SE

What are keywords?

Keywords are literally the key into the Web. Surfers seek information by using keywords in search engines. Keywords are so important that you should build your Web pages around them. Keywords could make or break your search engine positioning. You must be aware of the keywords that are likely to attract visitors to your site. I would recommend that you make a list of your top 30 keywords on a spreadsheet or database. Each page of your Web site should concentrate on no more than two keywords. These keywords should appear in the various parts of your web page, including the title, header, body text and the keyword-, description- and content-META tags. Whilst you will be able to see the page title, body text and text links on the Web page, the tags can only be seen in the 'source' HTML. The keywords should appear at the top of the body text. If you have 30 keywords you will need at least 15 pages with two keywords per page. Remember, the more specific your keywords are, the better the chance that people who find your site through search engines will actually benefit from its content.

For SEO keywords and keyword research is essntial.

It is apparent that ideally each of your pages should concentrate on just one or two keywords as you would be hard pushed to optimize your page for more. The search engines will refer surfers to the most relevant individual pages and not usually to your home page. Remember your page title is the first element that search spiders will find and it follows that the titleof each page should be carefully considered. It is the task of Web designers to optimize each Web design for high Search Engine ranking.

To see the importance of keywords, undertake a search of the most important keyword for your Web site. Look at how the top ranked sites have this keyword in their pages by looking at their 'Source' HTML. Some search engines, when presenting their rankings for a surfers search, may include the top line of the page text, others the META description tags or the title of the page.

Use your keywords in your graphic file names: wordphrase.gif is better than image1.gif and image alt tags.

Keyword weight or density is the number of times that your keyword appears on a page compared to the total number of words. By using your keywords frequently and reducing the remaining text, the keyword density will increase. Whilst keyword density may be important in your search engine rankings, you must also ensure that the text is sensible to your visitors. Some search engines may penalize pages that contain less than a hundred words.

What is keyword research?

The process of uncovering and selecting the appropriate keywords for your site is called keyword research.

Keyword research is the science of discovering keywords that internet surfers are using to find the information they seek. It is estimated that search engines such as Google and Yahoo provide 80% of traffic to websites. Keyword research is the fundamental and most vitally important aspect of your search engine optimization campaign. If your site is targeting the wrong keywords, the search engines and your customers may never find you, resulting in lost dollars and meaningless rankings.

An important aspect of keyword research is to find keywords that are frequently searched for and that are within your reach.

Keyword Value

Some keywords have greater commercial value than others. Many keywords may attract visitors but those visitors are looking for information. I have a woman's health website which provides valuable information for patients. It is the most popular personal website in its category but it has very little commercial value. The majority of visitors are looking for health information only.

Keyword commerciality is the commercial value of a keyword / keyword phrase. A low commerciality keyword may attract a large number of visitors, but these visitors are not looking to purchase anything.

The Long Tail

Search engine optimization tips: One of the conventional search engine optimization tips for new websites with low authority is to concentrate on long tail keywords. Recently a marketing concept has been working its way through the online marketing community, called The Long Tail. Essentially, the long tail is the hundreds to thousands of keywords and key phrases that a site is found for.

The principle of the Long Tail is the opposite of focusing on the top 10-20 keywords for marketing websites. When studying the referrals from the search engines, those that focus on the top 10-20 terms may be missing the majority of potential traffic.

Conventional thinking applies the 80-20 rule that the top terms provide 80% of the business, but this has proved to be the opposite.

In most cases, the top 10 terms may provide a lot of traffic, but not nearly as much as the total terms after the top 10 or 20 most popular. Add up the terms that refer 1-3 visits during the month, and they will add up to more total visitors than the top terms. On closer examination, most sites will have the majority of their business (sales and leads) generated from these terms that are rarely tracked. This is the heart of the long tail that the length, or total number of low-number referred terms outnumbers the height, or the total of top 10 terms.

In most studies, the success of the site was from the hundreds or thousands of referrals outside of the most popular terms.

Take a look on your keywords that have provided traffic on your control panel web statistics or use Google Analytics.

Keyword research is the science of discovering keywords that internet surfers are using to find the information they seek. It is estimated that search engines such as Google and Yahoo provide 8% of traffic to websites.

  • The success of a Website is dependant on the quantity and quality of its content.
  • The content should be structured around keywords.

No keyword research tool can accurately identify every search conducted for a given keyword.

Keyword research tools provide access to databases of information provided by the search engines.

Each keyword tool database is subject to their sources and they all use different sources.

As a result:

  • The numbers of searches reported by the different tools vary.
  • KEI calculations will differ.

Until recently, Google, the largest source for search engine keyword referrals, only provided relative frequency graphs.

From July 2008, Google has commenced offering actual numbers of searches for the previous month.

 

First Website Design .com aims to help you build a high quality website that will receive large volumes of targeted traffic . It will provide you with advice on the best internet marketing strategies that will assist you to sell products and ways to make money online.

For information on search engine optimisation, please visit our specialist site - SEO 4 us .com

David Viniker, the author and webmaster of FirstWebsitedesign.com, believes that quality of content is a prerequisite to success. He is a clinician (consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist - ObGyn at Whipps Cross University Hospital, London - borders of London and Essex). He has research and teaching interests. His website www.2womenshealth.com receives 1.5 million visitors annually and is the most popular personal women's health website on the internet. He has applied his clinical skills to researching SEO techniques.

We are based in Loughton, Essex and close to North and East London and Hertfordshire.