All good search engine optimization starts with keyword research. After all - "If you aim at nothing you're bound to hit it". It's important to know the keywords people who are looking for products and services like yours are entering into Google. Not just for SEO purposes but for internet marketing in general. To date I've been referring people to Google's Keyword Tool to help them determine which keywords their potential customers are using. But alas Google has announced on August 26, 2013 they'll forever shutter the Google Keyword Tool. That's the bad news.

Here's the good news... Google has launched a new tool to help you target the right keywords and I have to say so far it works better. It's called the Google Keyword Planner and you can access it by going to this link . Please not you'll need a Google Adwords account to access the Keyword Planner.

Once you're in the Google Keyword Planner you'll be presented with three options. You can either search for a keyword, upload a list of keywords, or multiply keyword lists. For most people I recommend the first option of just searching for a keyword that has to do with your product or service. If you choose this option you'll see a few more fields you can fill out. The first field asks you to enter your product or service, followed by a field for your web address, and lastly you're asked to choose a product category. Once you've completed these steps you click the "Get Ideas" button and you'll see a list of suggested ad group and keyword ideas. You can click the respective tabs to toggle between the two.

Now that you see a list of both ad group ideas and also keywords you can sort these by the number of searches, competition, and average CPC by clicking on the top of each column. This will give you a better understanding of which keywords are commonly searched for and which are the most likely to lead to acquiring a new customer. Obviously if companies are willing to pay a lot per click for a specific term it means the average value of the customer is higher and/or they're more likely to buy when searching with that keyword.

Now if you're advanced there are several other features of Google's Keyword Planner but I won't go into detail how to use each here. A few of the better features you may want to utilize will allow you to narrow your focus by language, negative keywords, and exact match.

Whether you're an SEO professional, web designer, or just a business owner you're going to not only need to find keywords to target you're also going to need a website builder with full search engine optimization capabilities. WebStarts has everything you need not only to build and maintain your website but also to get great search engine ranking. Be sure to sign up and create a free website at WebStarts.com and check it out for yourself.