Lots of ways to approach this, but you have lots of time, too! So that's a good thing.
So many things may change -- her choice of major, her desire to live on/off campus, and the all-important scholarship offers that she may need to compare from each school. And if money is an issue, you either narrow it to public schools only, or she gets a great ACT score which will make most private schools also doable.
One thing you could do now, if she's interested, is to print a list of all the colleges in your state (if you think she'll probably stay in state) or draw a circle of a certain radius around your city (100 miles, 200 miles, 500 miles -- whatever you and she are comfortable with). That narrows things down considerably. But honestly, you can wait to do this until she's ready. If she has a heavy load this year, maybe start this process in 10th grade. No need to put the pressure on now.
We knew, for many reasons, that our dd, who could have gone just about anywhere, wasn't going to go too far away from home and she wanted to live on campus. So that narrowed things down a lot! She chose a large-ish university because she went in undeclared and wanted lots of options, rather than a small university where she might end up wanting a major they didn't have or didn't have a good reputation with. Other things that mattered to her were diversity of student population, the Honors College, and the good non-humanities opportunities (science, computer science, etc.). But all of this was settled more in early 11th grade.
It was a tough decision between two schools, and she agonized over it for a while, but in the end she "knew" which was right for her and is very happy with her choice!
"Ree-bee," Mom to former United States Marine ds and math teacher DIL * artist dd 20 * motion-loving ds 17 * piano-playing ds 12
"For Miss Minnie loved children and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other." from "A Consent," by Wendell Berry