Optimizing your site for search engines has a lot of factors involved for you to remember. You need to have inbound links, have your site indexed with the search engines, and most importantly you need to base your pages around keywords. Keyword selection is critical to the success of your site as they signal the search engines on what your topic is about. Having a good keyword phrase to build a page around gives you a central theme to work toward. When the search engines find that particular page, they will know exactly what to rank your page for. When someone types in that keyword, your page will come up in the search results. How important is keyword selection in search engine marketing? It is possibly the most important thing in building your site when adhering to search engine optimization.
Just because you select a keyword to make a page around, doesn’t mean that its an ideal keyword. Some keywords will never get your page found for a few different reasons. If the keyword is to popular and vague like the word “dog”, you probably won’t get the traffic you need. When someone types in the word dog, there are millions of other sites that will pop up as well. You’ll probably be towards the back of the list with your site and no one will ever see it. The other thing to consider is that after someone types in dog, they’ll go back and refine their search. They’ll type in dog food, or dog leashes. They’ll realize that their initial search results were much too vague to find what they needed.
There are a number of ways that you can find a good keyword. You’re looking for the words that aren’t massively overcrowded, but still get a fair amount of traffic as well. You can use a few different tools to help you do keyword research. Don’t just take someone’s opinion when it comes to keyword selection. You need to figure out exactly who is searching for what. There are a few different tools like Wordtracker, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, and others to help you do the research you need on keywords.
You need to select 2-3 keywords per page to focus on for your site. You don’t want 10 keywords per page. The search engines will be confused and you’ll end up getting no traffic as a result. You want to zero in on a few good keywords per page. One thing that you should keep in mind is that most people enter multiple words into the search engine in order to find what they want. Like in our earlier example, make your keyword “dog leashes” instead of just “dog”. The traffic that you receive will be much more relevant and net you better results.
Overall, keyword selection is an integral part of search engine marketing that should not be overlooked. Do some research on the keywords for your site and you’ll be much better off than when you started.
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