subject: Article Marketing Strategies: Keywords Are Like A Library Card Catalog [print this page] Most people who are doing article marketing are just normal people who have businesses that they want to bring attention to. They are usually not internet masterminds or people who know the intricacies of how search engine optimization works.
Thankfully, when you're doing article submissions, you don't have to have in-depth technical knowledge about how search engines work. You do, however, need to have at least a little knowledge about what "keywords" are.
Keywords are one of those topics that come up again and again when you're considering article marketing strategies. The whole "keywords" thing can sound a little technical, but before you turn away thinking that it's too complicated, I want to explain keywords to you using an illustration that you probably already understand--the library.
There was a time in history when all research was conducted at the library. Before there was Google or the internet, when people needed information they would make the journey to their local library where they would do research. In trying to teach you what keywords are in a non-technical way, I want to get your mind thinking about libraries and how they work.
Back before computers existed, when you needed to do research in a library you had to go to the card catalog. This was a cabinet that had lots of little drawers, and each drawer had index cards arranged in a certain order. There was at least one card for each book in the library, and on each card you could find the author name, the title, and the subject matter of the book. The subject matter of the book determined the "call number", and all of the books in the library were arranged according to those call numbers. Libraries still organize their contents by call numbers. If you have the call number, then you can easily find one little book in a huge library.
What do you think happened when new books were sent to the library? The books didn't have an index card in the card catalog or a call number--they were just "unclassified". It was up to the librarian to create the call number and the index card for the book, but how would she know what the subject matter of the book was?
She would get that information from the publisher or author. After all, they are the ones who have actually read the book. You can't expect the librarian to read every single book that comes into the library, so she is dependent on the author or publisher to tell her what the subject matter is.
They indicate the subject matter by giving her a list of key words that are associated with the topic of the book.
The key words help the librarian classify the book so that it can be placed in the right spot in the library and have an index card that helps readers find the exact book that they're looking for.
Do you see where we're going with this?
In the same way that authors or publishers give the librarian a list of key words (or subjects) associated with a book so that she can classify it, so you need to communicate the keywords associated with your website to Google so that it knows where to list your website in search engine rankings.
Most of the time, when people do searches on Google, they have a question or they're looking for information on a topic. They have no idea what web pages will give them what they're looking for--they count on Google to know that.
This is why article marketing is so crucial to your success. When you do article marketing with your keywords in mind, you are helping Google to associate your web pages with those words, which in turn helps Google to rank your site's pages appropriately in its listings.
If you neglect to market your website or if you don't keep in mind your keywords as you submit articles, it's like taking your book to the librarian and saying, "Just put it wherever you want."
Google is like the librarian, always wanting have her books organized so that people can easily find them. Google's main goal is to organize the web pages on the internet so that Google's customers can easily find what they're looking for. It's keywords that help Google to do its organizing.
