Keywords are at the very heart of search engine optimisation and finding the right keywords can make or break your SEO success. It is therefore very important to find the right keywords to target. It is impossible to optimise your website for all interesting keywords, so you will want to start out with the most important ones. Here, we will give you four good ideas on how to find the right keywords.

1. Put yourself in your visitor's shoes. Think about words and phrases that your target group of users would use in a search. Keep in mind that the regular visitor will not necessarily use the same jargon you do. So ask someone who does not work in your field which keywords they would use to search for your products or services in search engines.

2) Make use of available statistics. You will find statistics for internal searches on your website in our webtool 'Analytics' under Internal Search. This list is very informative because the statistics give you the facts and not assumptions about what keywords your visitors are searching for. But remember that your internal search is limited to your website, which means it is often enough with a stand-alone keyword. In Google, a stand-alone keyword will often be too generic, causing searchers to make their search more specific using a keyword phrase of 2-4 words to get a relevant result.

In the SEO module under Performance, you will find statistics on keywords from external search engines (such as Google). These statistics will tell you what keywords your visitors are using to find you in the search engines, but keep in mind that these statistics only include keywords your website already ranks well for and where your visitors have clicked your link in the search results. We can not show statistics for searches where users have searched for your products or services and your link was not clicked or was not included in search results at all.

3) Find popular keywords with 'Google Suggest'. When you start entering a keyword in Google, their autocomplete feature offers suggestions for popular keywords; try to play with this feature and see what keywords are typically used.

4) Use Google's own keyword tool. Google has created a free tool with the purpose of selling more ads. However, the tool can also be used for purposes other than creating ads. You submit a few keyword ideas, and the tool suggests a lot of related keywords. You will have to sort through the resulting keywords with a firm hand as a lot of the suggestions will not be relevant. Take a look at the numbers in the column to the right(local searches) and find the popular keywords that are  relevant to your website.

Make a long list of all the keywords and phrases you can think of. Be creative and think about synonyms as well as descriptive terms. When you can't think of anything else, you need to start editing and prioritising until you have a manageable list. Enjoy!