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The last section focused on the basic do's and dont's in building a search-engine optimized website.
In this section, we will look more at keywords: the corner stone of search engines
How to choose the right keywords
By now, you must know that keywords are of great importance if you want to be listed highly in the search engines. You don't just pick keywords, you must choose the right keywords. Here are a few tips on how to go about this task:
1. Think specific keyword phrases, not just generic keywords. Competition is very high in those generic words so your chances of ranking high for a general term is very dim. Let's cite some examples:
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Generic Keyword
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Specific Keyword Phrase
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negligee
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silk satin negligee
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pearls
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South Sea pearls
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women's shoes
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tennis shoes for women
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2. Think how people would search for a product or service like yours. Brainstorm with your group. Ask people for ideas. You can also use Internet tools to find out exactly what people type in the search engines when they search. You can do this by using Google and Yahoo. This was discussed in How to Prepare your e-Business Plan.
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Check if your keyword is a good keyword:
Is it too popular?
You know your selected keywords are popular. You know what are the phrases that people use. But it doesn't mean it's a good keyword.
A keyword that is too competitive, meaning too many sites competing is not really a viable keyword.
You can use a tool called Wordtracker to see if your keyword has good business potential. It doesn't just give you the phrases used and how many times it was used but it gives you a very clear idea of the popularity of that keyword. In other words, you can choose those keywords that are used by searchers but not really used by your competitors.
Wordtracker has published a case study on "Vegetarian Dog Food". It is a keyword case study with contributions from nine SEO experts. To download you free copy, click here.
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Try Wordtracker for free, click here.
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3. Check out what keywords your competitors are using. Use the search engine to do a seach for a keyword that you have in mind. Let's go back to our example. Do a search on "South sea pearls". You will see several sites listed. Click on the first three and view the source HTML code. Here, you can find the keywords that they use in their metatags. You should be able to pick a few ideas from here.
To view the source code, click the "View" at the top of your browser and then select "Source".
4. Use your own website traffic log. If you are your own administrator, this should be easy to do. Simply log on to your administration site and look at that portion on search queries. This section will give you the list of words or phrases that searchers used to find your site.
To continue, click here.
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