Every website requires the webmaster to deal with search engine optimization or SEO. This is a process that is required to achieve top search engine rankings. To rank well in competitive searches you will need detailed analysis and research. A thorough analysis of competitor pages will help you hone your keywords and use the less competitive keyword phrases. Your keyword analysis is critical. If you target the wrong keywords then everything you do could be a complete waste of time and get you very little results. Let’s have a look at the different aspects of search engine optimization:
Part one of your research is to ascertain the keywords that people are using to search for your subject. What are they interested in regarding your topic and what they are typing into the search engines. Choose two to three different keyword pharses that are being used to apply to your page: the main keyword phrase, and 1 or 2 closely related secondary keyword phrases.
In order to decide which particular phrases to target, you will want to compare the number of searches done for that keyword, with the number of competing pages listed in Google or Yahoo search results.
In order to determine the number of searches use keywords tools such as the Google Keyword Tool. (For a list of keyword tools view the list here) With Google Keyword Tool you can type in some 2 or 3 word phrases that relate well to your topic. Tick the box to include synonyms, and then click the “Get More Keywords” button. The Google results will list the keywords related to your input plus one for synonyms (if you checked that box) under “Additional keywords to consider.”
To see which words have the most search volume click on the “Search Volume” column to sort them. Go through the list and deleting irrelevant phrases. Select only keywords that you feel are most appropriate and have medium to high search volumes. Now you can download the results to save for further research and for creating your Keyword Meta Tag and to use when writing your content. You want to focus your content around those keywords.
If the results aren’t exactly what you wanted repeat the process or enter some of the keyword synonyms from prior results for more ideas. Do this until you find keyword suggestions that more appropriately describe the content and have good search volume.
The next step is to discover how many searches are performed for each keyword. For this you’ll want a keyword research tool like Wordtracker SEOChat or SpyFu. All of these SEO tools all have a free search option, but I strongly suggest that you purchase at least one tool that gives you an in depth search. It’s well worth the money since a keyword research tool or service will automatically show keyword competiton, saving you a lot of time and making the whole process much easier. Basically you want to run a keyword search on each of the keywords or keyword phrases in the downloaded list. You want to determine the amount of competition you have for each keyword, the amount of searches you could possible receive for each keyword and, in the case of AdWords campaigns, the approximate cost of each keyword. You want keywords or keyword phrases that have very little competition AND good search volume. There’s no point in having high search engine rankings for keywords that have very little search volume.
You might plan your website to have lots of pages targeting very easy long tail keywords with few searches, or one page focusing on a few keywords or keyword phrases with heavy search volume. It’s important to consider that conversion rates on most sales pages are approximately 1 to 2 percent, meaning 100 visitors might yield a single sale.
Now you must find how much competition there is for each of your keywords. Using Google search, enter the keywords that you have chosen but put them between quotation marks. Once the results are show note the number of competing pages Google lists (where it says, “Results 1 - 10 of about …” at the top of the results page. Using the quotation marks around your keywords will show only those pages that contain your exact phrase. Those are your direct competitors.
When your research is done and you have decided on the keyword phrases for your website page or pages you will want to use your keywords in the following ways:
1. Create your website title using your main keyword. You can also include one or both of your secondary keyword phrases as a sub-header or descriptive header under the main title.
2. Place your title text in the “TITLE” tag in your html which is at the top of the page code, right after the opening HEAD tag. For example:
3. The “description” meta should be written to entice someone reading it to visit your page. Use your keywords, and use your most important keyword phrase first, because the order gives an indicator of relevancy. Example:
4. Create a meta keywords tag. Use the most important keyword phrase first, followed by the second most important and so on. Example:
Separate keywords with spaces instead of commas (except on blogs). Search engines find exact matches to more search phrases (Google ignores commas, and gives little weight to the meta keywords anyway). For example, if your meta keywords tag contains “best SEO, ranking advice” many search engine’s will not match “SEO ranking.” However, this means a few of the smaller search engines will see your keywords as one big phrase.
Avoid “keyword stuffing, which is repeating any phrase more than two or three times in the title, meta description or meta keywords tags. Also, the fewer the words in your title, meta keywords and meta description tags, the more “relevancy points” each of them will get. The more words you have, the more the importance of each is diluted, making them less effective.
5. Place the keyword(s) from your title text in a H1 or H2 heading at the top of your web page. Try and make this the first text on the page whenever possible (perhaps by making any preceding text into images).
6. Use your keyword phrases in the first one or two sentences right after the H1 title.
7. Use your keyword phrases naturally and SPARINGLY throughout the content, together with other synonyms. Don’t try and force keywords in where they don’t fit. Take the length of the text as your guide to if, and how often they should be repeated. You can use one of the free Keyword Density Analyzers for this or WebCEO’s Density Analysis Report.
8. Use your keyword phrases again at the very end of the page before the closing BODY tag, not the end of the article.
9. If possible, make use of your secondary keyword phrases in H2 or H3 subheadings within your article or content.
10. Use an image near the top of the page. Rename the image with a file name that includes your main keyword, for example: “main-keyword-phrase.jpg”. Then use that keyword in the “ALT” attribute.
11. Save the page as “my-main-keyword-phase.html” or “my-page-title.html”. Use hyphens instead of underscores as word separators since Google reads a hyphen as a space and an underscore as a character.
12. Internal links on your website should use the main keyword in the anchor text such as: < a href="my-page-title.html">My Page Title
13. Create a single directory (web folder) named after the common theme. Usually this will be a keyword applicable to them all. This directory will contain an index page. The index page will list all the pages in that directory and each of those pages will link bank to the index page.
14. Create a sitemap and place a link to it on the index page.
15. The last step is to submit your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ and ALexa. Use del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, and StumbleUpon to bookmark the site. Create a Squidoo lens that is relavent to your site and points back to it.
In conclusion, the more you use search engine optimization or SEO, the better you will get at it and the more tricks and tips you will learn.
Tags: keyword phrases, keywords, search engine optimization, seo
