When a person performs a search through one of the major search engines, he typically types in keywords to find what he is looking for. Most regular internet users do not think about this when they type in their query. The results for the search show up on the results page, with the most relevant information typically towards the top of the list. Search engines use the use of keywords to determine which websites are most likely to have the information that the searcher is looking for.
The act of using keywords to get a web page higher up in search engine rankings is called keyword marketing. Keyword marketing takes advantage of how search engines rate and rank websites, catering to what will get the page higher ranks. There are several ways to use keywords to improve rankings, most of which can be performed easily with little or no experience.
Before beginning keyword marketing, it is important to know what keywords are. They are the important words and phrases used in website content. For example, a web page about classic muscle cars may have their main keyword phrase be “classic muscle cars,” but other keywords may include “classic cars,” “mustangs,” and just “cars,” amongst others. Assuming there are not a lot of other similar websites, a search engine would show this site any time someone searches for those terms.
When developing a keyword marketing plan, the first step is to brainstorm all of the possible keywords you want to use on your website. There are several free online tools available to help generate keywords, and then show you which keywords are searched for the most often. A web page shouldn’t have more than three to five keywords, and only one main keyword. After the list is ready, it is time to begin using keyword marketing to improve the page’s search engine rank.
The easiest way to use keyword marketing is to use the keywords often in the page’s content. The main keyword or keywords should be in the title of the page, once or twice in the first paragraph, and a few more times throughout the page. It should be used naturally, though. Using the word too many times not only can count against your site in terms of rank, but also make it much less likely visitors will read your content.
Another way to do keyword marketing is to use keywords in the “slugs,” or specific page URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of your site. For example, the classic muscle car website has a page about buying cars. The URL of that page might be www.classiccars.com/buying-classic-muscle-cars. When the search engines come across this page, the URL slugs will positively affect the site’s ranking.
There are a few less obvious places to use keywords when working on keyword marketing. Using the keywords in meta tags and other areas in the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) can also improve your site’s ranking. This is easy to do, even without previous HTML experience. There are several places to learn how to do this online.
While using keywords in a website is important, using too many, or “keyword stuffing” is never a good idea. It is also frowned upon by search engines. Effective keyword marketing can improve a website’s search engine ranking, increasing the traffic that a site receives. Increased traffic can lead to increased sales off of the website, making more money for the site owner. Learning how to use keywords is a simple and inexpensive way to improve a website, and is worth the investment of time to learn how to do it well.