Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your website is an important part of the process of search engine optimization and making your site more visible to search engines and searchers alike. If you’re not sure what search engine optimization is, I invite you to read my article titled Search Engine Optimization 101.
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: 20-30 minutes
Here’s How:
You’ll want to think about who is your target audience, and what the primary focus of your website will be. Need help on this one? Read my article titled Understanding Your Audience.
Jot down a list of words and phrases that you think people might type into search engines when looking for your site. Don’t worry about being perfect: just be creative. This might be a good time to review how to brainstorm for keywords and phrases.Each page on your site should have one to three related keyword phrases that are site-specific. For example,say you have a page all about coffee mugs. Good phrases to target on this page would be coffee mugs, ceramic coffee mugs, or unique coffee mugs. See what I mean? They’re all related, and they’re all pointing at the same general content on the page.
Your keywords should be used throughout your site copy – where they make sense – as well as in your title tag and various meta tags. Don’t go overboard and start inserting keywords every other word, because this is considered bad form. Read more about the title tag, meta tags, and unethical search engine optimization.
Tips:
- Be creative, but be choosy.
- Try not to target keyword phrases that are too competitive until you are confident you can rank for those phrases.
- If there are unusual words associated with your content that you think people might search for, or misspellings, include them sparingly.
What You Need:
- Creativity
- Persistence