Standing out from the crowd often means not competing in a crowd and using keywords in such a way that your web page shouts at the search engine (but not too loudly) telling it clearly what your web page is about. If you understand that an electronic calculator is a number cruncher, a search engine is an electronic word cruncher of mammoth proportions. It’s the ultimate word processor whose main task is to sort, index and catalogue billions of web pages and trillions of words.
Here's an example of how important choosing the right keywords are to your success with the search engines. Recently a webmaster asked me to look at the keywords someone had chosen for a series of web pages. The keywords and keyword phrases that were chosen for different web pages were: "hypnosis,"
"weight loss hypnosis" and
"stop smoking hypnosis." Whilst these keywords and phrases are searched for frequently by people using the search engines, they are also keywords and phrases used by over half a million to one million other websites. This means they are keywords with a lot of competition. The result was that after more than 6 months in existence this website was not in the top rankings for any of these keywords with any of the major search engines. When I say the top rankings I mean in the Top 30 search results. In fact the website in question was not even in the Top 500 on any of the major search engines of Google, Yahoo or MSN for any of these keyword phrases. What made this situation worse is that the person who researched the keywords used for this web site was being paid to do this SEO.
This is what you should know about choosing keywords: It’s VERY IMPORTANT to choose keyword phrases that are used by people actually doing searches on the search engines It’s VERY IMPORTANT to choose keyword phrases that have enough people using them to query the search engines. This is so that you can get traffic if you get a high enough ranking in the search results for that term. It’s VERY IMPORTANT you choose keyword phrases that don’t have too much competition, especially when your web site is new or has a low ranking on the web.
OK now for some ACTION: Write down all the keywords and keyword phrases you have currently chosen for just the index page (main landing page for your domain) of your web site, or if you have more than one web site, choose one. Now ask yourself, HOW you chose YOUR KEYWORD PHRASES and more importantly WHY ?
If HOW you chose your keyword phrases was WITHOUT doing any proper Keyword Discovery and WHY you chose them was because that's what you think your web page is about, then you are more than likely doomed to fail with the search engines. For another great tool I use frequently for Keyword Discovery go here
Part I is at Choosing Keywords - Part I | 
