"Keywords” are the cornerstone of search engine optimisation. They are those little words and phrases that people type into search engines to navigate their way through the Internet - and hopefully to your website.
Good web content containing relevant keywords is your starting point, not only in selling your product or service, but in getting the right people to your website. So before you start writing the content for your site, it will be well worth your while to research and figure out what your keywords actually are.
How to identify your keywords
Your keywords should obviously describe the service/product that you are promoting or selling via your website. But if I’m selling apples, ‘Apples’ in not sufficient to ensure that I’m found by the search engines for the delicious organic fruit that I sell. So how do I expand on ‘apples’, to give myself the best shot of being found by potential customers?
- Brainstorm all the keywords and phrases that you believe relate to your product or service.
- Ask your friends, colleagues, employees what words they would use to find what you are offering through a search engine. They may provide you with some alternatives that you’ve missed.
- See what keywords your more successful competitors are using on their websites.
- Run the list of keywords and phrases that you’ve compiled through the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to see how popular the phrases are. (If you have a niche product with a relatively small market, bear in mind that your precise keywords and phrases may not appear to be that popular.) This tool will also provide a list of alternative keywords and phrases for any phrase you type in. Commonsense will suffice to weed out all the irrelevant words and phrases that are spewed out by the keyword generator.
- Refine your list so that you have a limited core of highly relevant and targeted words and phrases. It’s no use being too vague – there is literally a whole world of competition out there, and you need only compete for potential customers with those in your niche market.
Where to put them now that you have them?
Now you’ve got your list, use it or share it with your copywriting team so that is integrated throughout your website. Don’t skimp on website content either – a good few hundred words of well-written and well-researched copy can go a long way in improving your website’s search engine rankings.
Keywords should be used in:
- Title tags – this is the page title that you see on the bar at the very top of your browser window (and what you see when you minimise the browser.)
- Meta data keyword lists and description tags (this is within the html code). The blurb inside the description tag is what you see when you see the entry listed in a search engine.
- Headings – top level and sub headings should include keywords.
- The main site content (preferably in the first couple of paragraphs). Although don’t cram in the keywords to the detriment of the readability and added value of your content.
- The text for the hyperlinks between your site’s pages.
- The ‘title’ tags for links between pages of your website
- In the ‘alt’ tags used for images.