Many people starting out in the Internet Marketing world fall prey to the idea that "If you build it, they will come" and end up having their website floating around in WWW limbo with no traffic.

If you are going to make your own website, there are certain things you must do in order to get people to your site. Not least of these is to convince the search engines that your website is relevant.

Let's look at how Keyword Research can help you in this regard.

Define Keyword: Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page (via a search engine).

When you have decided what your website is going to be about, you will then need to purchase a Domain Name. For the sake of better Search Engine Optimization, your domain name should be related to your website's keyword.

So how do you determine what keywords to use for your site?

There are a number of free keyword tools that even the most experienced internet marketers use and which are available to you. Each tool may give you slightly different results, but comparing your results and determining trends is part of the fun of keyword research.

Here is easy way to find out the exact number of websites competing for a particular keyword: Google your keyword in parentheses, e.g. "xyz keyword". Above the search results you will see: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,270 for "xyz keyword". If this is the first time you are going to make your own website, you should try to find keyword with less than 50,000 competing websites, but with at least 100 searches per day.

One handy free tool can be found at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Here you can type in a word or a term and see how many searches your term receives on a daily basis.

Another great free tool is Google's Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

With Google's keyword tool you can also see how competitive these keywords are. So, for example, if your website is about Weight Loss and you enter the term "weight Loss" into the tool, you will see other related keywords and how much competition there is in the market for those related keywords.

Play around with it - it's fun and you will soon get into the swing of keyword research.

So, what I like to do when I make my own website is give myself a fixed period of time in which I must decide on the keywords I am going to use for my website. Right now, pick 5 - 10 keywords and create a file listing them which you will save in a new folder on your desktop. Name this folder something like XYZ Website Project.

When I have decided on my keywords, I choose one keyword to be my primary one and create a domain name using that keyword. You may not be able to use the keyword alone in your domain name. Sometimes you will need to add additional word or words to create a unique and available domain name, e.g. bestkeyworddotcom or keywordnowdotcom

Your domain name is just one way in which you can optimize your website for the search engines when you make your own website.