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12 Tips for How to Use SEO Keywords
Advice for Rising to the Top of the Internet Search Lists
On Being Listed
by the
Search Engine
Once your site has been posted for few weeks, it will be discovered by the spiders of Yahoo! and Google. Once crawled by these robot codes, your site will be added to the natural search lists, as opposed to the paid lists. You can hurry the process by submitting your site to Google and Yahoo! After a few months, especially if you have website traffic, you will find that other spiders from other search sites are crawling your pages. So why is everyone so concerned with SEO and website submission?
There are several good reasons, the most important being time and traffic. The sooner your website is listed by the numerous search engines, the more traffic you will have to your site. But what traffic will you get? Casual browsers or niche visitors? Readers who come and go, or those who stay and buy? Part of your control over attracting people to your site by natural search is in your keywords: which ones you use and how you use them.
Your goal in using SEO techniques is, of course, to get your site listed among the first few pages of a search result. Harold Davis has called the search results a popularity contest, with the more popular sites being listed first. Indeed, although the search algorithms of the search engines are unpublished and proprietary, top billing seems to be related to 2 factors: how often someone links to your site and how often your keywords are searched.
Some say that good SEO is as much an art and the better SEO consultants are as much artists as experts. Common sense says that not everyone can be #1. But, we all scramble onto the SEO bandwagon because with good search engine optimization, our website should at least be found by those who search.
12 Tips for Using SEO Keywords
Ok, you have carefully chosen a set of keywords for both your site and a particular webpage. How you use the keywords is an important part of SEO.
Please note: Keywords as used here refers to both words and short phrases.
1.
Title
Use your best keywords in your page title. Write descriptive titles with at least one natural phrase commonly used to refer to the contents of the page. People often search using phrases that come naturally to mind.
2.
Heading
Use keywords in the headings--and use headings to organize your page content. The spiders will crawl the headings and expect he concepts in your sentences, headings, and titles to be related. The idea is that the closer the relationship, the better able to match your page to a search.
3.
Content
Keep the text on a page short and well-matched to a set of related keywords. When you change keyword sets, continue onto another page. This seemingly creates better search engine response. An added advantage is the fact that visitors want to quickly scan a page and move on.
If you have a highly informative article that you want kept in one page, that's OK. You can start the page with a short introduction section that follows the SEO techniques. A brief keyword-rich abstract, a few background comments, a related-subject comment-- these all provide SEO opportunities and generate reader-interest, freeing you to present an article that doesn't require embellishing with keywords and phrases beyond the natural flow of the article's content.
The keywords bring the visitor to the site; then anyone that wants to continue with the article will do so. If you prefer having an academic article free of all the SEO hype, write two pages, an introductory page that is SEO rich, and an article page, ready to be printed. Try using the "blurb + read more" link technique to keep the reader, ah, ...reading.
4.
Keywords
Use phrases that are common sound bites. These phrases are often what a potential visitor will enter into the search box when looking for information. Knowing your audience or customers will help you determine what words your target site visitors will most most likely use.
Market research and SEO consultants will help you decide what words and phrases are best for your site. There are sites on the web that rank keywords and suggest synonyms, including Google Adwords: Keywords Tool.
5.
Tagline
Use a tagline on each page that becomes a sound bite associated with your site and its products. This is your branding slogan and refers to the whole site. It should contain a few keywords that fit your niche market. This can be in a paragraph, in the ads column, or wherever. It doesn't have to be a title or header. Sections of your site that have a common theme can have their own taglilne.
Have you noticed mine? "The Webmaster Pages" is the tagline for the section of pages on my site that are written about website design and affiliate marketing. The tagline for the site itself is "Chosen with teaching and learning in mind." These are slogans that guide me in choosing what to put on the site. Hopefully, my loyal visitors will eventually think to search for teaching or learning with chosen and classroom tools with chosen or valerie or coskrey. Any combination of these keywords will place my website in search results, hopefully up high in the list.
A quick Google search test of "chosen teaching tools" returned my site as #4. The set "chosen teaching ideas" returned the site on page 2. The set "classroom tools ideas" had me at #1, but I did not appear until page 2 with the set "classroom tools," and page 5 with "classroom ideas." If you have not visited other pages of this website, the name of the site itself is "Valerie Coskrey's Classroom Tools and Ideas".
6.
Images
Write alternate text for your images,
I get a steady and significant amount of traffic from Google images. Using a unique image on the page as a visual metaphor will encourage the visitor to identify with the page content, preventing the potential "I've been had by a bait and switch" feeling that could result when the image doesn't match the page. Doctored photos, fractal art, Fotolia images, free government photos, and artistic friends and family are great sources for graphics if you are not an artist.
7.
Paragraphs
Use a keyword or key phrase in the topic sentences of several paragraphs, especially the ones after the headings. This is a good place to use synonyms and longer phrases. Some say that the Google spider does not read much past the header and the first couple of sentences of a paragraph. However, I have located paragraphs deep within a page with some keyword searches.
When writing copy, be sure to use keywords in ways that make sense, ways that inform the reader, ways that have value beyond being a keyword. Visitors seek information, and you will want your visitors to trust you as a reliable source of data and ideas. If a keyword doesn't fit the flow of ideas, do not use it, according to the advice from one SEO expert.
8.
Meta
List your keywords in the html meta tag name="keywords," just in case. Google claims to use 100 variables in the search algorithm; I suspect that the keywords tag is probably one of the variables.
9
Description
Write a brief description of the page in the html meta tag name= "description;" again, just in case.
10.
Introduction
Make the first text written be keyword-rich. You can do this with a quick summary of what the page is about immediately following the h2 or h3 tags. A question testing the knowledge of the reader about the topic works here, too. In my introduction, I used the question at the end of the first paragraph and the second paragraph as keywords-rich text for this page. The first paragraph is keyword-rich for the pages in the SEO Techniques page set in my site.
Whenever I test the search engine for my pages, I find that the information in the first p tag is often the information that appears in the search screen. I have also seen the sentence deep within the page that contains a keyword set and phrase, even with the words of the phrase separated, be the beginning of the information that pops up.
11.
Google
Check your keywords with the tools online, including Google Keyword Tool. These site will tell you which words are most often used. They will also list related words for you. I wrote about this above.
12.
Niche
Along with the more common keywords, also use a few of the less common keywords that are more specifically what your page is about. These words will bring more niche traffic with a more finely-tuned interest and possibly a visitor more likely to be a customer than a browser. Don't forget that your ranking depends partly on popularity, so the casual browser is a valued and welcome visitor, too.
You can get SEO experts to do marketing analysis, website design and copywritng, along with keyword analysis. My references for these pages are all SEO consultants. Their webpages offer blog postings, newsletters, and ebooks on the SEO techniques and website design. Visit Flyte, SitePoint, and ADDME.
Maintaining a top-ranked position is easier than first gaining one, but having
regular traffic already established is a plus. Adding new articles and new,
fresh pages regularly helps too. Adjusting keywords to match the changing
times, cultural usage, and current competition is a must for staying on top
of the list. Of course, one must consider that everyone else competing with
you is doing the same, so do not despair if you do not reach #1. Just keep
trying. A solid set of informative articles, a good product, an attractive
site, and judicious use
of SEO tactics should help you rise upwards and keep you near the top.Sometimes
it helps to climb to the top. Just be sure the network branches you used are
strong enough to hold you there. This Arizona Palm is a modified photo by
Valerie.
Author: Valerie Coskrey, ©2008. VCCTI's The Webmaster Pages: SEO Techniques -2
Permission is granted for use as copy in your site, blog, and emailed newsletters. Please include the author's name and the link above to this page in any use or reference to the article. Please, include the references, too. This page is formatted in CSS, so copying and pasting the article will not carry the formatting. Feel free to use a blurb and link back to this page, or reformat the text. If you do use the text, please let me know.
References: These references apply to all the SEO Techniques pages.
- Fathom SEO Search Engine Marketing :by Michael M. Murray, Trade Publications ,pdf file, accessed Mar. 2008.
- O'Reilley Search Engine Optimization Building Traffic and Making Money with SEO by Harold Davis, O'Reilly Media, .pdf file, accessed Mar. 2008. .
- SEO Guru: SEO Crash Course, www.theseoguru.com, accessed Mar. 2008
- SEO Tools, and SEO Tips, www.submityoursite.us, (/tools.htm and /tips.com) accessed Mar. 2008
- Web Marketing Advice, newsletter and blog from www.flyte.biz, accessed 2006-2008.
- web design newsletter from www.sitepoint.com, accessed 2006-2008.
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