What does it take to be in the top 10 search engine results on Google or Yahoo? The answer is finding the right keywords and optimizing your site accordingly. You can be number one for any keyword, as long as you do it right.
Here are a couple hints and tricks that should help you get the most out of your keywords.
1. Use Google’s keyword search tool – it’s a great place to start and snoop around what people are searching for. It gives you vital information on which keywords to choose. You can add the ones you think work best to a list on the right, and later save that list to your desktop. Then you have your main keyword list to go by. Be careful though – better keywords usually have higher competition and are more expensive in your ad-campaign.
2. Pick a combination of keywords you think people will use to search for whatever you are offering. Only add it to your list if enough people are actually using this combo.
3. Try to identify niche keywords – something nobody else has thought of yet. Sometimes you stumble upon a good keyword combination by accident. Be creative!
4. Next, work your keywords into your content – the more the better. It may sound a little strange afterwards but you will have to sacrifice writing quality for keyword density. Repeat your most important keywords at least 5 times (not in one sentence)!
5. Use your best keyword as your page title and in your meta-tag description. It is the first thing people see and search engine robots read. If it’s in your page title, it must be important.
6. Meta-tag keywords are ignored by Google, in case you didn’t know. But just to be sure (some other search engines might read them) you can put in 5-10 keywords.
7. Here is a trick: use your keywords in the alt tags of all your images. It will improve your keyword density but will be close to invisible to the viewer.
8. Link your keywords to other pages that use similar keywords. Linking your content is very important and guides the search engine robots through your site. The more links the better.
9. Use your keywords in content headings and near the top of the page. Focus your attention on writing a strong opening paragraph that contains most of the vital keywords.
10. Use Google’s Webmaster tool to monitor the performance of your site. It tells you how people found you and what the bounce rate is for each page etc. Tons of useful information you can play around with and use to your advantage. You can also link it up with Google Analytics to get even more detailed info about your visitors.
Part of writing and testing keywords is to keep careful track of your results. Keeping documents of how much traffic using certain words can help you track results. As those in the business of SEO optimization have discovered keywords and keyword phrases that seemed to work yesterday may not work today. Keeping track of your keywords simply by noting those that bring you profits and those that don’t are ways of figuring out what makes money for you and what doesn’t.
One of the most popular ways to choose keywords is to do so through hit results. One good place to look at keywords is the overture keyword engine inventory. All you need to do is put in a few phrases or words that apply to your business or service and then assess them by popularity.
Another great place for looking up keywords is a site named Word Tracker. They have a database of over 40 million results that is updated every 2 hours. If you enter a phrase or a word you can see how many people are actually searching for that keyword. You have to pay to use word tracker but there is a sliding scale. It costs about eight bucks U.S. to use it for 24 hours. A yearly membership is $274 U.S.
When looking at these keywords keep in mind that you are never looking for keywords that are too popular or that are too well used. This is because these keywords are too general and will bring untargeted traffic to your site. Untargeted traffic is traffic that is looking for someone else but ends up on your site anyway. They are like tenants that don’t pay rent because all they do is use up your bandwidth. Remember that the most specific and targeted keywords are never the ones that are the most popular.
A query is simply a name for the word or two that people will type into a search engine box when they are looking for something specific on a popular search engine like Google or MSN. The fundamental components of these queries are called “keywords” as they are the simple every day terms that people use to look for products and services. The major search engines note these words in database records that on the major engines such as Google and Overture can be accessed for free. This allows you to determine the popularity of a keyword simply by looking up its ranking or the number of “hits” it has had on a keyword inventory tool. Both Google and Overture have excellent keyword inventory tools that tell you what people are looking for when they search for something on the World Wide Web.
A query term can be one word such as “curling iron” or it can be many words such as “Con-Air tourmaline ceramic plated curling iron.” Knowing what these query searches are is critical to the successful promotion of your website both within its pages and outside.
The key to choosing the right keywords is to know what keywords and commonly used short keyword phrases are commonly used to describe your service, products or the theme of your site. As a rule of thumb also avoid choosing keywords that are too general. When people search for products and services on the Internet they tend to search for specific things with a few words. This is because they know that typing in a single word will bring them to many options to sift through. You should take the same tact as using keywords that are too general may bring you window shoppers as opposed to serious buyers. In essence, understanding the relationship between keywords and query phrases is as basic as knowing your market.
