The key to successful Search Engine Optimisation is the careful selection of key words and phrases for your website.

Using our tools, you will see two major parameters for your prospective key search phrases.

1. The competition for the search phrase, and
2. The monthly volume of search for the phrase

The higher the degree of competition for the search phrase, the harder it will be to be well ranked for it. For highly competitive search phrases, for example "car insurance", there are more than a hundred million search results. It would take many months and thousands of pounds a month to get anywhere near the top for this search term. However, there are search terms with just a few thousand competing pages where it would cost just a few hundred pounds and take a few months to get well listed.

The monthly search volume will show you how many people are searching for your particular key phrase, which will give you a good idea of the potential business available.

A good technique is to choose a mixture of hard keywords with a potential high return and easy keywords with a lower potential return, so that you get some business from your website soon as possible, with the potential for longer term growth.

• unless you are B2B, avoid industry jargon.

• Don't use marketing speak, eg “The largest insurance brokerage in East Anglia” The only people searching for this term are people trying to sell you something. Ordinary people will be searching for “house insurance Ipswich”
• Jargon and Marketing speak can appear on your site, but they are not your key search terms.

• Geographical search terms are the hardest, should you use Sudbury, Suffolk or East Anglia? People may be looking for “Florists in Sudbury”, “BMW in Suffolk” or “Hotels in East Anglia"

• There are free tools - including Google's own - which can help you with key phrase selection, including telling you how many searches per month are made using the term and how much competition there is for the term.
• Get the list down to about half a dozen terms - probably a mixture of easy terms with a quick return and harder terms with a long term benefit.

How many key phrases should I use?

Initially at least, your home page is probably by far the most powerful page on your website - you should concentrate on a maximum of six key terms for this page.  These key search engine optimisation phrases should be related in some way, so that the search engines really understand what your site is about.

As deeper pages on your website become more important, you should select up to six search terms for each of these pages as well. There is little point on repeating the same phrases that you have used for other pages.

A content management system will help you use these keywords effectively in your website.