Search engines rank your site based on the relevance of the content. They do this by examining the site pages and comparing them to the search phrase typed in by the searcher. They then examine how many inbound links the most relevant page on the website has and, crucially, the quality of those links. In Search Engine Optimisation as in life, quality trumps quantity every time.

At the heart of it all is good content that will attract links to the site and, ultimately, buyers. Each blog entry or page should be about one keyword or keyphrase. But how do you come up with these keywords and, therefore, the blog entries? I’m in the process of optimising my candle-making blog and one of the challenges is knowing what to write about.

Most people will be familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword tool but there are many other ways of finding inspiration. Here are five of my favourites:

1. Google Wonder wheel

The Wonder wheel is an attempt to display a mind-map of searches similar to a keyphrase you type in. So, if I type in “candle making” I get a wheel made up of various related keyphrases. I can then click on each and Google will generate another wheel with that phrase at the centre.

To get to the Wonder wheel, type in your keyphrase and click Google Search. You’ll see “Wonder wheel” on the left.

2. Google Related Searches

If, like me, you prefer words to diagrams then check out Related Searches. Search on your keyphrase then click “More search tools” on the left. “Related searches” will appear beneath “Standard View”. Click it and several columns of similar keywords and keyphrases will appear at the top. Interestingly, these tend to be different to those you would see in the Wonder Wheel so it’s worth using both tools. Each of those related keywords is a potential blog entry.

3. Wordtracker Keyword Questions

Your product is the answer to someone’s question (at least I hope it is!) and one way to find out what specific questions your audience is asking is to use the Wordtracker Keyword Questions tool. I recommend keeping your keyphrase as short as possible here to get a large data set. In my case, I typed “candles” to find that by far the most commonly asked question is “how to make candles” – a perfect subject for a blog post. I shan’t be bothering with the fourth most popular “how to make ear candles” however!

4. Wordtracker SEO Blogger

SEO Blogger is a keyword plugin for Firefox. Once installed, clicking the Wordtracker logo brings up a panel on the left-hand side with two parts. The top part is a list of keywords related to the keyphrase you type in. You can then add them to the panel below and this will keep track of how many times you actually use those keyphrases in your blog entry or page. This is the sort of thing that plugins were invented for, pure genius.

5. Wordstream.com

I’ve saved my favourite till last. Wordstream’s free keyword tool presents a list of related keyphrases in a simple interface along with their relative popularity. Again, this results in what is, essentially, a list of potential blog entries.

Remember that with your blog entries or pages you’re trying to achieve two things. Firstly, you want to attract paying customers so you’d certainly want to create entries based on keyphrases that include “buying” words such as “candle making kits” or “cheap candle making supplies” or “candle making supplier”. Secondly, you need to write entries that will be rewarded with incoming links and will therefore result in pages that appear higher up the rankings. For example, if I write a post on how to make candles (almost) for free, this will attract incoming links much more readily than a post about a new product. More people will see it, arrive at the page and, perhaps, go on to become customers (they haven’t cost anything in advertising after all).

SEO won’t entirely replace your spend on advertising but it will supplement and, hopefully, reduce it – after all, cutting marketing costs whilst simultaneously increasing traffic is business nirvana.