Keyword Selection and Website Optimization by Chris Haney
Marketing and optimizing a website for search engines is a broad topic. There
are many factors to consider when heading out with the goal of improving your
website's visibility and ranking within various search engines. In part one I
will discuss the highly requested topic of website keywords. In follow-up
articles I will cover additional topics such as page ranking, pay-per-click
advertising campaigns, the marketing techniques to avoid, and the latest
analysis technologies including eye tracking software.
Choosing the right keywords for a website is an important and informative
research task. In the process of improving your website you'll learn a lot
about your industry and your competitors.
Keywords are one the main factors that come into play in the algorithms used by
major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search. If a web
surfer is looking for home decorating tips and types 'home decorating' into a
search engine, it will search its database for websites that contain that
phrase and those individual words.
Selecting the correct keywords
If you are an expert in your field, you know what your customers are looking
for. Specifically, you know many of the words and phrases your customers would
use to describe your products and services. Start with what you know.
Write out a list of phrases and words that describe your business. If you have
a home decorating business you may think of words like 'interior design' and
'furnishings'. Sort your list so that the most common phrases are on the top of
your list.
You will now want to cross-reference the list of keywords that you have compiled
with other lists generated for your industry. This will bring to mind other
keywords that you may not have thought of. I recommend using a popular
web-based keyword research tool named Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com
). Wordtracker helps identify additional keywords and phrases and offers a free
trial of their service. It provides only a limited number of related words, but
is still a great starting point. Searching for related keywords for 'home
decorating' with Wordtracker produces a list of keywords like 'home', 'decor',
'decorating', 'home decor', 'furniture', 'design', 'interior', 'interior
decorating', 'art', 'wall', and 'fabric'.
Other keyword tools, which produce similar results, are also available. These
include, among others, the web-based tools provided by Yahoo (Overture) (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/),
and Google (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
).
After compiling and merging the various lists of keywords, you'll be ready to
move on to the next step.
Using the correct keywords on your website
Now that you have a clear picture of which keywords web surfers may type into
their search engine to find your business, you need to be sure your website
contains these important keywords.
A strategy is required when updating your website to include the keywords in
your list. Starting at the top of your list, quickly review the keywords. Think
about which keywords would naturally be present on your website and which
keywords you probably wouldn't use. Using the first list of keywords, you may
now start reviewing the different sections of your website.
Your selected keywords should be placed in various areas of your site with the
proper frequency. Your website content should focus on making sense to your
visitors, not fed with keywords that will hopefully improve your search
positioning. Search engine algorithms can detect the over use of keywords,
which can negatively affect your positioning. Let's now look at different areas
of your website.
Website Title
Every website has a title. This is not a website logo or a bold heading found
on the top section of a website. The website title is displayed in the web
browser's title bar. This is the top most area of the window located to the far
left of the window's minimize, maximize, and close buttons. The website title
is also the text that is displayed in search engine search results, which is
often in a larger font and underlined. The website title is the first thing
that a web surfer sees when performing a search. Web surfers quickly scan
through search result website titles to evaluate which website will meet their
needs. This is your first opportunity to grab their attention.
A website title should contain as many of your keywords as possible, while
maintaining easy readability. This will do two things for you. First, the
search engine will find your website in its database and display your website
in their results. Second, the website title will catch the surfer's interest as
they see their search criteria matching your website title. Over-stuffing the
title with keywords makes the title difficult to read and may be seen as abuse
by search engines. The website title is updated by changing the text located
between the opening and closing title tags, in the header of the HTML code
(<title>Page Title</title>). The title length should be kept to
handful of words. The website description allows more space for describing your
products and services.
Website Description
As with the website title, the website description should also contain a
variety of keywords. Unlike the website title, the website description is not
visible on any part of the website itself. The description is the summary
information you see in search engines results, displayed below the website
title. The website description gives you a little more space to describe your
website and your products and services. Again, be sure that your description is
easily readable for your visitors, in order to attract them to click your site
title. The website description can be updated by changing the text in the
description meta tag, in the header of the HTML code (<meta
name="description" content="Page Description">).
Website Keywords
Along with the title and description entries in the HTML code, there is also an
area to define a set of keywords that you'd like to associate to the page. This
is called the keyword meta tag. Keywords are entered as a comma separated list,
as follows (<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2, phrases
allowed as well">). The industry consensus is that the keyword meta tag is
currently of little or no use with today's major search engines. However,
search engines continue to recommend their usage.
Website Content
This brings us to the meat of our website, so to speak. Our chosen keywords
should be used throughout the website content where it makes sense. Again,
over-stuffing page content with keywords so that the message is unnatural can
be detected by search engines. A good practice is to use the keywords to make
the page content more descriptive. For example, a pet store may sell a variety
of pet foods. This can be written in a descriptive manner, such as, 'dog food
and cat food', instead of using 'dog and cat food'. In this example the keyword
'food' is used twice.
Headings and Hyperlinks
Special attention should be given to the usage of heading (<h1>This is a
Heading</h1>) tags and anchor tags (click
here
). Keyword usage in page heading is more valuable than keywords used in a
paragraph of text. The same can be said with anchor tags (a.k.a. hyperlinks).
Using keywords as the clickable text of a hyperlink is very valuable.
Keyword Density
Keyword density refers to the percentage of occurrences of your keywords
compared to the other text on the web page. Keyword density tools such as
Webconfs.com's Keyword Density Checker (http://webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
) provides a visualization of the main theme or message on a chosen page. This
tool counts the number of times each word is repeated on the page, which is a
good test of how you've done at inserting keywords to optimize the content. It
is also a good representation of how search engines will see your page. 'More
is better' is not the most effective keyword density goal. Although the optimum
keyword density is much debated, having some balance is definitely in order. A
density below 1% makes it difficult for a search engine to understand your main
message, where a density over 5% will start to make the content appear
unnatural. At this stage in website optimization, the page content can be
continually edited while the keyword density is being re-checked. Continue this
process until your keywords are among the words with the highest density.
Conclusion
Choosing the correct keywords for your website is a must. Website keyword
optimization is not rocket science, but it must be implemented carefully. By
using the correct keywords, not only will your site be positioned well in
search results, but it will draw visitors to your website.
About the Author
Chris Haney is the founder of The Coding Studio (http://www.TheCodingStudio.com),
a custom web site development company serving businesses in Calgary, Alberta,
specializing in dynamic, data-driven web sites, ecommerce solutions, web-based
applications, and search engine optimization.
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