One important factor you must know on key words is what your customers are interested in
. Brain storming was one way to find them while writing down your customers views and getting the opinions of focus groups also could help. These were the popular ways to find the correct keywords some time back but now you have the option to listen to conversations on social media and find the right key words by analyzing those conversations.
There are key word research tools which could do the job for you. Two of the key word research tools are keyword discovery and word tracker. Another point to remember about keywords is that though one word key words were the trend some time back; the present trend is to use key phrases. Key phrases consisting of two or three words are more popular as the surfers have realized that using key phrase they could get more accurate results. The disadvantage with key phrases is, that search engine optimization for a phrase is more difficult as the words could come in different combinations. Instead of optimization to just one key word you need to optimize for a few phrases.
When a searcher is starting a search he will start with one or two key words but as he goes on with it, he will narrow his search and go for more specific searches. Most business organizations make their sites to get high ranking in the preliminary broad searches but this is not useful as they will not be there when the search becomes more specific. The only advantage in such ranking is that the surfers could come back for other searches.
Finally when you come to know the pattern of searches and the key words used, you have the option to adjust your site to suit the needs of the surfers.