Search terms are the words and phrases that people type into the search forms of search engines. Keywords and keyphrases are the words on your site that match these search terms.

Before you do any type of search engine marketing, you have to understand your target audience and know the search terms they are using. Once you know the search terms being used, these can be included in the content of your Web site as keywords and keyphrases.

Your keywords and keyphrases will also be used if you plan to promote your site with pay per click or keyword based pay per impression advertising.

To learn more about Keywords and Search Terms:

These sites provide lists of the top search terms used on the search engines. These are not intended to help you find keywords and keyphrases specifically for your site. These lists are useful for looking for general trends.

Top 500 Keywords Of The Week
This week's list of the top 500 most frequently searched keywords used on search engines.

Lycos 50
Lists the 50 most popular user searches for the week.

Livesuche
Shows the search terms people are using on the German search engine Fireball.

Ask Jeeves Peek Through the Keyhole
Shows the questions that people are asking at Ask Jeeves.

Kanoodle.com - Search Spy
Shows what other people are searching for on Kanoodle.com.

Metaspy
Provides real-time display of searches being performed on MetaCrawler. Provides both filtered and unfiltered versions.

Yahoo! Buzz Index
Find out what people are searching for at Yahoo! Subjects are ranked according to a buzz score which is based on the percentage of users searching for that subject on a given day