subject: Choosing And Using Keywords To Optimise Your Website [print this page] Keywords are the words that your target market are using when searching for the products or services you sell in search engines like Google. You need to figure out what these words or phrases are then use them throughout your website so the search engines display your website in the results when someone conducts a search using those words.
Step 1 Keyword Research
Your choice of keywords can mean the difference between lots of search engine traffic to your website and none. So you need to put some time into choosing the best ones. Search engine optimisation is very competitive these days, so you will most likely need to target niche markets by including things such as your location or a specific product name.
Here are some tips:
Use a free tool like Google Keywords Tool to find out what people are searching for
Two words together can count as one keyword - if you are selling tennis equipment, you could use keywords like 'tennis balls', 'tennis rackets', 'tennis shoes' etc.
You can choose combinations of keywords like, 'buying tennis rackets', 'tennis rackets for sale' etc.
Think about your keywords from a customer point of view - what words would potential customers use to find your business/products/services
Use your company name in phrases as people do search by company name
Use your geographic location as a keyword - people will often search for businesses within their local area
Review your competitor websites to get ideas of words you can use
Don't use keywords that are too broad. Instead use modifiers to make generic keywords and phrases more specific. For example, insurance related companies might use the key phrase 'health insurance quotes'
Try to use multi-word phrases, eg 'car rentals newcastle'
If you are ready to go beyond the basics, get our detailed guide to the process of keyword
research here - http://www.bloomtools.com/process/help/knowledgeBase.html?answerId=239
Step 2 - How to Use Keywords
To get your website appearing in the search engine results for your chosen keywords, they need to be strategically placed throughout your website. The most valuable places for keyword placement are the page titles, page names, headings and internal links within your content.
Tip Write the content for your pages first, then go back over them and add keywords in where possible. This ensures your copy reads well for humans, not just search engines.
SEO essentials:
Ensure keywords are included in the title of each page you create
Repeat your keywords near the top of each page as headings or use bold
Design your website with pages that don't have more than 300 - 500 words per page, with keywords repeated 3 - 6 times for every hundred words
Your overall keywords should be repeated throughout the whole website, not just the individual page - use links back to the home page with the keywords in them
At the bottom of each page, link to another part of your website using its keywords. Eg: 'Click here to view our tennis shoe collection'
Fill out the meta description and meta tags for each page in The Web Console
Give all your images alt text rich with keywords
A great strategy for getting qualified traffic to your website is creating pages within your website to target specific niche markets and optimising these with lots of keywords. For example, a law firm that specialises in family law could create a page with information about their family law services and optimise it for keywords such as 'family law gold coast' to attract that specific market.
Another thing to keep in mind with your content and keywords the search engines often reward websites that have fresh, regularly updated content by giving them a higher spot on the search results. So you need to be regularly adding to your content with new pages, articles or a blog and ensure you always use your keywords as much as possible with lots of hyperlinks.
If you don't have these tools (articles, blog etc.) running on your new website, talk to your
Internet Consultant once the website is live and they will help you take it to the next level with more functionality.
