Search Engine Optimization: Keywords

One keyword tool to rule them all

The foundation of good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is finding the most relevant keywords for the content on your website. There are a number of useful tools available to assist you in finding the best keywords for your site. WordTracker is one of the best (if not the best) keyword research tool on the market. They offer a trial for their software. However, if you’re in the SEO field, WordTracker is well worth the $300 a year.

WordTracker allows you to see how many times a particular keyword has been queried in Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN and more. It also finds similar keywords that are searched for based on the initial keyword that you provide it. Search Engine Optimization is a lot easier with software like WordTracker. Yahoo offers a keyword research tool for free but it is quite slow and not nearly as comprehensive as WordTracker’s software. However, Yahoo’s tool is free.

Optimize, optimize, optimize

Once you’ve found the most relevant keywords for your website content, begin optimizing your content with the chosen keywords. What does that mean - optimize your content? To put it simply, optimizing your website content involves integrating your keywords into your content in a creative, non-spamming way.

First begin with the <title> tags of your web pages. Make sure that all of the pages of your site do not have the exact same <title> tag. The search engines do not like this and will most likely place your content in their supplemental index - basically the index where content is not searchable. You don’t want your content in the supplemental index, so don’t use the same <title> tags on every page.

Next, optimize your description meta tag. Make sure to include some of the keywords in the description as well. Keep your description short (less than 200 characters) and concise. Avoid using generic words. Enter in the information that your target audience is looking for.

The keywords meta tag is another place where you can add in your keywords. The keywords meta tag is not used by Google, but some engines still use it. There is no need to repeat words in the keywords field. Some people think that adding the keywords “dog” and “dog food” are two different things. Well, they are two different things, but you don’t need to use the word “dog” twice. Simply enter “dog, food” to achieve the same result. Search engines do not like “keyword stuffing” - repeating the same keyword over and over again in bulk. Make sure when adding keywords in the description and keywords meta field that you don’t use the same word more than 3 times. An example would be: “dog, dog food, dog bones, dog collars”. Instead, enter “dog, food, bones, collars”. You don’t need to repeat the same word - the search engines are pretty bright!

After you’ve taken care of the meta fields, you’re ready to optimize the content of your web pages. The content in your website is extremely important. Some people stuff their meta-tags with keywords and have very little content. Search engines love content. People love content. Do yourself a favor and make sure that you add rich, keyword dense content throughout your site. Keyword density (the percentage of your content that contains your keywords) should stay between 3 and 5 percent of the page you’re optimizing. This keyword density tool will tell you how dense your web pages are with the keywords you’re using to optimize your content.

Do what we do

Besides using keyword optimization in your meta tags and content, you should also create a blog and optimize the content of that as well. It is also very important to find high-quality one way links from other websites with similar content to your website. We will discuss these and even more ways to optimize your content with keywords in the next article.

Search Engine Optimization is tedious; however, if you’re willing to invest the time and patience, you will be rewarded by having a site that ranks high in the search engines.