Search Engine Optimization Academy

Begin by typing the obvious keywords into a text editor or word processor — the ones you’ve already thought of, or, if you haven’t started yet, the ones that immediately come to mind.

You probably know who your competitors are (you should, anyway). Go to their sites and open the source code of a few pages at each site — just choose

Talk to other friends and colleagues to see if they can come up with some possible keywords. Ask them something like, “If you were looking for a site at which you could find the latest scores for rodent races around the world, what terms would you search for?”

After you’ve put together your initial list, go through it looking for more obvious additions. Don’t spend too much time on this; all you’re doing here is creating a preliminary list to run through a keyword tool, which will also figure out some of these things for you.