Is Google Analytics the best way to see what keywords people are searching for that gets them to my site or is there a better way?
Analytics is good. You probably already have some log analysis stats available from your host as well.
Google Analytics is very good. It's free, it works and easy to install. Add to this Google's Webmaster Account and you can do a great deal without spending money.
Yes google analytics can show you the keywords that drive traffic to your site. Try also seodigger.com
do you have AWSTATS from your host? Do you have cpanel? if so awstats comes with that. That I find is better then google. most of the time Awstats is show that I have aot more hits then google shows. So I do not know which one is correct.
Well if you have Cpanel then you can use AWstats to see what keywords are bringing you in the traffic. IF not then try the following. GetClicky.com StatCounter.com if even that doesn't try looking at your keyword density using seoquake.
If you are using hosting that offer cpanel you can view also through awstats and other similar tools for top search terms for the month, all search terms used for the whole month with other details.
Google's free webmaster tools are excellent too - they only apply to google searches but they have good depth of information when you download and view the spreadsheets.
thats the catch 22" key word optimization remember that" see my sig for free see tools and more at Blogurple.com
Yes,its important that you should look at, what keyword your site is getting traffic.Try SEOELITE tool for best keywords to use in your Meta tags.
I find that Google analytics (GA) is OK but I always tend to fall back onto AWSTATS. The advantages are that they show a lot more than what GA shows you: A full log analysis enables AWStats to show you the following information: * Number of visits, and number of unique visitors, * Visits duration and last visits, * Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits, * Days of week and rush hours (pages, hits, KB for each hour and day of week), * Domains/countries of hosts visitors (pages, hits, KB, 269 domains/countries detected, GeoIp detection), * Hosts list, last visits and unresolved IP addresses list, * Most viewed, entry and exit pages, * Files type, * Web compression statistics (for mod_gzip or mod_deflate), * OS used (pages, hits, KB for each OS, 35 OS detected), * Browsers used (pages, hits, KB for each browser, each version (Web, Wap, Media browsers: 97 browsers, more than 450 if using browsers_phone.pm library file), * Visits of robots (319 robots detected), * Worms attacks (5 worm's families), * Search engines, keyphrases and keywords used to find your site (The 115 most famous search engines are detected like yahoo, google, altavista, etc...), * HTTP errors (Page Not Found with last referrer, ...), * Other personalized reports based on url, url parameters, referer field for miscellanous/marketing purpose, * Number of times your site is "added to favourites bookmarks". * Screen size (need to add some HTML tags in index page). * Ratio of Browsers with support of: Java, Flash, RealG2 reader, Quicktime reader, WMA reader, PDF reader (need to add some HTML tags in index page). * Cluster report for load balanced servers ratio. If your host doesn't automatically provide you with access to AWSTATS - then go search google or sourceforge - free download - and you can do a lot more with it. Onward and upwards Steve Dorrington (AKA CarpetDog)