How To Use Keywords To Improve Your Ranking In Search Engines

The importance of keywords

Keywords or key phrases you choose will determine how your site is positioned in the search engines. It is always better to have lots of pages each focusing on a small group of keywords. This will give them more relevance to each individual page.

For example if your site is about shoes you may have lots of different types of shoes.

Your index page should have a menu leading into each of the different categories of shoes.

You might have a page for sandals, one for platform shoes as well as stilettos, court shoes and flat heel shoes.

Choosing keywords

First you have to think like your customer. What would they type into a search engine if they wanted to find the products you are selling.

Use phrases as well as single words. Often someone looking for a product or service will type in several words. For example a customer may want to buy a shoe with stiletto heels. They may type in "stiletto heel shoe", "black stiletto" "stiletto heel","stiletto high heel" or "high heel shoe"

brainstorming keywords.

Start by thinking of as many keywords associated with your site as you can. To make it easier there is a free tool for this which can be found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

It will give you the number of times this word has been searched for in the last month. This will also give you a guide to the popularity of the keyword.

Try looking for similar sites to your own and viewing the source code. This will give you ideas for keywords that your competitors are using. Viewing the source code is easy, just right click the mouse somewhere on the page and click on view source.

A good idea is to open a file in wordpad or other text editor and call it "keywords" then if you find words or phrases relevant to your site copy and paste them into your file. You can then view them offline and even print the page out to study it. This can give you ideas for keywords you may not have thought of.

When you have made a list of keywords relevant to each page you will then need to check the supply and demand if you want an edge over your competitor.

You will already know the demand of each keyword the next thing you need to do is to take a sheet of paper or use a spreadsheet on the computer and make 3 columns naming them keyword, supply, and demand.

In the first column list the keywords that have the highest demand. Then in the supply column type how many times it has been searched for.

Lastly in http://www.Altavista.com or http://www.Google.com type in your keyword surrounded by quotation marks like this "stiletto shoes" and see how many sites come up. They will list the number of sites with that keyword in it.

Go through your list, and see how many have a large demand and lower supply. Of course the idea is to have as many large demand and low supply keywords as possible.

Optimise your site by creating theme based,keyword focused pages for each category of shoes or whatever it is that you are selling.

This will greatly increase your chances of getting a higher ranking in the search engines.

Just concentrate on a couple of keywords in each page.

The title meta tag

The title tag is THE most important part of your webpage. It must appeal to the search engines and also the visitor to your site. The title of your page is used as the link to your site by the search engines and is visible to the reader.

Use your most important keywords in the title. Make the title between 15-20 words in length.

The title must be compelling for people to want to click through to your site.

Don't ever make the mistake of leaving the title tag blank.

Not a good idea if you want an edge over your competition!!

Every page on your site must have a keyword focused title.

The description meta tag

The description tag is also very important and some search engines display it as a summary of your site. Use some important keywords here but don't repeat them more than 3 or 4 times as it could be seen as spamming.

Keyword tag.

This tag is not as important to search engines as it once was, but you should still use it to list your keywords.

The alt tag

This tag is used to describe images and is useful to the visually impaired.

If an image takes a long time to load the alt tag will appear first.

Add keywords to this tag as part of the description.

The main body of text

Place emphasis on your keywords in the first paragraph of the main text, and repeat them several times in the rest of the page. As each page is theme based the keywords will be relevant,and will appear naturally in the body of the text.

You will greatly increase your chances of getting your site in the top positions of search engines if you follow these ideas.

You must however regularly register all your pages with each of the main search engines to make sure the pages are still there as they can suddenly disappear, or drop down from a number 1 position to number 201!!

Normally about once a month is enough.

You can use a site submitter to make this a lot easier.

A good one that I use is http://selfpromotion.com or another one is http://www.submit-it.com

About The Author

Kathy is an artist and webdesigner for small businesses. She has designed sites for other artists to showcase their work, and has her own online business. Kathy has written several articles on promoting an online business. Visit her site at http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk.

healthytowealth@aol.com

[tags]seo,search engine optimization,search engine ranking,search engine placement,site promotion,keywords[/tags]

A SEO Choice For Content Management System (CMS)

There are three main 'tiers' to search engine optimization: the internal, the external, and the all-too-important website content itself. While the internal and external factors have everything to do with server issues and link popularity plus, the content portion of a website is a large piece of the SEO pie. To add to the mix, all too often this important content needs to be placed into the hands of end users within the company, and therefore they must opt for a system to keep their website up to date. This article addresses this content management system dilemma from an SEO point of view.

I was originally contacted by a community college that needed a solution that would allow their different departments to update their website via web-based methods. More importantly, it must be SIMPLE TO USE as most of these updaters or "users" had very little knowledge of computers. Many had little or no experience with Microsoft Word, so simplicity was a MUST.

The second dilemma was a little harder. Knowing that I was an SEO specialist, they needed me to either design or find a Content Management System that would allow their site to be SEO compliant. It was important that their current and potential students be able to find their site using search engines, both quickly and easily.

Prior to the start of this project, they had someone in-house do a little bit of research. The Savvy software was recommended as a solution to the end user problem, but they needed me to review the software for search engine compliancy. I took one afternoon and spent some time on the phone with the company, asking detailed questions about the software and how it's built.

I found that this company had done their SEO homework prior to building this software. They did a remarkable job handling the often overlooked, yet extremely important SEO compliancy issues. They addressed many issues that most CMS's do not.

Savvy is software you can install on your own web server or host.

Owning the software allows you to choose your own web host – one that is not listed on a spam list. If your site is hosted on a computer that also hosts known spammers, your website is often also penalized for spam since it resolves near the same IP address of the spammer. With the ability to install the software on the host of your choice, you have the option to choose a "clean" server. In addition, if you are required to use the host of the software, your domain name is being pointed, or redirected to your site. However, if the redirect is not programmed a particular way, it can be considered a type of spam for which Google penalizes. Make sure you have control over your software and your web host server.

Page names are SEO compatible.

Search engines frown upon urls such as www.reneescomputerhelp.com/page.asp?ID=23451fjdlks34565. Savvy creates pages with names like this: www.reneescomputerhelp.com/seo/index.cfm which is completely search engine friendly and avoids complicated parameters that search engines tend to avoid or deny spidering altogether.

Templates can be built with SEO in mind, so that every page created using these templates is search engine friendly.

By strategic use of CSS or tables (if one must), the layout of the template code can become search engine optimized – meaning any page created with this "SEO Template" is also search engine compliant. For example:

One of Google's 106+ algorithmic variables is the analyzation of the first 200 words of the body. Many times web developers unwittingly design the site so that other things, like navigation for instance, precedes the body copy, and therefore it is considered by Google to be the first 200 words of the content. If this occurs over several pages within the website, it begins to look to Google like every page is the same since the first 200 words of every page are the same.

Savvy gives the webmaster power to design "SEO Templates." The next step is to teach the end user to adequately write the content to be search engine optimized. During Savvy end user training, I usually include a 30 minute session on the requirements needed for their content to be 'likable' by the Google mathematical algorithm. There are several simple steps that an end user can usually follow without complication of any sort. It's also made easier in that the WYSIWYG editor in Savvy compliments the need for these steps by utilizing well-thought-out editing tools.

Savvy's editing tools make it easy to teach end users not only to update their pages, but how to make them search engine compliant, and in some cases, even search engine optimized.

Headings, bold type, alternative text for images and more, all play an important role in search engine compliancy. With Savvy's editing tools in the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, a 30 minute session on search engine optimization can teach the end user how to appropriately apply these features within their text to make their pages at least search engine compliant and at other times optimized. Remember, compliant means that search engines will 'eat' it, but 'optimized' mean it's the search engine's 'favorite food.'

Savvy gives you power over your meta data.

The most important meta tag in a web page is its Title tag. When creating a new page, Savvy gives you the opportunity to write not only the Title tag, but the Description and Keywords as well. The User Manager in Savvy controls the rights given to end users as to whether they are allowed to edit the meta data or not. It would be best that only those trained in SEO write the meta data. Remember one thing though: Content on your page is KING and always will be, but the next most important is the page's Title Tag. Most other CMS's assign page titles for you and leave you with no control over this important SEO issue.

Savvy's navigational features render text links.

"Anchor text" is an important factor in search engine optimization. Anchor text, the text used in a link to a particular page, is not only relevant from external links, but also from within your site. Structuring your site so that your key phrases are used in anchor texts to point to your most important landing pages is one of the keys of good SEO navigation. Savvy's navigation, using CSS (cascading style sheets) to control the look and feel, renders text links that are easily spidered by search engines and gives the end user power to control the anchor text and therefore, the overall structure of the site for search engine optimization.

After careful review of Savvy, I determined that it was an excellent solution to resolve the need for a content management system as well as the need for SEO compliancy / optimization. I've used Savvy now for several web clients and all clients can be found on Google easily by typing a portion of their company name. You may even find the specific pages for a department if you type the company name and its department. Too often a website can't be found for even its company name, but Savvy has set up their CMS to win in the area of SEO; even if you're looking to optimize your site for keywords and phrases other than your company name. Savvy allows for well-developed sites that Google can spider and give their searchers the relevant results they need from you. Savvy makes both the client and Google happy.

Renee Wasula - Certified SEO Analyst
http://www.reneescomputerhelp.com
renee@reneescomputerhelp.com

[tags]SEO, SEO Content Management System, SEO CMS, Search Engine Optimization[/tags]