Marketing and optimizing a website for search engines is a broad topic. There are many factors to consider when heading out with the goal of improving your website’s visibility and ranking within various search engines. In part one I will discuss the highly requested topic of website keywords. In follow-up articles I will cover additional topics such as page ranking, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the marketing techniques to avoid, and the latest analysis technologies including eye tracking software.
Choosing the proper keywords for a web site is an significant and informatory search task. In the process of improving your web site you’ll acquire a good deal about your industry and your competitors.
Keywords are one the primary factors that come into play in the algorithms exploited by major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search. If a web surfer is looking for home decorating tips and types ‘home decorating’ into a search engine, it will search its database for websites that contain that phrase and those individual words.
Choosing the right keywords
If you are an expert in your field, you know what your customers are looking for. Specifically, you know many of the words and phrases your customers would use to describe your products and services. Begin with what you know.
Write out a list of phrases and words that describe your business. If you have a home decorating business you may think of words like ‘interior design’ and ‘furnishings’. Sort your list so that the most common and popular phrases are heading the list.
You should then cross-reference your list of key words that you compiled with other lists generated for your bussiness. This will bring out other keywords that you may not have thought of previously. I would suggest using a web-based keyword research tool named Word tracker. Wordtracker helps identify additional keywords and phrases and offers a free trial of their service. The trail version will only give you only a limited number of related words, but is still an excellent starting point. Probing for related keywords for ‘home decorating’ with Wordtracker produces a listing of keywords similar ‘home’, ‘decor’, ‘decorating’, ‘home decor’, ‘furniture’, ‘design’, ‘interior’, ‘interior decorating’, ‘art’, ‘wall’, and ‘fabric’.
Other keyword tools, which produce similar results, are also available. These include, among others, the web-based tools provided by Yahoo (Overture) (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), and Google (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).
After compiling and merging the various lists of keywords, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.
Using the right keywords on your web site
Now that you have a good idea of which key words web surfers may type into search engines to find your business or products, you must ensure your website contains these important key words.
A strategy is mandatory when updating your web site to include the keywords in your list. Starting at the beginning of your list, you should review the keywords. Determine which of these key words would normally be present on your web site and which of these key words you probably wouldn’t use. Using your first list of key words, you should start reviewing the different sections of your web site.
Your selected keywords should be placed in various areas of your site with the proper frequency. The web site content should focus on making sense to your visitors, not filledwith keywords that could improve your search engine positioning. Search engine algorithms can detect the over use of keywords, which can negatively affect your positioning. Let’s now look at different areas of your website.
Web site Title
Every website has a title. This is not a website logo or a bold heading found on the top section of a website. The website title is displayed in the web browser’s title bar. This is the area of the window located to the left of the window’s minimize, maximize, and close buttons. The website title is also the text that is displayed in search engine search results, which is often in a larger font and underlined. The web site title is the first thing that a web surfer sees when reviewing search results. Web surfers quickly scan through search result website titles to evaluate which website will meet their needs. This is your best chance to grab their attention.
A website title should contain as many of your keywords as possible, while maintaining easy readability. This will do two things for you. First, the search engine will find your website in its database and display your website in their results. Second, the website title will catch the surfer’s interest as they see their search criteria matching your website title. Over-stuffing the website title with key words makes the title hard to read and may be seen as abuse by search engines spiders. The website title is updated by changing the text located between the opening and closing title tags, in the header of the HTML code (Page Title). The title length should be restricted to very little words. The website description allows more space for describing your products and services.
Web site Description
As with the web site title, the web site description should likewise comprise a mixture of keywords. Unlike the web site title, the web site description is non visible on any section of the web site itself. The description is the summary information you see in search engines results, displayed below the website title. The website description gives you a little more space to describe your website and your products and services. Again, be sure that your description is easily readable for your visitors, in order to attract them to click your site title. The web site description can be updated by changing the textual matter in the description meta tag, in the header of the HTML code ().
Web site Keywords
Along with the title and description entries in the HTML code, there is as well an area to define a set of keywords that you’d like to link to the page. This is called the keyword meta tag. Key words are entered as a csv or comma separated list, as follows (). The industry consensus is that the keyword meta tag is presently of minuscule or no use with today’s major search engines. However, search engines continue to recommend their usage.
Website Content
Bringing us to the meat of our web site, so to speak. Our elect keywords should be used throughout the web site content where it makes common sense. Again, over-stuffing page content with keywords so that the message is unnatural can be detected by search engines. A beneficial exercise is to use the keywords to make the page subject matter more descriptive. For instance, a pet store may trade a assortment of pet foods. This can be written in a descriptive manner, such as, ‘dog food and cat food’, instead of using ‘dog and cat food’. In this example the keyword ‘food’ is used twice.
Headings and Hyperlinks
Special attention should be given to the usage of heading (This is a Heading) tags and anchor tags (click here). Keyword usage in page heading is more valuable than keywords used in a paragraph of text. The same can be said about anchor tags (a.k.a. hyperlinks) - Text Links. Using keywords as the clickable text of a hyperlink is very valuable.
Keyword Denseness
Keyword density refers to the percentage of occurrences of your keywords compared to the other text on the web page. Keyword density tools such as Webconfs.com’s Keyword Density Checker (http://webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php) provides a visualization of the main theme or message on a chosen page. This tool counts the number of times each word is repeated on the page, which is a good test of how you’ve done at inserting keywords to optimize the content. It is also a dependable representation of how search engines will see your web page. ‘More is better’ is not the most effective keyword density goal. Although the optimum keyword density is much debated, having some balance is definitely in order. A keyword density below 1% makes it hard for a search engine to understand your main message, where a density over 5% will start to make the content appear unnatural. At this phase in web site optimisation, the page content can be continually edited while the keyword denseness is being re-checked. Continue this process until your keywords are among the words with the highest density.
Closing
Choosing the correct keywords for your website is a must. Website keyword optimization is not rocket science, but it must be implemented carefully. By using the correct keywords, not only will your site be positioned well in search results, but it will draw visitors to your website.