Making the most of keywords

People find websites via links from other sites, typing in the URL from printed material, guessing at domain names, clicking on ad links, and keyword searches. For most websites, keyword searches bring the majority of first-time visitors, through organic and/or paid keywords. Keywords offer us the opportunity to entice a highly targeted audience to our sites. If our audience finds exactly what they're looking for, they're more likely to become customers. As webmasters, we need to identify and use the best keywords for what we're offering and (for organic search results) optimize our sites for those keywords.

Keyword terminology

For those who are new to the topic, let's look at some of the terms used when discussing keywords:

• Keywords are words or phrases that people enter in search engines to search for information.
• Keyword density is the frequency that keywords are used on a page, the ratio of those words to other words.
• Keyword optimization is the process of finding the most suitable keywords and then using them in the best places and with optimal frequency on each page.
• Keyword meta tags are meta tags in the page source code where webmasters can list the keywords for the page. Search engines used to give these words weight as keywords, but most don't any more because the practice was abused.
• ROI, or return on investment, is the success rate of converting to customers site visitors who found the site via paid advertisements.
• Organic search results, also called natural search results, are search engine results that appear because of search engine rankings for the keywords on the page results displayed.
• Paid results are what appear as "sponsored results" to the right of organic search results. The cost of having ads appear with search results depends on the popularity of the keyword.

Research keywords for your website

To optimize web pages for keywords, each page should use a number of different keywords that work with the content. If you want keywords for advertising purposes only, the research process is still necessary to choose revenue-producing keywords for the best ROI. The first step is to put together a long list of keywords to choose from.

Make a list of keywords you'd use to search with. When you're researching what your competitors are doing, what keywords do you use in your searches?

Ask friends, family members, and customers what keywords they'd use. People who have occasional use for products and services may come up with different keywords than the industry terms that come to your mind.

Study the keywords that your competitors' sites are optimized for. Look at the words that are used in their titles and headings in particular. If they use keyword meta tags, what words did they include there? Look for keywords in their press releases as well.

Pay attention to differences in phrasing. When the above yields different ways of saying the same thing, include the different phrases on your list. They'll add variety to your content, and each of them may bring in different searchers.

Look at what people are searching for. Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool offers search results for both Wordtracker and Overture. Enter a keyword, and the results will display related keywords and how often they're searched for daily.

Choose the best keywords for your website

The best keywords for each web page have two main features:

• The keywords are relevant to the products or services being offered on the web page.
• The keywords can bring traffic by appearing frequently in search results.

Specific keyword phrases help bring searchers who know exactly what they're looking for. For example, "pink aluminum widgets" will help people who are looking for pink aluminum widgets to your site. Even if you could optimize your site for the more general keyword "widgets," traffic from people who are searching for a type of widget you don't carry won't benefit you.

If your website offers a local service, or if your city or country is relevant, geographical terms are valuable keywords. For example, according to Overture, the keyword phrase "hair salon Chicago" is searched for 23.7 times per day and "hair salon in Chicago" 8.9 times per day.

Location is often relevant for online businesses too. Many people prefer to buy from companies in their own country or that allow them to pay in their own currency. The right keywords help these people find your website.

Unless you've been working at keyword and search engine optimization for a long time or have a lot of time to invest in this work, the most competitive keywords will not bring the most traffic. Ideally, your site will appear on the first page of results for your targeted keywords. Appearing on the second and third pages may still bring you some traffic. If you can't get your web page on the first three pages of search results for a keyword, it isn't worth your time optimizing for it.

Look at your competition. How big are their websites? How many inbound links do they have for their keywords? If their sites are highly optimized for certain keywords, your time may be better spent optimizing your web pages for related but different keywords.

Put the keywords to work

Location and frequency are the keys to using keywords. Search engine bots pay attention to both.

Where practical, name pages with keywords, e.g., "pink_widgets.html," and use keywords in the anchor text of menu links. On each web page, use keywords in these places in particular:

• The <title> tag, in the <head> section of the source code, contains the words that appear in the page link with search results. Several keywords can fit in it.
• The <h1> tag is for the page heading. It's almost as important as the <title> tag. As the title of the page content, the words in the <h1> tag are often used as anchor text when webmasters link to the page from other sites.
• The <h2> tag is for headings of page sections. It carries less weight than the <title> or <h1> tags. However, search engines see keywords in the <h2> tag (and descending header tags) as more important than words on the rest of the page.
• Alt tags, the alternative text for non-text items on the page, are also given extra weight by search engines.

While most search engines don't look at keyword meta tags any more, a few do. Most webmasters still put keywords in the keyword meta tag.

The rest of the text should include the keywords you've chosen for each page. Use them when you can, such as instead of "it" in places. Include spelling variations and misspellings, for example, "Widgets, sometimes written as widjets." But avoid keyword stuffing, which is the practice of cramming keywords onto the page to feed search engine bots. Using keyword stuffing may get your site banned from search engines.

When your website is optimized for your chosen keywords, the title, headings, and content of each page are optimized for the keyword for that page content. Links and alt tags contain keywords. Text should flow naturally; readers who aren't familiar with how keywords work shouldn't even notice how they're working. And webmasters who link to specific pages at your site may naturally use some of those keywords too.

Next - Keywords, Part II