I try to ask questions I havn't seen before, maybe this has been discussed.

How should I choose, search for, and incorporate keywords.

Is it all meta tags?

Sometimes I look at the source for the number one hit off of a search and I see no keywords in the meta..

Also I have heard that you should include not just words but entire phrases and have them appear on your site a few times.

A few pointers would be greatly appreciated since I have the least experience in SEO.

Meta keywords have been useless for almost ten years - all major SE's ignore them. Too easy to spam. You rank for the keywords by having them in your title, h1, and according to some people strong and em tags, on the page, and in anchor text, off the page.

I had found a really cool keyword tool that tells you how often a search is, and gives you reports on all the variants of that search. I'll have to find the URL and post it when I do.

Entire phrases do help...marginally. Meta description tags are still used...marginally. Pretty well all on-the-page SEO can help...marginally.

This is how the forest gets lost within the trees, however. What you need to step back and look at is the way in which your site appeals to users. Make your copy legible, make your site easy to navigate, add content that is unique, and tell the right people.

You follow those four things, SEO will stem from that...and so will traffic from other sources such as StumbleUpon (contrary to what the exchange crowd thinks, and I've got an organic SU link with stumbles going into the thousands to prove it.)

hmm, What do you mean by "copy"? , just the font type? I started my site without the knowledge that I could make money with it, so I put all my time into design, coding and content. Thus I left out the SEO part, but from what I gather, the things i have done will be a major factor? I'm not quite sure what Em tags are, but I suppose I could look it up.

I mean your writing itself. Not the font itself, but the actual content.

<em> tags are another variant of italics, with the difference that they EMphasize text for screen readers.

Basically, there is no one major factor. There are over 100 minor factors that combine to make major factors. The best thing you can do is adopt a holistic approach; don't focus on one factor or another, but give them all more or less equal weight and attention.

well if you are already behind the 8 ball so to speak..then you might try a little link bait.

I have a technique, works pretty well that I use

write some nice relevant content for your pages...don't stuff keywords, but use relevant words to your theme or niche

Then crawl the page with a keyword density tool

Generate your title and description tags from the relevant words that were most dense

then go back and add alts and heading tags containing a few of those words, but not more than 3 each.

when you are first getting this going I find it much easier to use anchor text for your in bound links, that are of the long tail nature. They hit easier and faster. After you have had some success with the longtails, move on to other keyword variations.

The top engines for the most part consider your entire page and its textual content, so they already know these keywords...you just demonstrate their importance by creating proper tags with them.

GL
Melanie