If you are running an online business, it's important that you learn how to promote it through search engine optimization. You should be aware by now that the competition for customers online has never been tougher. If you are not aggressive in optimizing your website or blog so that more people will be able to find it, your competitors can easily outsmart you and steal your potential customers. With that said, now is the time to focus a considerable amount of your time and resources on optimizing your website. SEO is not rocket science. As long as you have a good grasp of its most basic tenets, you are good to go.

The very first thing you need to do is find the keywords that your potential customers use to search for your products and services online. These keywords can be single words or phrases or combinations of both. There are numerous keyword research tools that you can use. Most of these are free to use so you have nothing to lose in utilizing them. If you are not too familiar with these tools, a good place to start would be Google's own keyword research tool. It has a lot of features that will enable you to find the most relevant keywords for your business.

Once you have come up with a list of keywords, the next step is to integrate them into your website content or in external websites that you utilize in your marketing campaign. However, you need to be careful in using the keywords lest you get penalized for using too much of them. The general rule is to use the keywords moderately. Make sure that they flow well with your content. Simply think of what your customers want to know then build your content around it. In a nutshell, if you want to attract more customers, you need to make keyword research an integral part of your marketing strategy.