Here’s a quick, do-it-yourself method to determine how people are finding your site. A traffic meter is a must-have. Site Meter offers a free web counter that tracks visitors, but I recommend their Standard service at $6.95 per month. With this service, you will have access to search word terms that led visitors to your site and which terms are the most popular.

Signing up for Site Meter may not be necessary if you have the ability to measure site traffic through your current hosting service or blog platform.

Update (7/29): From Inc.com:

Be sure to know your keywords.

Blogs can help customers find your business when they are searching on Google or other sites. Therefore, it’s important to know: What words do customers most often use to find you via the search engines? What words show up in competitor or industry blogs on a regular basis that help place them high in Google’s index? Knowing which words to drop into your posts on a regular basis will help boost your search rankings. “Small businesses get more search engine benefit from blogs than larger businesses,” Campbell says. After all, your marketing budget probably is a fraction of what GE will spend this year. Writing frequently and dropping keywords into your posts to help boost your search standings can go a long way for a business owner on a tight marketing budget. But don’t overdo it. Readers will see right through any obvious attempts at self-promotion.