This is a question I get asked a lot and it's not surprising - the 'dark art' of SEO has got many people absolutely foxed and they just don't know where to start. Every day you hear about people who are absolutely raking in the cash from websites and you have to wonder - "how do they do it?"

Well, they're doing it by creating a site and then promoting it so that people can find it - easy as that, but how? Seriously, how does someone who just got a website up and running ever get it found on Google?

Well, you can do one of two things, depending on your cash-flow, resolve and chutzpah:

• Hire someone
  Could be expensive. SEO is a time-intensive, boring and often soul-destroying job. If you're not turned on by articles, link building and keyword research then you want paying handsomely for your time. Also, the amount of work that can be automated is limited - you simply have to pay the daily rate.
  
• Do it yourself
  This is what I'm talking about here. If you can hack it then you can do it yourself. There's nothing overly complex about it, you just have to do it. And do it right to get that number one position with all that goes with it.

Obviously the first thing to get right is the keywords. Oh, those dreaded keywords. This is where it usually goes all wrong and everyone gives up just at the time when you should really be doing your best to get it right. But where to start?

First things first

One common mistake by the SEO novice is to think of their products and simply pick some keywords out of the air in the expectation that someone will type them in and find their site. Here are the most common mistakes that are made:

• Too competitive keywords
  
  Let's say you are selling toys, you're going to want to be found for the word 'toys' aren't you? Well, heads up dude, so is everyone else in the world. Thing is, you just can't do it. There are thousands of sites after that keywords and you're just a starter so you need to find something else.
  
  I'm not saying you could never appear for that keyword, but it isn't going to happen tomorrow.
  
  Keyword research is about looking for keywords that you can optimise for and then get found for and then sell. Luckily the Internet is chock full of people searching for all sorts of things and they're using all kinds of keywords.
  
  
• Not competitive enough keywords
  
  These are keywords that really nobody is going to be searching for. I sometimes call these 'vanity keywords'. A good example of this is your company name. It's no surprise that many people can be found for their own company name and usually at the top of the search results. Well, unless you've got a name like 'Smiths and Sons', that's not surprising is it? Trouble is, unless you've got a fantastic brand, no-body's going to be typing it in - you may as well not exist.
  
• Competitor keywords
  
  "I want to sell my own brand of PC so I'm going to optimise for 'Dell'". Not in itself a bad idea, in fact, quite cunning - but you're going up against a Goliath and that's just plain crazy.
  
  

Ahh, my friend, luckily there are tools available to help you on your way and the great news is, the best of the bunch is free, free I tells ya.

Enter the world of the Google Keyword tool. For our example I'm going to use a little 'muse' site I have that sells tyre changers. I haven't done a lot with this site over the months I've had it, so now I'm going to do a bit of research and see if I can't get it a bit higher on the rankings.

So, let's get some keywords

Head on over to Google and type in 'Google Keyword tool'.

This tool allows you to either type in a keyword and have it go look for similar ones, or you can simply type in your web address and it will suggest some based on that. In our example we'll type in 'Tyre changers' and let it go do its stuff.

The results

When it's done, it then comes up with a whole bunch of results and you're probably ahead of me here - it's a whole bunch of keywords that we could use. Hmmm, genius.

OK, it's all well and good having this big list in front of me, but how can I use it to choose some good keywords?

Well, the first thing to do is to scan all the way down and look for your niche. There's probably something that you do that would make you stand out from the crowd. There will be a product that you sell that is pretty unique to you, or you do better than anyone else. Scan through these words and find something that fits, and then look at the number of searches.

What you're ideally looking for is something that has a lot of searches each month, but that doesn't have much in the way of competition. Now, this is difficult because if it's out there then odds on someone has already found it, so you need to really dig deep - but you'll find something.

Going deep underground

When you've found them, you then go deeper. Grab yourself a list of keywords and then do a search on them. This is where it starts to get really fun because not only do you then find a bunch of keywords that you can effectively optimise for, you then start to see what the competition is doing - and beat them.

There's a lot to be doing there, and it's too much to take in in one go so I'll be talking about competitor research in a subsequent hub. In the meantime, we'll be publishing more information about DIY SEO on our Facebook page. Check it out!