Search Engine Optimization

Are Your Keywords Making Money for You?

I built my website, it's perfect. My chosen subject of the website is Computer Support Services. Of course this is an example, but moving along, what should my keywords be?

Keywords are what people type into a search engine to find something on the internet. These words are what drive user requests.

Words to live by I like to call them. Why? Because on the internet your website will live and die by the words you use, or the words I use when you hire me to optimize your site.

How many words should I use?

What should they say?

How many phrases should there be?

What's a phrase?

First off, let's cover what a keyword is. A keyword is a word or collection of words used to describe your website. For those doing their own website design these words are applied in what is called a meta tag such as the following:

meta name="keywords" content="these words, would describe, your site"

keywords should say something about your website. They should also directly reflect the content of your site. They should not be random words that have nothing to do with your site, or you. If they are, you can expect that your page ranking will fall rather than rise. Of course, you will still have to submit or resubmit your website to keep your page in the eyes of the various search engines.

The number of words and phrases should be no more than 21-22, or a combination of the two. I have seen sites that had over 780 keywords, but no content to support them. Even if there was content there to support that large number of words, it's fruitless to have that many words. Most search engines will ignore anything over the 22 words limit.

A phrase is defined as more than one word. "Real Estate Sales" is a phrase. "Real, Estate, Sales" is a collection of keywords. Both of these if used in a search would render completely different results.

Short, to the point, and using some of the keywords that describe your service or product. Here it's Auto Repair Service, it's New, and it's Terrific.

Description - The second most important item on the page. Make this relevant to the content (typing) that you have on your webpage:

Bob's New Terrific Auto Repair Service is the most experienced auto repair shop on the coast. Servicing All types of autos from 9am - 5pm 7 days a week. We offer early bird service on Fridays and Free Car Washes to all customers who pay by cash.

KEYWORDS -

Select about 22 words/phrases that descibe your product or service, and separate them with a comma. This line would look like: auto, automobile, service, terrific, new, free car wash, pay with cash.

How do I find these keywords? Use the following tools:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

This tool known as the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool is one of the most widely used methods of finding out what subjects people are searching for. What products they are searching for, what services they search for.

Enter your words like this: star wars or use something like business plan sample and when you click the button, you will be presented with a listing of how many times that word or words was searched for in the past month. Picking the higher ranked ones will be good for your site.

How does keyword selection help sales? It helps in the sense that by selecting the correct keywords, your site will be more visible, found more often in searches, and as a result of more visitors, eventually you will get more sales. Please make sure that the BUY IT NOW message on your website is clear. If not, all the optimization in the world will not help your sales increase.

Michael Murdock - former Macintosh Systems Engineer for PIXAR now owns/runs DocMurdock - A website optimization & Internet Marketing company. Helping websites move higher on the right search engines, and helping clients products move out the door and into the hands of the ideal clients.