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When determining what keywords or keyphrases to optimize a website for, there are many things to consider. The goal is to pick phrases that have a large amount of searches and a little amount of competition. Golden rule - the phrases you pick MUST be relevant to your subject matter. If you optimize for terms that are too broad, you will likely increase traffic but decrease your action rate. Remember, the goal of most websites is to produce a specific response from users (which can be anything from purchasing an item to reading your information).

Quantity or Quality

It is important to differentiate between quantity traffic and quality traffic. Both play a role in online marketing, however quality traffic is far more significant. Quantity traffic is the total number of unique visitors your site attracts. Search engines keep track of this information and use it as one of many factors that determine a sites “importance”. For this reason alone, new websites do have to concern themselves a bit with getting quantity traffic. It is one of the first hurdles you must overcome while navigating the search engines relevancy highway. Quality traffic, on the other hand, occurs when a unique visitor enters your website, and produces a specific action intended by the website (as referenced earlier).

Selecting great keyphrases is a quick and easy solution to attract quantity traffic (as well as helping with quality traffic). Here are some ideas to help you select the keyphrases for your website:

• Online Keyword Tools - There are plenty of online tools to help you pick keyphrases. My favorite is the Google Adwords keyword tool.
• Regional Variations - Consider optimizing for variations of your main keyphrases. not everyone converses (or types) in the same dialect that you do.
• Geographic Variations - add the city, state, or county your business is located (or markets customers from).
• Competitors Analysis - Look at your competitors websites. what keyphrases are they using?
• Friends and Family - Talk to friends and family and ask them how they would describe your business. you might be surprised at the terms they use.

Every static page on your website should be optimized for 1-3 keyphrases. There is a wealth of information and resources out there, and no real mystery to it, so use it to your advantage.