Keyword Crafting Sells Your Site
So you want to develop an online presence for your business, and you know search engine placement is the key to expanding your clientele. How to pick the right keywords? What if your site never gets seen? These search engine optimization (SEO) tips will help you craft the right keyword phrase and use it to drive traffic to your web site.
Choose the right keywords
It’s tough picking effective keywords for a search. If you describe your product too precisely potential clients won’t be searching for the right string of words. If your keyword phrase is too generic, you’ll be competing with too many other sites for search engine placement.
The trick is to strive for a balance between precision and popularity. Say I wanted to choose search engine keywords for a site that sells handmade beaded bracelets for women. I might be tempted to choose a fairly generic keyword, like women’s bracelets or maybe even the more general jewelry. I could potentially reach customers who hadn’t necessarily been thinking of beaded items. But then again, I would be competing with some pretty major and well-established sites. My site would be so low ranking that no one would find it.
If I got more specific – something like handcrafted beaded bracelets – I’d place higher in search results. But how many people would search for such a thing?
I’d do better to aim for the middle ground, with a keyword phrase like handcrafted bracelets or beaded bracelets. Competition for these keywords is not as high, and both phrases do a pretty fair job of describing my product without asking a potential customer to consult a psychic in order to find my site.
Use keywords in your title
Now that I have my keywords, I need to use them in the title of my site. So if I’m going to set up a company blog, I want to be sure I use the words beaded bracelets somewhere in the name of the blog.
If I’m setting up a slightly more static web site and I want to use the name of my company in the site name, I’d still include the keyword phrase where a search engine can find it. This can be done by using the HTML title tag, as well as the keyword meta tag. In the title tag I could enter “BEADutiful Designs – Beaded Bracelets.” I would also enter “beaded bracelets” among other phrases in my keyword meta tag.
Choose a domain with your keywords
You may already know that a domain name that uses your search keywords will help SEO. But what if beadedbracelets.com isn’t available when I want to register my site? Or what if I have a bricks and mortar shop with a good clientele? I know these customers will look up my site using the store name, so I want it in my domain name. How do I get beaded bracelets into a web link then?
This can be done by simply using the keyword phrase in the title of an individual page on the site, or in the titles of individual posts to my company blog. For example, I might write a blog entry introducing my product to potential customers.
If I use the title “Beaded Bracelets for Fashionable Women,” my keyword phrase will be in the URL for that blog page. It’s a snap to do this with additional posts, and to use other keyword combinations as well for improved search ranking for the site overall.
Do you have any tips to add about keyword usage on your website?
Leave a Reply