Posted by on July 2nd, 2010 View Comments
Posted in SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
Developing a website is a very complicated task to do. But with so many tools to use and several people you can turn to for help, the burden of developing your own website becomes easier and very doable. Getting your website relevant and ranked high in search engine results pages is the second important step in search engine optimization.
Keyword Optimization
One of the most popular strategies in the SEO process is keyword optimization. Relevant and keyword-rich content is the life of a website. This is what search engine crawlers look for in a website and becomes their basis in indexing and ranking a particular website. Search engines base their rankings of websites on their relation to certain keywords or phrases that users usually look for.
Keywords are words that are trending and popular among search engine rankings. These are usually words that users type when they make their queries and searches. Using these keywords and incorporating them in your web content will make it easier for your website to be noticed by search engine crawlers and indexed in their rankings.
Taking Advantage of Trending Keywords
Being aware of keyword optimization is key to finding success in the SEO arena. Keywords may form a little part of your whole SEO strategy but they play the most important role in the whole process. Being highly ranked in any search engine in the Internet today depends largely on how you effectively use keywords in your web pages.
Here are some things web developers do to fully optimization their keyword usage:
• Research and Determine the Keywords you Will use
There are two types of keyword categories that web developers should always keep in mind. There are Money Keywords and there are Market Defining Keywords. Differentiating the two is important as they both play separate but equally important roles in the whole keyword optimization process.
Money keywords may be the more popular one especially among SEO practitioners. These are words that they usually bid on and serve as the main keywords used in their optimization processes. These are trending words that are advantageous to use within the posted web content. However, money keywords are not always the keywords used when developers need to evaluate recent SEO trends on their particular industries.
Market Defining keywords are the ones used in this evaluation process. These kinds of keywords are the ones deemed to be at the highest level and can be used to accurately measure the industry you are interested in. They may not be the trending ones at the moment but market defining keywords are usually the more often used keyword in the whole link building process.
• Analyze the Competition
It is not only advisable to know the certain Money or Market defining keywords in your particular industry, it is good to research on the websites that are currently ranking on top based on these certain keywords. You should be able to know who is considered authority website for a particular keyword and be able to observe the strategies they are employing to stay on top of the search engine ranking pages.
The goal here is to learn and be able to improvise on certain strategies so that your website itself can rank high with regards to a particular keyword. The companies that are usually on the top 20-30 SERP of a particular keyword are the ones that can be considered authority ones. These websites are also known as SERP dominators.
When users search for a particular keyword or phrase, these are the websites that would almost always be returned by the search engine crawlers. The goal is to ultimately become one of these.
• Use Keywords in the Link Building Process
Knowing these sites can also help in the overall link building process, not just in keyword optimization. Web developers, especially for start-up websites, can get a significant amount of relevant backlinks from these authority websites, something critical in all link building endeavors.
Developers can search for blogs, guest posting opportunities, interviews, press releases and many more regarding a particular money keyword or phrase. Developers can log into these top websites and find for an opportunity to link there. Not only will you have authority backlinks, search engine crawlers will definitely turn a positive eye towards your site and catapult it up the search engine rankings.
• Use Your Assets
Assets would mean the link building assets that you have in your company, in your utility. These are pages from within your website, information you have in your hands, or even the people who work within you company all of which can be used to generate links pertaining to certain keywords in your industry.
Assessing these is important because you never know the link opportunities that a simple interview with your company’s CEO or a certain picture about a product can generate. You should maximize these assets and connect them to certain keywords that you are targeting. Search engines, with all the latest developments they have undergone, are now more capable than ever in considering various link building assets in their SERP criteria.
• Use Keywords and Link Building Query Operators Combined
To be successful in your SEO process, it is important to always look for opportunities and saturate every avenue you can find. One way to do this is to find for certain Market defining keywords and combining it with link building queries available for web developers to use.
Some of the more popular link building queries in the Internet today include:
1. The Ontolo Link Building Query Generator
2. Link Search Tool by SoloSEO
3. SEOBook Link Suggest Tool
• Do Guest Writing
Posting and writing web articles in web directories or for some other company is advantageous; you create a network for yourself and an extensive link building opportunity for yourself.
Some web directories and sites allow their writers to post certain links for further reference to be used by their readers on the topics they have searched for. You can use this opportunity to create a natural and relevant backlink to your website which will eventually increase visitor traffic and would surely help in getting you atop search engine rankings.
Also, the opportunity to observe and know certain strategies that some of your indirect competitors apply is advantageous in your own link building and keyword optimization process.
• Reach out and Ask for Help
Though this is more personal than technical, it will not hurt if you ask friends, acquaintances or even family to link back to your site and help you in the whole keyword optimization process. Reach out and ask. The link opportunities that can be generated would still count and help you succeed in your endeavor.
Strategically Placing Keywords in Your Website
There are several ways to put keywords in the contents of your website. But you must know what works and what does not for your website to be able to fully optimize the process. Placing keywords strategically in your site is crucial because some visitors and web crawlers use these as the basis on whether or not your site is worth spending time on.
Here are some places within your site where you can put keywords in:
1. The Title
The title of your content or article should have keywords present on it. Aside from thinking of a creative title for your posts, it is also important that the titles feature the keywords that you are targeting. It is advisable to have around 5-6 words in your title with the keywords on it.
2. In the Description Meta tag
In the search results page, search engines always use the description meta tag in providing a snippet of what your website is all about. Sometimes reading these short sentences can entice or turn away visitors from logging into your website. It is important that the keyword/s be present in these descriptions to make search engines have an easier time partnering you website to a certain money keyword.
3. In the Keyword Meta tag
This pertains to the list of keywords or key phrases that are targeted by your page which also enable the search engine crawlers to find and index your site. Some things to remember would include:
o Use keywords that are also present in your title and description meta tag
o Do not overuse your keywords. Twice or thrice is enough.
o Remember to limit the characters you use for your keywords to 200 only, including spaces.
o Use keywords relevant to your pages
4. In the Heading Tags
The heading of your pages should feature your keywords.
5. In the ALT Tags
These are the tags present in other files within the website like JPEG, PNG and other picture files. Sometimes users have the tendency to disregard the loading of images in a website to make the pages load faster. They will be relying on the ALT tags for information that is why putting your keywords here is very important.
6. In the Web Content itself and its corresponding Hyperlinks
As you know by now, search engines base their rankings on the relevance and keyword-richness of a site’s content. Remember to always post unique and fresh content that has around 2-3% keyword density. Your hyperlinks should also feature your keywords as search engine spiders also check these regularly.
The Relevance of Keywords in SEO
Keywords are the major basis of search engine optimization. Your site cannot be considered authority unless you have maximized the utilization of your keywords by posting relevant content. The whole search engine optimization process anchors itself on keywords and their importance should always be deemed highest by web developers and SEO practitioners.
