Choose the right keywords.
Why is that, with all of the highly effective search engine strategies that we
can employ? It's rather simple. If you don't choose the right keywords, all of
your other strategies won't help you at all, because those strategies build on
top of choosing the right keywords.
Let's look at it from the point of a view of a searcher. A searcher visits one
of the major engines looking for your goods or services. He types in what he
considers to be the most important topic, or keyword, for his search. Up come
the results, ten per page.
If you haven't taken time to choose the most effective keyword phrases, you may
have done something like use the name of your company as your main keyword. If
your company has significant name recognition, like Sony, that's fine. But, if
your company is like the vast majority of companies on the Net, optimizing the
page for the name of your company has just cost you some business.
Choose the most effective keyword phrase for your page!
How on earth do you choose your important keyword phrases? First off, don't
depend on yourself to choose the right keywords. Your searchers are probably not
finding you the same way that you'd think they'd find you.
Choose the right keywords with Traffic Builder's Keyword Builder Pro
Learn more about
Keyword Builder Pro
Choose the right keywords and see your traffic skyrocket!
Learn how to choose the best keywords for your site.
Keywords Reflect Your Site's Focus
Develop your keyword strategy during the site design process when you are already focused on how to communicate the purpose of your Web site. Selecting your keywords is much like writing an extremely short mission statement. Ask yourself several questions:
- What is the site's focus?
- Why is the site's information valuable?
- Who is your audience?
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The answers to those questions will help you select appropriate keywords because they force you to think about how your site's content serves its intended audience. If you already have an established business (online or not), go one step further and ask your customers what words they would use to find you. Don't limit your keywords to your products; people visit your site looking for information too.
For instance, suppose you sell home ice cream making supplies and attract visitors with interesting content about ice cream in general - like ice cream recipes. So your keywords wouldn't only be product-oriented (ice cream maker, rock salt, etc), you would also include keywords and phrases that describe your content (ice cream recipes, history of ice cream, etc.).
Research Keyword Popularity
Now you should have quite a few keywords and keyword phrases that succinctly describe your product or service. You're ready to research their effectiveness by answering 2 questions:
- How many other sites use the same keywords?
- How many people actually search on those keywords?
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First, select several top search engines and find out how many results each of your keywords or phrases return. If you have a number of keywords and phrases to research, consider making a simple spread sheet to easily organize your information.
Search Term |
AltaVista |
Go/Infoseek |
Lycos |
Google |
| ice cream |
419,374 |
99,760 |
541,448 |
763,000 |
| ice cream recipes |
1458 |
359 |
779 |
1100 |
| okra ice cream |
0 |
0 |
0 |
6 |
Overly broad keywords rarely work well. With "ice cream" as a keyword, your site competes with many thousands of other sites for attention. However, the more targeted "ice cream recipes" phrase increases your chance of appearing near the top of the results list. If you really want to get specific, your site would always be at the top of a search on "okra ice cream" - if any users were to actually search on it.
Find out what keywords people actually use to query search engines before you make a final selection.
Traffic Builder's Gold and Platinum versions includes a Keyword Builder Pro a tool that tells you which keywords are used by your competition.
You'll see which keywords are most import ranked by order of use
Include Keywords On Your Page
Once you've decided which keywords are appropriate for your site, the hard work begins. You have to integrate them into your site's content in a credible way. Here are a few basic techniques to try:
- META Tags: Insert a META KEYWORD tag into the HEAD section of your document and list all your keywords. While you should use this tag on every page of your site, you don't have to use the same keywords on each page.
- Misspelled Names: If you're using a keyword that's often misspelled, include that misspelling as a keyword - but not as part of your content!
- Plural Terms: Add plural forms to your keywords and using both singular and plural terms in your content. Most people use plural search terms because they hope to receive a list of results and not a single site.
- Keyword-rich Content: Use your keywords early and often in your page content. Merely including them in the META tag is not enough; search engines assume the terms are more relevant and important if they're used in the content as well.
KEYWORDS TAG
<META NAME = "keywords" CONTENT = "keyword
keyword keyword">
The KEYWORDS tag should be a list of possible keywords a user might submit
when searching for information your site contains. Your keywords should
repeat keywords that appear in your title and description and most of
these words should appear somewhere in the content of your page. Like
the description tag, if the keywords you add do not appear in the content
of your page, then search engines will ignore them and possibly ban your
site (in extreme cases) for doing something referred to as "spam"
or "keyword loading."
Search engines are all working on getting rid of 'spam' (or keyword loading).
You've seen the search results where the titles of pages come back as
nothing but a list of keywords. Loading lists of keywords into your title
tag, putting in long lists of invisible key word repeats at the bottom
of your page, and the other desperate measures some webmasters go to
attract more traffic, will now get you dropped from several of the search
engines, or at least put at the end of the results pages. The search engines
are trying to find ways to level the playing field and make it easier
for searchers to get real information. Don't get caught 'spamming' or
you could wind out with even less traffic. This you don't want. Investigate
carefully before doing keyword loading.
Use the KEYWORDS tag properly and do not try to "out smart"
the search engines. It will only get you in trouble and it's just bad
practice.
Tips for the KEYWORDS tag:
- Use plural over singular (if a user types "cat" in
the search engine and you have "cats" in your keywords list,
your site will also be included in the list of results)
- Put variations and acronyms in your keywords (e.g., employment,
vacancies, jobs, careers) and include common spelling mistakes
as keywords.
- Don't use commas between keywords. Commas add characters and separate
words that may be searched for together and makes repeating keywords
harder (search engines do not like repetition in keywords).
- Your keywords should be 1000 characters or less. More will
just be ignored.
- Do not repeat a keyword more than three times. Be careful with
variations of the same word (cook, cooked, cooking).
- Match important keywords in the body content
of the page.
- Insert the most important keywords near the top of the body content
of the page.
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