What's the most important part of optimizing a web site to perform better in the search engines? If you're like most people, you probably thought "keywords." And that's true, of course, as long as you include about a million other techniques and nuances when using keywords to optimize a web site! (Okay, maybe not a million...) But of all the strategies you can use to improve your search engine placements, using keywords effectively is the one that you want to get right.
In the Old Days
Using keywords used to be very simple; all you had to do was add the words that best described your business or web site content in the "keyword" meta tag in the HTML code of the site. Of course, people quickly found lots of ways to manipulate this, so the search engines began altering their search algorithms on a regular basis. The challenge for web site owners today is figuring out how to legitimately use keywords to get good search results, while competing with millions and millions of other web sites that are trying to do the same thing.
Choose Carefully
In order for your keywords to be effective, you must first choose the right keywords for your site, which requires some research. Doing this step is critical. Yet, if you are like many small businesses, you may have overlooked or skipped this step entirely. Why? Probably because you already have a good idea of what keywords you think your customers would use to find your business. However, what you think people will use to find your business is often quite different from what searchers actually use when they perform searches. Once you have found the right keywords for your web site, there are some other basic keyword tips that you can use as well, such as:
- Optimizing for phrases - people don't search using only single words, they search on phrases containing two, three, or more words. Watch your web stats to find out which phrases searchers are using to find your site, then make sure you optimize for those phrases.
- Using "follow-through" words on your landing pages to show visitors that they have come to the right place. For instance, if a visitor arrived at your page from searching on "bright yellow widgets," make sure that those words appear in that order on your landing page.
- Measuring keyword densities - make sure you use your keywords enough to be helpful to the search engines, but not so much that it could be considered keyword-spamming.
- Using your keywords in titles and headings whenever possible.
- Including keywords in your ALT tags for graphics and images.
- Using keywords in your filenames, including image files.
Keywords are Key
There are several techniques you can use to improve you web site's position in the search engines, but using keywords effectively is probably the most powerful tool in your optimization toolbox. Remember, you are competing with millions of other web sites, and they all want to come up in the top 10 results. Choose your keywords wisely, and use them intelligently throughout your entire site. In the end, getting the keywords right can make a world of difference in your search engine rankings, your web site traffic, and the overall success of your small business web site.