Locating keywords for your software product or service is a grueling process but well worth the effort. A good keyword or keyword phrase is one that receives a lot of search engine searches and is relevant to your product. In order to rank well in organic search listings for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, it is best that there are not a lot of websites that are already optimized for that specific keyword or keyword phrase. In other words the less competition the better. The trick to great keywords is finding popular, relevant words that do not yet have a lot of competition. We have come up with a few suggestions for locating good keywords.

Determining good keywords can result in qualified traffic that generates revenue in both optimizing for organic search and implementing pay per click campaigns.

1. Brainstorm
Sit down and make a list of keywords that are relevant to your software. Remember, different people in different age groups, jobs, or geographical regions, might use different words to describe the same thing.

2. Make it a Family Affair
Get friends and family to brainstorm, you might be surprised to find that friends or family members use a number of terms that did not occur to you.

3. Web Tags
Examine the websites of any competitors, take a look at their website header tags, what keywords are emphasized in their website title and description, or keyword meta tags.

4. Pad Files
Examine competitors PAD files for their keyword lists. Consider if those keywords are related to your products.

5. Google Suggest
Use Google Suggest to locate possible terms. The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

6. Yahoo/Overture
Use Yahoo to find additional words and phrases.
http://inventory.overture.com/

7. Word Tracker
Use WordTracker, a web based service, to analyze keywords and related words. WordTracker assigns a value (known as KEI) based on the number of searches a word or phrase has and the amount of competition that the word or phrase has.
http://www.wordtracker.com

8. Competitive Intelligence
Use competitive intelligence to locate keywords. This can be done by analyzing competitors.

9. Web Logs
Examine web logs to determine what words customers are currently using to locate your website. Consider using derivatives.

10. Thesaurus
Use the thesaurus to locate synonyms.
http://thesaurus.reference.com/

Ideas:

1. Take a Tumble
Tumble keyword phrases to create different possible combinations.

2. Popularity
Check the popularity of keywords and phrases using online assessment tools

3. Optimize
Optimize each web pages for 2-3 phrases. Each page on a website can and should be optimized for different keywords.

Other Resources

Downloadable Software
Good Keywords - http://www.goodkeywords.com/

Developer Resource contains a large collection of software marketing tips.