Effective Keyword selection is essential to attracting customers and internet web traffic to the business website. Identifying a good, short term or phrase that properly describes the business, the product or the service though can be a challenging task. Keyword selection must characterize the page content though if the search engines are understand what the page is about.
Most start up businesses either haphazardly guess at what would be a good keyword or keyword phrase or simply ignore keyword selection altogether. As these words are the ones that search engines will use to catalogue and appropriately display the business website, it is important to select phrases that accurately describe your business and the page to which you want to attract readers.
But what really are ‘keywords?’ The keyword list is found in a section of the webpage that the viewer doesn’t generally see. The ‘keyword metatags’ provide words and phrases to the search engines that describe what your page is about. Readers can’t see the meta tags unless they look at the page source code.
More importantly though, keywords describe your business, the web page and should be used throughout the page. Keyword phrases that appear frequently provide confirmation to Google and others that the page is in fact about what the keywords describe.
Once useful keywords and terms are identified, they should be installed within the page title, headlines and placed wherever reasonably possible throughout the text of the page. Be careful about overusing keywords in the text though. This practice can be considered ‘keyword stuffing’ which is frowned upon by most search engines. The search engines can then devalue or remove the page from their index, so use keyword phrases appropriately within the page text.
The process for selecting keywords can take many forms. Google provides a tool within the Adwords suite that helps evaluate keywords and provides the number of possible searches or ‘impressions’ that a top Google (paid) advertisement could be expected to make. This is useful information even though you are not paying for an advertisement on these pages.
Among the pitfalls are keywords that are highly competitive. In other words, a new website should avoid terms for which a high number of competitors are seeking high ranking or paying a great deal of money for on their Adwords system. The Adwords keyword tool will display which possible search terms or keyword phrases are highly competitive and expensive. These search terms will generally require a longer period of time to produce results for – especially for new business start up pages.
When you believe you may have discovered a good keyword phrase, run a Google search. If major corporate websites appear at the top of the results page, reconsider your choice. If your company page would be up against someone like Bank of America for your keyword term, rest assured that they will ruthlessly compete against anyone using that term – which decreases your opportunity to rank well. (There is a way to compete with the big guys just not head-to-head using their keywords. See the note on including a geographic term below.)
Choosing effective keywords and phrases then is an art form that identifies a creative and descriptive phrase that describes your page as well as your business. The other part of the art is to identify one of these terms that generates traffic but has fewer big companies competing for it. A good and efficient keyword phrase then is one that has a good amount of internet traffic but isn’t heavily competed for.
It should be noted here that the traffic number provided by the Google Adwords tool is not an exact number. These should be used for comparison purposes only as they provide a comparative measure of the search activity that some terms receive.
A certain degree of creativity is also helpful. Organizations that do business in a particular geographic area can use the name of that area in their keyword phrases. Setting one’s business apart from others by using a geographic term (such as “Banks in Birmingham” as opposed to just “Banks”) is a good way to compete with larger organizations. Large companies typically don’t compete well on a local level. Users though, won’t search for a term as broad as “Banks” but will usually restrict their search to a local relevant area.
Be flexible in selecting keywords. Some that seem to look good may have to be abandoned if they produce traffic and not actual sales. Consumer behavior is an odd game for which there are no set rules. Error, trial and error frequently turns out to be a highly successful methodology for the small or start up business to select keywords.
SEO Consultants in Denver brings years of experience in link building, keyword selection and website optimization to assist organizations win new or start up sales. SEO Consultants Denver quickly deliver top page search engine rankings even for new or start up pages.