How To Choose Keywords To Improve Your Site Ranking

[gigabyte]

by Gigabyte
first published: January 4, 2007

Many search engines no longer consider your keywords as part of their ranking criteria. However, choosing the right keywords is still extremely important in helping your visitors find your web site.

If you want your web site to be ranked higher in the search engines, then find out the words that searchers use to get to your site and then place them in the appropriate places. Make sure you research your keywords extensively before you begin placing them on your web site.

Avoid the trap of placing too many keywords on a single page, because many search engines consider this as spamming and your site might not even be indexed. Below are some quick tips on how to conduct a keyword research and how to use them to optimize your site and rank it as high as possible in the search engines.

1. Write down keywords you think are relevant. Have a brainstorming session and don’t discard any idea that comes into your mind. You will cleanup the list later on.

2. Always think like a customer. This is a rule of thumb in marketing. Remain focused on the prospective customers and try to understand how they think.

3. Try to think of the most common spelling mistakes for your keywords and include them in your list.

4. Finally brush up your list. Remove any words that are simply too common and aren't searched for too often. You don’t want to waste keywords that have no value.

5. Use Keyword Research tools. Once you have narrowed down your keywords list, it's time to evaluate the result. There are numerous resources available on line but remember these tools are not perfect. Here are a few to help you get started:

Google Keyword Tool - generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics

Good Keywords - a free Windows software for finding the perfect set of keywords for your web pages


6. Check your web content to ensure that your main keywords are covered on your text.

7. Checkout your competition. What keywords are they using to get high ranking?

8. Don't use single words. Phrases are better than words.

9. Make sure that the description of your web site reflects what you have to offer.

10. Try to anticipate your prospective visitors' needs and make sure you meet them.

11. Choose keywords with a narrower focus to face less competition.

12. Choose a primary keyword for which to optimize your web page, and some secondary keywords that can be helpful in increasing the number of your potential visitors who use them in their search.


This is a short summary of some of the elements in choosing the right keywords to improve your site ranking. If you follow these simple rules, you will see results. Good luck.

[charlesgan]

a very comprehensive can say... good writting.
indeed there is much more you can write about keywordresearch tools.
a good place to start is wordtracker...

[referencement]

13- use your keywords in anchor text to improve your ranking,

[Seo Madrid]

Another source worth trying: http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/

[chrysostom]

thanks for the tips!

[Seo Madrid]

Actually, something that works good for me is, if you are running a PPC campaign, it's a perfect arena to try all possible keywords and based on the profitability of each of them, you might find the most interesting ones to target on SEO. The tools mentioned here are just a good indication of what people are searching, but you can't know how good they're going to convert for you, so doing a test on PPC can give you a better picture of what it is going to work for your site out of all the suggested keywords

[borzack]

i read somewhere that it's better to use 'longtail' keyword for a website. can someone elaborate?

[Seo Madrid]

Originally Posted by borzack

i read somewhere that it's better to use 'longtail' keyword for a website. can someone elaborate?

Well, that´s relative. The long tail keywords normally convert better, as a) they are more specific and b) are used by users that are in a closer stage to convert. For example, let´s say that someone is looking for a digital camara. Then after checking in several sites that user will decide to buy the "sony dsc whatever". So based on that theory that´s the keyword that you should rank for, as the user is in the buying stage of the research.

However, by doing this you would be giving up high volumes of traffic. Based on my experience, if you rank for "digital camera" you´ll get a lower quality of traffic but you´ll end selling more, as the high volumes of traffic will compensate the quality in traffic.

[costa blanca]

yes i agree long tail keywords only seem to be ok if you are trying to sell one particular item.

[Comenius]

Originally Posted by gigabyte

by Gigabyte
2. Always think like a customer. This is a rule of thumb in marketing. Remain focused on the prospective customers and try to understand how they think.

This should be the number one piece of advice that everyone considers.

You really have to try to put yourself into the head of someone that might be looking for what you are offering. It's a lot harder than it sounds, especially to do it well!

[temyong]

A very informative tips thanks.

[TrafficFinder]

Wow, a year later and still impressed. Nice work.

[Alex Aguilar]

Great post!

[robertjackeline]

Good Post! Well, now there is a tendency to select long tail key phrases, because it offers good conversion ration and it is easier to get ranking than any generic keyword.

[nalds20]

thanks for the tips.. very nice information

[corlock]

nice article you got here...maybe you're having a hard time copy and pasting it...LOL

[Limtex]

Here some tips

1.First choose some keywords most relevant to that site.
2.search those keyords in search engines
3.Check the top ten sites meta tag
4.Find the what keywords they used
5.next see the regular keywords search results through google adwords overture