Determining keywords is a critical step in writing articles online for effective public relations strategy. If your articles, blog, eZine, or website do not contain related keywords, surfers will be unable to find your articles when they conduct searches.

According to Sharon Housley the formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your article. "These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms," she says.

The optimal terms in an article should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for an article with your content that relates to your area of expertise.

In order to achieve success your article should be optimized with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches.

"The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines," according to Housley.

She gives this great formula: relevant + popular with searchers but not with competitors = success

"Markets saturated with other sites competing for search terms make it difficult to find quality keywords. Sometimes it is better to optimize for a less popular term, one that is more targeted at your visitor, as it will likely have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term," she believes.

So how do you go about it?

Here are 6 easy steps:

Step 1: Brainstorm a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your area of expertise, product or offerings. This should be done by a number of individuals; sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may tap words that hadn't occurred to you.

Step 2: Use free and low-cost tools available online and for download to allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed. The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts. The tools will often assist with pay-per-click engines, creating expanded, related keywords or phrases that can be bid on.

Examples include:

KeywordTumbler - KeywordTumbler takes existing keyword phrases and generates multiple variations, reordering the words. This allows you to build a large keyword list in seconds. http://www.keywordtumbler.com/

TheDowser - Overture Keyword Tool, Google Keyword Sandbox, Keyword Harvester, Google AdWords report analyzer, Google AdWords optimization tool, log file analyzer, conversion tracking and optimization tool. http://www.thedowser.com/

WordTracker - Wordtracker helps you choose the right internet marketing keywords that will help your search engine placement and ranking. Use Wordtracker for keyword research. Web marketing is all about search engine ranking, and that starts with the proper internet marketing keywords. Get a free keyword report and web site promotion information! http://www.wordtracker.com/

Keyword Suggestion Tools - A handy little tool will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. Enter a search phrase below to see how often it's searched for, as well as get suggestions for alternate (but similar) keywords. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Keyword Ranking Tool - This utility can be used to check search engines for keyword ranking and track search engine ranking for your various keywords over time, which, as you probably know, is critical when doing search engine optimization. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Overture Keyword Tool - After entering a keyword or phrase, Overture provides a list of related phrases that have been searched on. The tool provides a count that indicates the number of times the phrase has been searched on. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Topword Tool - Topword Tool is a free online tool that analyzes a complete web page and counts keyword occurrences, as well as keyword phrases (number in brackets), equal to or above that set in the Minimum Occurrences setting. It supplies a list of keywords and keyword phrases which are most likely to achieve the highest rankings on a major search engine. The tool will also analyze your meta description/keyword and title tags and then, through color coding, inform you of words/phrases which should be included. The main use for this tool is checking your optimization and tweaking existing web sites to rank well. http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html/

Google Suggestion - The Google Suggestion is a new online tool for webmasters. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type "bass", Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass fishing" or "bass guitar". Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like "programming", "programming languages", "progesterone", or "progressive". You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse. The tool provides a number that indicates the number of searches a specific word or phrase has had. http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Step 3: Examine your log files on your own website to see what terms customers are using to find an article or website,

Step 4: Visit competitors web sites and articles and examine their meta tags for additional terms,

Step 5: Use a thesaurus to find related terms, include misspellings of keywords in your keywords, and optimize for various forms of nouns and verbs, including tenses and plurals.

Step 6: Measure your success. Keyword statistics give Internet marketers a way to tap into what is on the minds of Internet consumers. When you can match your marketing efforts to the various ways people locate their items of interest on the net, Housley says "potential customers will be streamed to your site like ants to a picnic". Also measure posts to your blog or new subscribers to your Ezine as other ways to measure how successful your effective public relations strategy has been.

Source: Adapted from: "Determining Keywords" by Sharon Housley published online at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=433/

Thomas Murrell MBA CSP is an international business speaker, consultant and award-winning broadcaster. Media Motivators is his regular electronic magazine read by 7,000 professionals in 15 different countries.

You can subscribe by visiting http://www.8mmedia.com. Thomas can be contacted directly at +6189388 6888 and is available to speak to your conference, seminar or event. Visit Tom's blog at http://www.8mmedia.blogspot.com.