When it comes search engine optimization, one of the biggest factors in your success is which keywords you want to rank for. This process might seem simple, but it has one of the biggest impacts on the overall success or failure of your website.

If you choose a keyword that is too competitive you may never rank on the first page of search results. If you choose a key word that has too little traffic, you may rank on the first page because of less competition, but you'll never get the traffic you need to have a profitable website.

While many people espouse different guidelines for choosing keywords in general you should try and pick a keyword that has a high amount of traffic, but a low amount of competition. It is much harder to find these keywords then it sounds depending on how competitive your niche is.

One way you can do this is for free is to go to the Google Adwords Tool and type in the keywords that you want to rank for. This will give you a bunch of synonyms and the amount of traffic they get monthly.

Then you can just take the keywords and type each individually into the Google search engine with quotations and look how much competition there is for the keyword. By doing this you can pick the ones that are in the "sweet spot," those that have enough traffic but also those that have a lower amount of competition.

There are many software programs that you can pay for that will do keyword finding for you automatically. But if you are short on money you can continue to do this manually.