Before setting up any site, keyword research is of major importance. Without it you are likely to fail. Without a good keyword list you will have no targets to aim for.

A good keyword list makes it easier to optimize your site for traffic and for monetization. This list provides the keywords you will be using when writing articles, making posts to your blog, creating your meta tags and title tags, and so on.

How to Create a Good Keyword List

Here are the basics of getting a good keyword list together. Start by doing a search at freekeywords.wordtracker.com. This free tool gives you a list of top keywords.

Copy these keywords into an Excel spreadsheet and group them by subtopic if you can. For instance, if your main topic is dogs, your subtopics could be dog care, dog breeds, and dog training.

Keywords under dog care could be dog day care, dog health care, blind dog care, and dog skin care. Keywords under dog training could be crate training, housetraining, leash training, and obedience training.

The Next Step - KWBrowse

Once you have a good list under each subtopic, go to kwbrowse.com and fill in your keyword and subtopic keywords. This free tool gives you related keywords that you can add to your Excel spreadsheet. Then go back to freekeywords.wordtracker.com and get more keywords to include with those related keywords.

Free Keyword Research Tools at Google AdWords

If you plan to monetize partly with Adsense, then when you have a sizable keyword list go to adwords.google.com and click on the link near the middle of the page that says "Get Keyword Ideas." This takes you to a page where you can type in your keyword and choose between four different kinds of results.

Use "Keyword Search Volume" and "Search Volume Trends." "Keyword search volume" shows you if there are Google Adwords campaigns for that keyword. If you are planning to put Adsense on your site, it will be important to know if there are ads for that term.

"Search volume trends" tells you if there are very many searches for those keywords, and how the volume changes each month. It even tells you which month had the highest searches.

Free Downloadable Keyword Tool

Another free keyword research tool is Good Keywords. It is available for download at www.goodkeywords.com. After you type in your keyword, such as "dog care," the tool brings up a list of related keywords and the number of searches done on the keyword for the last month. You can then use the "menu" button to select different options, such as "copy to clipboard" or "export keyword data."

These are some of the free tools you can use to put together a good keyword list which you can later use to write pages for your site, write posts, and to use in articles that you submit to article directories. They aren't as powerful as the keyword tools available for purchasing, but they are good enough to start with.

Again, time spent analyzing and choosing keywords now means more money later on. While you don't want to get stuck on keywords indefinitely, spend at least three to four days focusing on keyword research, analyzing and deciding what keywords you are going to optimize your web site for. This research will save you time later on and increase your traffic and earnings.