This is one of the most important things that you will have to do. First, you will have to decide what the keywords are that most people may use when they want to look for what you are providing. Think about the words people would use to find your site, and the more people who contribute, the more exhaustive the list is going to be. After you have narrowed down the general keywords that you think that people will be looking for, you can use specific software like Google's keyword tool, Yahoo's Overture Keyword selector tool, Wordtracker, Keyword Dictionary or any other tool that you are comfortable with.

Most of them are free to use and will give you a combination of keywords based on the keyword that you typed in. This will help you identify the best combination of keywords to use in your content because it will give you the search strings that are the most commonly used in relation to the word you typed in.

Be dynamic, not static

This does not mean that once you write and post your articles you are finished. Keywords are very dynamic, and often, along with trends the search strings that are often used too often will change. You do not have to necessarily change the entire content in your site during times like this. Just making sure that you incorporate the new keywords is sometimes good enough.

Don't overdo it

This may sound simple but in reality it is not. This is because you will have to walk a fine line between over-stuffing your articles with different keywords and with putting in too few. And even then most search engines are able to identify if the keywords come logically as part of the sentence or have been forced in somewhere where they are not suitable.

Nobody knows exactly how the search engines do this as it is their trade secret, but suffice it to say that just because your article is full of keywords it does not necessarily mean that the site is going to get a better ranking. Often an article with the keyword appearing just once will pop up higher than one where it has been repeated a number of times. Keep this in mind when writing your articles.

Also never copy content, unless you are linking back to where you are copying from. All search engines are able to identify copied content and if it finds that your article is copied, you will even lose ranking because it will tend to push your site to the bottom of the pile.

Copy Others

This may sound a little odd, especially after the previous chapter but this is something that everyone does. You don't copy the content; instead you copy what someone else is doing better by getting more traffic to their website. You will know what websites are getting more traffic to them by their ranking on search engines.

Do your groundwork

This is not as easy as you would think though. You will first have to locate all the sites that are the leaders in the segment you are in. There are a number of tools that will help you do this, and Google PageRank is both very useful as well as free.

After you form your list you will have to visit each of these sites and figure out for yourself why they are doing better than you. Check different search engines that will give you this information and this is where your true talent lies. The more accurate you are in identifying why others do well, the better you can make your site.

While making changes you will obviously have to continue tracking hits to your site, but do not be hasty and make changes quickly. It will take a day for the changes to be indexed properly in the search engines, and even then you will have to allow some time before the changes start making any difference. It is a slow process and you learn as you go.