Search Engine Optimization: Keywords

With millions of web sites on the Internet, it’s understandable that sites owned by the vast majority of us don’t make it anywhere near the top of the heap on search engines such as Google™. While getting on Page One of a keyword search is a hard slog for most, it’s still important to move our site up in the rankings by ensuring we’ve chosen and plugged in the most appropriate keywords.

Whether you have created your own web site or have hired a webmaster to do it for you, some tweaking may be needed. In web parlance, this is referred to as SEO, or search engine optimization. It typically involves getting into the site’s HTML code, so if this makes you squeamish, you may want to consider passing this task to an SEO specialist.

Regardless of whether or not you do the coding, your involvement as site owner is crucial. Why? Because nobody knows your business better than you. That’s important because you need to come up with keywords that best describe what you do, yet differentiate you from the competition. Phrases that use keywords should also be used as keywords. They are the conduit through which people will be able to find you. Here’s how they get used on your website:

• Title tag: The Title appears in the top of the browser when someone lands on your site, and tells them what your site is about. It should contain at least some of your most important keywords as close to the beginning of the Title as possible. Reducing the number of words in the Title will increase the “weight” of the keywords – a good thing for search engines.
• Meta Keywords tag: While not as important as it used to be, this is still sometimes used by Google™. The most important keywords should be placed at the beginning of the tag.
• Meta Description tag: Like the Meta Keywords tag, this is not the most important tag on your page, but should contain your best keywords or phrases. This tag contains a concise description of what your site is about, but is not viewable by a browser.
• Beginning of page text: Place the most important keywords/phrases as close to the beginning of the text as possible. If you have a lot of keywords, you may want to be selective, since forcing in too many keywords will make the text unappealing to read. Also, you don’t want to make it look like you’re keyword-stuffing (frowned upon by search engines) by using words that don’t work well together.
• End of page text: Repeat the same important keywords again in the last 50 characters of your page text. Again, use only enough keywords to make the text read well.
• ALT tags: These are the little “flyouts” that appear when you hover the mouse over a graphic or link. Increase your searchability by using them, and incorporating keywords within them.

Some points about keywords:

• Avoid using keywords that most of your competition uses. What words or phrases describe precisely what you do, are somewhat unique but are still likely to be used by someone in a search engine? Don’t make them too obscure, however.
• Remember that you can use keywords in a graphic, but they won’t help searchability one bit. Search engines can’t read graphics. This is where ALT tags will help.
• Bold and/or underline keywords within your text. Search engines pay more attention to words highlighted in this way.
• Use top level headings in your text, and use keyword in the headings.

One free tool that I have found handy is Web CEO (webceo.com). Not only will it help you with all aspects of SEO, it is good for checking the frequency with which the keywords you are contemplating using are searched on a daily basis, what alternate words you might consider, and which competitive sites are using those words.

Choice of keywords and proper use in a web site are the most important actions you can take in search optimization. Of course, there are other things you can do as well. I’ll be covering those in future articles.