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In order to take the right
steps towards a better position on the search
engines, you must first identify exactly what your website is
offering. Once you have a
good idea of what that is, you need to cut down your idea to just a few
words, literally. A search
engine doesn’t use a full-page public relations newsletter to index
sites—it uses words and short phases.
If you are not sure about what words or phrases best describe
your site, look at it from the user’s perspective.
How would they find your site?
What search words or phrases make sense? The importance of these choices cannot be emphasized enough.
The
keywords that you chose will dictate the life or death of your website. When you chose your keywords, you need to be able to compete
with them. It is
unrealistic to think that a young and small company’s website could
rank number one on keywords like “Software”, “Books”, or
“Sex”. Larger, more
established companies who have been on the Internet for several years are
not only much more well known, but also have links to them from many
other websites. These links
give credit to the larger companies and allow them to compete on such
general words—engines see these sites as a reliable source.
That credibility is established over a long period of time
through affiliate programs, alliances, link partnerships, and other
similar programs. By
submitting your site to link directories, you can increase your “Link
Popularity” and slowly gain similar credibility, as more pages across
the web take notice of you and link to your site.
Hopefully though, you will be using more specific keywords than
the ones mentioned above.
The
fact that most people do not query search engines on single words such
as “Books”, or “Fish”, works in your favor.
Users are more likely to search for something more specific like
“Cook Books”, or “Monk Fish”.
The first step, then, in choosing the right keywords, is to make
them specific. You can
also be more specific in your keywords by narrowing down your geographic
location. For example, if
you are a dentist in Georgia, you would be most interested in attracting
web site visitors from the Georgia area.
Georgia Internet traffic would also be more likely to visit you,
rather than a dentist in another state.
So you would be best off picking keywords like:
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You
also have an excellent chance at ranking well on keywords that are
closely related to the main subject of your site.
For example, if your website subject is gourmet foods and
culinary arts, you might try targeting related keywords such as
“Vietnamese cinnamon” or “Cajun spices”.
The point is, people looking for these items are probably
interested in cooking as well. Furthermore, the competition for these
keywords is much less intense than for “food”, or “Cooking”.
You have a better chance of getting an excellent position using
focused and targeted keywords such as these.
There are other opportunities as well, such as taking advantage
of misspellings.
Misspellings
of keywords should be seriously considered for targeting.
People very frequently misspell the search phrases they use on
search engines. If a
particular keyword for your site is difficult to spell, or you are
aware of common misspellings for your keywords, be sure to include them!
As crazy as it sounds, many websites already do this to great
success. Remember, getting
a number one listing on a misspelled word can be very easy and rewarding
in terms of traffic.
Deciding
on the correct keywords can be the most critical decision you can make
regarding the success or failure of a website.
The keywords chosen must be specific and narrow in their meaning.
Picking related or misspelled words is also a viable option.
Geography should be used to your advantage as well.
The Internet may be a new business medium for some, but the same rules of
basic survival apply—websites that don’t take advantage of every
opportunity will be surpassed by the ones that do.
We
can analyze your keyword selections during the design or re-design phase
of your project.
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