Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

Webmasters sometimes believe that they already know the “best” keywords for their website, or ecommerce store. Most of the time they are wrong, and here are some reasons why.

Your customers don’t know as much as you do about your products or business in general. They don’t know the terminology and they might use different keywords to search Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. For example, a recent study found out that many people search for nose job instead of the clinical term or keyword “rhinoplasty” resulting in lower quality results for the potential client, and less business for the doctor.

It’s very important that you find the right keywords to not only get you more traffic, but to get you the traffic that will convert into sales. For example, one keyword that seems to get the most traffic in the web design business in the Cleveland, Ohio area is Cleveland Web Design. This keyword alone gets us about 20 - 30 unique visitors a day. Unfortunately, the keyword phrase does not convert into sales. So, just because you may get traffic on a certain keyword, or phrase, doesn’t always mean it will convert. The reason being in this case is, 80% of the traffic we get is from our competition checking out our website.

How much weight do title tags carry among the search engine result pages (SERP) that you’re trying to capture? Plenty according to most Web site development experts. This reason is why you need to pay close attention to the words that appear in the title tag – and the order in which they appear. It is extremely important that you develop a crisply worded title tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your Web page content.

Title tags carry hefty algorithmic hefty weight when it comes to search engines. Title tags are equally important as your visible text copy and the links pointing to your pages. You should definitely incorporate the name of your company in the title tag. If your company’s name is well known, it is essential that you include it in the title tag. The title tag gives you a great opportunity to further market your company and its brands.

The title tag has been and will continue to be one of the most important elements in search engine rankings. Title tags are the over-arching descriptors for the page; they communicate with the search engines telling them what each page is about. Don’t overlook your title tags. Their importance simply can’t be denied.

Looking to steer more traffic to your Web site? The key to motoring your success up the search engine ladder is in your keywords. Keywords are the function that drive search engines, and the most important keywords are what lead customers to your site. Once you’ve developed your site and understand which keywords are most important to you, it’s time to write the content for your site. You probably know that by repeating the keywords you can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) status. The frequency of which the keywords are repeated is commonly referred to as the keyword density.

Keyword density essentially is the ratio of the word that is being searched for against the total number of words appearing on a given Web page. If your keyword occurs only two or three times on a page of 500 or more words, it stands to reason that it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur 10 times on a page of similar length.

Keyword placement on the page, and their density on the page, are two important areas where keywords are felt on your Web page. The choice of which keywords to target on a page is often of vital importance, especially for highly competitive keywords.

Your choice of keywords – and their density — is the primary reason people will discover your Web site. Customers are led to your Web site through their searches for information. With this thought in mind, it becomes vitally important that your site offers as many opportunities to be included in those search results as possible.

There is no magic formula or guarantee for success behind keyword density. Just remember that no keywords translates to no placement among the search engine results page.

Wait… What exactly are keywords you ask? Keywords are the search “terms or words” that users enter in search engines to find web sites in search engines such as Google, Live, or Yahoo. These words or phrases must align to the theme of your web site in order to have a successful SEO campaign.

Keywords are vital to the success of your web site. It is a waste of time money and energy to optimize your web pages for keywords that no one uses in the search engines.

The purpose of SEO is to get targeted visitors to your web site. In order to get targeted traffic, your keywords and phrases must not be to general or too broad.

Remember to choose keywords and phrases that are generic enough so the surfer can find your product or service but at the same time selective enough to discount millions of others pages and competitors. The more specific a keyword is, the more targeted and qualified visitors come to your site which in turn increases your sales.

Here are some general guideline to consider when choosing your keywords:

• Try to use only two to four keywords at a time.
• Remember to be specific enough to bring in only target traffic
• Try to avoid over competitive keywords and phrases.
• Don’t use keywords that have nothing to do with your site.
• Single keywords usually will not work and usually are not effective.

Use Google’s Keyword tool to help generate new keyword ideas.