The Basics Of Keyword Optimization
When optimizing your webpage for search engine results one of the best methods is Keyword optimization. Sadly, it's also one of the things people tend to spend too little time on. They think up a few keywords quickly, optimize their pages a bit and then submit them to the engines. This can result in a not so good ranking under poorly related keywords.
Think About What Your Webpage Is Try To Say?
Before you start optimizing your site for the search engines, you should spend some time in figuring out exactly what keywords, or what keyphrases, you are going to target. Don't try to rush things. Sit down, open up your favorite text editor in one window and your website in another. Read through the first page of your site. When you have read it, stop and think about.
What is this page about?
Which of the words that appear in the document describe the contents of the page accurately?
What kind of words or phrases would you use if you were trying to find your site?
When you have found the answers to these questions, write down the words and the phrases you have come up with. It doesn't matter if the list becomes too long, as you can always remove some of the excess words later.
Keyword Optimization - The Next Step
When I do keyword optimization, I usually select 1 or 2 medium-popular keywords or phrases per page. These are my main targets, and I optimize heavily for them. Then I squeeze a few less common phrases and words into the body text, hoping that they will help the page to come up on some obscure multi-word searches.
Repeat this process for every page on your site. You should be able to create an individual, distinct list of keywords for each page. The different lists should not compete with each other, instead each should cover different areas. This does not however mean that there shouldn't be any similarities between your lists - it's perfectly OK to have some, but the lists shouldn't be 100% identical. It is better to have 20 good listings on different search terms than 20 good listings on the same one.
What Now That I have My List Of Keywords
So, now you have your lists ready. The next thing would be to go to Overture' keyword suggestion tool and type in the different keywords and phrases you've come up with. The tool will tell you each keyword and each phrase was how many times searched at Overture during the last month. It won't tell you exactly how popular different words are, since the statistics contain only the searches executed at Overture, but it will give you a general idea.
Because Overture's data is not always 100% accurate, you may also want to visit WordTracker. The service is not free, but the trial option offers a chance to search for good keywords without having to pay a dime. By using both Overture and WordTracker and comparing what they think about the popularity of different keywords, you should be able to separate the words people search for from those that are rarely used.
After checking the word tools, you might consider dropping some of the words that aren’t commonly used in searches. If you find some other words that look like they might be useful, you might want to add them.
When thinking about keywords always keep SEO in mind
By now, your list is probably pretty full of very competitive, single-word terms such as MP3 or books or computers or whatever. Scratch them. This might sound harsh, but if you're a novice, you have no chance of achieving a top listing under such these search terms. Even many (dare I say most) professionals tend to avoid them, as they are extremely competitive. There are hundreds of thousands of sites targeting them and even with excellent search engine optimization skills, they are very tough to conquer. What you should do is to narrow it down a little.
Think about variations of these popular keywords. If you were originally thinking about the keyword books, how about buy used books online or antique bookstore? Using these variations doesn’t mean it’s easy to rank high. Using these variations it would be better to rank in the top ten for a search term with medium usage than to rank 500th for a heavily used term. It would be a good idea to select keywords that get searched, but aren’t impossibly competitive.
Things To Keep In Mind - Keyword Optimization
You might also want to target common misspellings, if some of the keywords related to your site are often spelled wrong . Unfortunately, it is hard to efficiently target misspellings without damaging the authority of your site. Would you buy anything from a person that can't even spell the name of his merchandise? Didn't think so.. So, be careful with those misspellings.
A lot of the thing we talked about can have a major impact on what you might consider using in your domain name. After searching and finding the keywords related to your site it might be a good idea to use them in your domain name. keywords can have a heavy impact on search results, using them in your domain name can make the difference between a top 10 and a lower rank. This can also be a very important part in the domain name registration process.
Just like keywords are an important of your webpage and the domain name registration process, they are also important in your Meta tags. So after deciding what keywords are right for you, it would be a good idea to also use them in your Meta tags.
Another thing to keep in mind is linking to your other pages in your site. If possible use keywords in your link anchor tags.
Use Keywords In Your On Every Page
EXAMPLE - http://www.domaininform.net/searchengines.html
This will also give you a boost.
Remember to optimize for each page. That way if your main page can’t reach the results your looking for every page in your site has a chance at a different search.
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