An important part of SEO is keyword research. Keyword research is the process of determining which keywords should be associated with your website. Once your keywords are determined, they become the text used in your title tags, meta tags, article content, PPC campaigns, and anchor links. Obviously it is best to conduct keyword research before optimizing your site (or even building it).
A typical research model will look at keyword alternatives, competitiveness, and popularity. Ideally, you want to choose popular keywords that have a low competition rating. The easiest way to determine how competitive a keyword might by is to conduct a search using the term to see how many total results the SERP displays. In some cases there may only be a few hundred thousands results, in other cases there could be billions of results. Terms with fewer results can typically be viewed as easier to rank, though there are exceptions.
Keyword popularity is the measure of how often a keyword is used in a search. Popular keywords will mean more visitors to your site, but only if you are ranked high enough on the SERP to be seen by them. As you can see, the relationship between competition and popularity is precarious. You may be on the first page for "Orange County Advertising" but if that phrase is rarely used in a search, then being #1 on the SERP wont matter much if you only get 1 or 2 visitors per day for that search phrase. On the other hand, the term "advertising" might bring you 1000's of visitors but the level of competition might make it impossible for you to rank on the first page. So which do you choose, possibly getting 1000's of visitors per day after spending a year building links, or certainly getting 1 or 2 visitors per day after spending a month building links? For most experts, it's both.
Don't make the mistake of assuming you can only use a few phrases to associate with your site. There could literally be 1000's of possible keyword combinations. Most sites I promote begin with a minimum of around 40 keywords and keyword phrases.
There are plenty of free keyword research tools available online. For coming up with keyword alternatives, you may want to use Trellians Free Search Term Suggestion Tool. And to measure popularity, you may wish to try out Googles Traffic Estimator
Part 1: Introduction to SEO
Part 2: On Site Optimization
Part 3: Off Site Optimization
Part 4: Keyword Research
Part 5: 4 Essential Steps to SEO
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