you should also go to Google and search for the keyword. Add quotes to it. Check to see how many results are returned. Greater than 70,000? You're going to have a lot of competition to get through.

So,

Try to target keywords that people are searching for.
Try to target keyword where competition is low.

There are things you can do to improve on this. The number of competing sites could be low and still very hard to get on to page one if those sites are dominating the keyword with high quality SEO.

I hope this helps someone, even one person trying to figure out this keyword thing.