The use of keywords plays a significant role in your online success. The goal is to organically or naturally rank high in Google and the other search engines. Effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that include proper keyword usage will help to improve website ranking.
By spending time doing keyword research, you’ll discover the terms your prospective customers enter in the search engines to find what they are looking for or better yet, what you have to offer. Once you have these golden nuggets of information, waste no time cashing in on them. Include the relevant keywords and phrases on your site, in your copy, and in your content.
Be forewarned, site owners at one time used to stuff their sites and content with keywords in an attempt to trick the search engines into giving them a higher ranking. When the search engines realized they were being duped, they quickly changed the rules and let it be known that they were not going to put up with any unethical marketing. So if you don’t want to take the risk of getting penalized by the search engines, I’d strongly advise you play by their rules. Honesty is always the best policy and should be applied when trying to get ranked with the search engines as well.
So now that you have your keywords, how do you use them and where do you place them? For awhile, everyone was saying to use them in the Meta tags in the HTML. While you shouldn’t discount this tactic, it doesn’t seem to hold as much weight as it used to.
Keyword placement is not a constant and has a lot to do with the type of page you are building. For Web 2.0 properties such as Squidoo, Hub Pages or Google’s Knol, it is suggested that the keywords be in URL you pick, in the titles, subtitles, written content and in any tagging space that they allow you to fill in.
When creating a blog post for your blog, the keyword should be in the URL as well. However, this will only work if your blog template is set up in such a way so that the permalink structure for individual blog posts can be changed. Look in the settings to see if you can change the permalink for your particular blog post or not.
There are many blogs that will assign a blog post a number such as this: http://www.yourblogname.com/?p=123. In this case, you will need to select a custom structure and enter this code: /%postname%.html – this will make your blog post URL appear with the title of the post, where your keywords will be, like this: http://www.yourblogname.com/title-of-blog-post.
There are tremendous benefits to using keywords in all of your content. Focus on using your keyword in the first paragraph and if possible, within the first sentence. By doing this, Google will bold your keyword as an exact match if that keyword or phrase is being searched.
While there is some debate over the optimal percentage for keyword density, recommendations usually range between 2% and 10%. To keep it simple, write for both your human visitors and the search engine spiders; but make sure your content reads smoothly, makes sense, and still contains enough keywords to get the ranking you desire.
Peace & Prosperity,
P.S. Confused about keyword research, let High Profits Marketing do the job for you. Whether you do it yourself or outsource it, make sure your using keywords in your SEO strategy!
photo credit: parushing