Build Your keyword list

In order to make your website successful, you must make sure that the words on your site and the words for which people are searching are the same. If your site is not keyword rich (meaning it has the right supply of in-demand keywords), the search engine will be unlikely to find it. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to use the tools to build a keyword list - right now, before you start creating (or revamping) your website - which you will use later to design a site that search engines are sure to find, sending a slew of new users your way. Having a killer keyword list will help you create great content for your site, raise your search engine ranking, and create an effective pay per click advertising campaign to drive more traffic to your site.
This exercise requires a few minutes, an Excel spreadsheet, and a keen sense of curiosity. With these three things, you can home in on which keywords are most likely to drive users to your site and pretty much estimate how many of them are interested in buying what you're selling.

Building your keyword list will involve the following steps:

1. Create an Excel spreadsheet named Keyword Research. You will be adding to this spreadsheet after the initial research, if you expand your inventor or get more ambitious with your online advertising.

2. Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and start by typing in the most general word or words that relate to your site.

3. Copy and paste the list generated by the Keyword Tool into your spreadsheet for future reference. Right now, you're just trying to generate a list of search words/terms that might lead people to your site. Copy and paste all the words that come up, even if they only had a hundred searches last month. Later, when we cover online advertising, those infrequently searched keywords is your advantage.

4. Keep typing in words - you'll find some crazy stuff that will rapidly build up your keyword list. This exercise is fun!

5. Keep going until you have at least 250 words.

Once you've build your keyword list, you can (and should) keep adding to it, as you think of other keywords that apply to your business, build your website, expand your product line, and add content to your site. In the process of building and updating your keyword list, you will probably also stumble across and brainstorm other ideas for your site, so always keep a notebook handy to jot them down.