First, you need to find out how often a keyword is searched by internet users. You can use keyword tools. My favorite ones are SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool and Google AdWords: Keyword Tool.

But don’t just rely on tools. Use common sense too. If there is a popular event or something newsworthy just happened or is about to happen, you can be pretty sure that keywords related to the event or the news will be popular.

Competition

I’ll be talking more about competition. It really needs its own post because there are a lot of factors that go into determining the competitiveness of a keyword.

But the main thing to keep in mind is the top 10 results. If your goal is reach the first page, you only have to beat the top 10 pages. Don’t worry about total number of results that Google shows.