How to find keywords?

Having great content on your site is key, but it’s worthless if it doesn’t feature great keywords as well. Let me explain why it is so important to find the best keywords for your website.

After spending entirely too much time on the internet looking at how people are formatting their sites, it’s surprising to see how often businesses, especially new businesses or small businesses, fail to highlight the keywords relevant to their business.

The point of a business’s website is to turn traffic into customers, clients, or at least subscribers, but you need to generate traffic in the first place and one of the top sources for traffic is from search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is so important, and featuring your keywords is a vital part of SEO. That’s why finding and using relevant keywords is crucial to making sure people will find you in search engines.

On the web, the saying “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply. If your site is not showing up in search engines, people won’t know you are there.

 

 
How to find the best keywords

To find your best keywords, look at what product or service you are trying to sell. The keywords you use should be relevant to the focus of your website and should be featured throughout all of your pages.

The best tool, in my opinion, for finding relevant keywords is Google Adwords Keyword Tool. If you have an idea for a keyword, you can fill in the “word or phrase” box to find related keywords that you can implement. Or, if you’re not sure, you can find keywords based around your URL or the category you’re operating in.

Google Adwords then gives you list of related keywords along with how competitive they are, the global monthly searches for them, and the local monthly searches for them. These numbers help you to avoid a few pitfalls and help you find keywords that are more likely to lead to conversions.

 
Don’t get too broad

It can be tempting to focus on a broad keyword that has tens of thousands to millions of searches a month, thinking that you’ll generate loads of traffic. These broad keywords are very hard to rank on the first page of search results and if your site is buried on page 5 or 6 (or further) it is highly unlikely you will be seen by the majority of searchers.

Also, typically, the broader the keyword, the farther away the searcher is from making a purchase. An example of a broad keyword, also known as a “short tail keyword,” might be something like flowers. Ranking your flower delivery site for this search term will probably be next to impossible without some serious muscle, but the search term flower delivery in Sydney could be doable and drive high quality traffic to your local business.
Find the right balance

So as you can see, long tail keywords (that is keywords of 3 or 4 words) are more specific and people searching for them are typically closer to the buying decision.

An example might be “size 12 men’s shoe” which gets 1,300 global searches a month. This should be much easier to rank for than trying to rank for “men’s shoe” and should drive traffic to a page selling size 12 men’s shoes. However, long tail keywords can easily become too focused. This means that a low amount of people are searching and, while it’s easy to rank well for these keywords, it’s usually not worth your time since the amount of traffic you’ll get from them isn’t worth the effort.

Optimally, your site should be ranking for a healthy mixture of short tail and long tail keywords to bring a steady flow of different kinds of visitors in.

 
Don’t overdo it

Once you find the best keywords for you, make sure you feature them on your pages, but don’t stuff them in willy-nilly. The keywords should appear naturally within your content. Remember, people as well as web crawlers will be reading them and if it reads like an infomercial script you’ll turn people off and get penalized by search engines.

The amount of times your keywords show up in content on any given page is known as keyword concentration which is measured as a percentage. For example, let’s assume that the target keyword for this page was “keyword.” The concentration in this article would be about 4%. Now, depending on what you read on the internet, this number might be way too low, too high, or right on the money when it comes to SEO content. Honestly, don’t worry about keyword concentration. As long as you are aware of what your keywords are, you’ll naturally fit them into your content without sounding like a late night infomercial.

Keeping with the theme of not overdoing it – it’s important to realize that Google  rank the individual pages of a site, not the entire domain. This means that you don’t have to try and fit in your keyword into every page of your site to get the entire thing to rank. Focus on a keyword for each specific pages that you want to rank well in the search engine results rather than trying to fit the same ones in on every page of your site.
Action:

Implement keywords on one page of your site today:

    Pick a page
    Use the Keywords Tool to decide which search terms you should optimise the page for
    Go for it!

Google Ranking Factors

When I first started as a webmaster, there were numerous search engines around. Nowadays, though, we are, for the most part, left with only Google and Bing, with Google providing the majority of visitors to most websites, including thesitewizard.com. This article provides some tips on how you can improve the position of your site in the search engine results on Google. 

Improving Your Site's Placement on Google's Search Engine Results

Google ranks a page according to a large number of factors. Exactly what these factors are is apparently a trade secret, although there are number of well-known things that contribute to the ranking of a page. 

1.     Links Pointing to Your Website

One of the factors that contribute to a web page being considered "important" is the number of links pointing to that page. For example, if your page has 100 quality links leading to it, it will be ranked higher (in Google's estimation) than one that only has 20.

But what are "quality" links"? These are links from other popular pages, that is, pages that have, themselves, many (quality) links pointing to them. (Yeah, I know. My definition is circular. And it's possible that the search engine has other factors that determine the quality of a link.)

Anyway, in general, since Google ranks your pages according to the number of links pointing at your page, your site will do better if it has more links pointing to it.

2.     Your Title Tag

Google seems to give weight to the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is sandwiched between the HTML <TITLE> tags in the <HEAD> section of your web page. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like "New Document", remember to change it to some meaningful text with your keywords inside to reap the benefit of this feature. Otherwise, your site will only feature in the search results when someone looks for "New Document".

Note: by "keywords", I mean the words people will use when searching for your site. For example, if your site sells bicycles, then one keyword for it would be "bicycles", since that's the word you'd expect people to use when searching for bicycles.

3.     Your Page Must Have the Words You Think People Will Search For

Besides the title tag, if you want your website to feature in Google's results when someone searches for a set of words, say "Widget X", those words must actually occur on your page. Think about it from the point of view of a search engine. If you don't put the words "Widget X" somewhere on the page, how is the search engine supposed to know that the page deals with that topic? The search engine is not a human being who can draw inferences from the general tone and content of the page. Even if it can handle some synonyms, you're going to compete with other sites who have specifically placed those words on their site.

I know this point seems self-evident (once you've come across it). However, from experience, many webmasters don't seem to realise ("realize" in US English) that when they are first starting out.

4.     Keyword-laden Links

According to a paper published by one of Google's founders, if the links pointing to your page has some words in them, those words will be regarded by Google as an additional indication of the content of your page. For example, a link with the text "Cheap Shoe Store" pointing at your page will cause Google to think that your page is relevant when someone searches for "cheap shoe store".

However, my recommendation is that if you think a particular set of words is relevant to your site, don't rely on some random site on the Internet to link to you with those words. Put them directly on your page. 

Other Google Tips

1.     Use a Search Engine Site Map

Although not strictly necessary, if you find that Google (or Bing, for that matter) is not able to discover some pages on your website, create a site map. I don't mean the type of user site map that you see on thesitewizard.com (which is primarily meant for human beings), but a site map that is specially designed for search engines. While such a site map does not guarantee that Google will index and list every page, it will at least help it discover those missing pages if your site design is such that it has impeded the search engine from finding them before.

2.     Check Your Robots.txt File

Like all respectable search engines, Google will read and obey a special text file on your website called the "robots.txt" file. You can control where search engines are allowed to go with this file. A corollary of this is that you can also inadvertantly block the search engine from going to certain parts of your site. It's generally a good idea to create a robots.txt file for your website, even if it's an empty file with zero bytes (which means that search engines are allowed to index everything on your site).

3.     ALT text on Images

If you have been placing images on your website without bothering to place ALT text, now is a good time to add them. An "ALT text" (or alternate text) is just a way of putting a brief description (using words) of what your picture shows. They are needed by the software used by the blind so that they know what's in the picture. Since all search engines, including Google, are essentially blind, relying on words, they also need the ALT text. The description you give in the ALT text is treated like the words occurring on your web page, although I don't know if they are regarded as being of equal importance.

4.     Be Careful Whom You Hire

Google's use of links to rank a website has at least 2 side effects on the Internet. Firstly, people seeking to rank higher have engaged companies to furnish them with zillions of links. Those companies presumably set up a whole bunch of sites for the sole purpose of linking to their clients. Secondly, as a response to this, the Google programmers have retaliated (and continue to do so) by discrediting links from such "link networks" as well as penalising the sites that pay them for the service.

It's apparently possible to run afoul of this even if you have no intention of buying links. For example, if you are not careful, and have engaged a search engine optimisation ("SEO") company to improve your site's performance on Google, and they use a link network, your site may inadvertantly get caught in the crossfire of this ongoing war between the link networks and Google.

5.     The META Keywords Tag is Ignored

The Google search engine ignores the META keywords tag, and has always done so. If you have received spam from some wannabe search engine optimisation "specialist" telling you that you need to add this to your site, think twice about hiring him/her, since this recommendation already gives you a hint of the extent of his/her knowledge.

6.     Dynamic Pages and Google

Like all modern search engines (yeah, all 2 of them), Google is able to index dynamically generated pages, so long as a link to those pages exists somewhere. For example, a page like "http://example.com/showstuff.php?page=19" can be indexed by Google, so you don't really need to rewrite your URLs if you can't be bothered.

If you have a dynamically generated page that you think should be indexed, just make sure you put a link to it somewhere on your site. This applies to all web pages that you want indexed anyway, so even if you don't understand what I mean by "dynamic page", it doesn't matter. Make sure that all the pages of your site can be found through at least one link on your site. If they are not linked to from somewhere, no one will be able to find it, neither Google nor your visitors (unless they are psychic).

7.     Disabling the Caching of Your Page Will Not Affect Your Page Rank

In ancient history, it was claimed that Google would penalise pages that forbade it from caching their pages. As you know, the Google search engine caches the pages it indexes unless otherwise instructed. To avoid problems with people who dislike this, they allow sites to instruct Google not to cache those pages.

Google have apparently publicly denied that disabling caching would affect the page's ranking in any way. I tend to believe their claim.

8.     Don't Waste Your Time With The Google Toolbar's Page Rank

In prehistoric times, you could add something known as the Google Toolbar to your web browser, and get something known as the "Page Rank" shown for any site you visit. In those days, the "Page Rank" would give you an idea of how important Google thought your site was.

Nowadays, the Page Rank is only one of apparently zillions of factors used by Google in ranking a website. They also discourage people from focusing on the Page Rank, and as a result, do not actually update the rank displayed on the toolbar in a timely fashion. (That is, the rank shown is often many months out of date.) In fact, I'm not sure if the page rank is even shown on the toolbar anymore.

In other words, it's not worth your time to install the toolbar.

Title Tags Optimization

Title tags optimization is one of the most essential part of Search Engine Optimization. Title Tags do not just take part in rankings but these are also shown in search engine result pages:

Title Tag:

Title tags are shown at the top of a web page and included in the head section, Title Tags tells search engine what the web page is about and also provides idea to users about the web page when shown in search engine results. The title tags can be included in the head section in the following way:

<head>

<title>Webpage Title</title>

</head>

The average length for Title tags should be 55-60 characters, however you can make title tag of any length but major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing shows only 55-60 characters in Search engine result pages and rest of the characters are truncated. That's why it is better to use upto 60 characters. 

Why Title Tags are important

1. Title tags are very important to attain top rankings on search engine, as we know that title tags tells search engines about what the web page is about, therefore we can include our important keywords in the title that are relevant to the content of the particular web page. 

2.  Title tags are shown in the search engine result pages and provides and idea to the user about the information provided in the particular web page. Right titles can bring a lots of traffic to your website so make sure your website or webpage title should be catchy and makes the user to click your website.

Do' and Dont's

When you write title tags for a website make sure that you have your keywords ready so that you can make your title according to the keywords you are targeting.

Make unique title tags for every single web page. 

Title tag should be relevant to the content of the web page. It should exactly tell the user and search engine about the information on the page.

Write primary keywords first and then write secondary keywords

Don't stuff page title with excessive keywords 

Don't repeat the same word many times 

Example:  

Web Design | Web Designs | Web Design Company | Web Design Los Angeles (wrong)

Web Design Company in Los Angeles (right)

Make a descriptive title try to avoid use excessive hyphens and pipelines.

You can also use your brand name with keywords in title tag

How to find keywords for your website

Keywords are the words that users types in to find any information on search engine. If you want to optimize a website or a web page then the basic thing is to search for the relevant keywords that your customers may search to look for the services or information that you are providing. In this post i will tell you how to find the right keywords that can bring the right traffic to your website. Finding the right keywords and using it in your website is basics of Search Engine Optimization and also valuable in paid advertising.

The first thing you need to do is make a list of keywords that you think your customers will search on to find your website. Think like a normal user and then make a list of it. Let us take an example of an web designing company providing their services in Los Angeles. They have their website and now they want to promote their business online. Let us make list of some keywords that people must search to find the web designing company in Los Angeles.

website designing

web design

web design company

website designers

website design los angeles

web design los angeles

web designer los angeles

web design company los angeles

web designers los angeles

los angeles web designers

los angeles web design comapany
web designer in los angeles
web designing los angeles
affordable web designing in los angeles
best web designer los angeles
professional web designers in los angeles

website designers los angeles

website designer los angeles 

This are just a few keywords, there can numerous possibilities that you user can search to find the web design company in Los Angeles. Keywords with city included in it are called local keywords. These kind of of keywords are very important for local businesses and takes less time rank as compared to keywords that are general.

 You can make a lot of keywords, just think like a normal user and whatever comes to your mind just note it down. Now when your keywords are ready it is important to select the keywords that are best to rank your website. For that you need to know number of searches for every keyword that you can do with keywords tool available online. One of the best keyword tool which is free also is Google AdWords Keyword Tool. This tool has advanced features helping you to select the right keywords and it also suggest keywords that are relevant to the phrase you are looking for. Now let us take a look at the Google Adowords Tool:

I find this video on Youtube, explaining  how to use the Google Adwords Keywords tool, just watch this video carefully and you will understand how to get the most from Google Keywords Tool.

What is search engine optimization?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most popular internet marketing technique which is used to get traffic from search engines. It is process in which we improve the visibility of a website or an individual web page in search engines natural (Unpaid) or organic results. Search Engine Optimization can also be defined as the process or strategies developed to achieve higher rankings on search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing. SEO techniques involves making changes to the website to make it more search engine friendly, creating back links for the website, promoting websites on social media websites.

Definition of Search Engine Optimization in Wikipedia:

"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results."

Search Engine is the place where people looks for everything they want whether user search for doctors, lawyers, some kind of products or information search engines provides the most relevant results to the user in  the form of websites, blogs, articles, etc. So the main motive of SEO is to the get the website on top of the Search Engine result pages when someone search for a particular keyword. The working of search engine, how people search, what kind of words user enters to find something (also called Keywords) are some of the main considerations for an SEO expert.

SEO is also referred to as Search Engine Optimizers, people who provide SEO services. Due to huge growth in online marketing SEO experts are now very common and many online businesses are taking services of such experts.

Keywords in SEO

Keywords are just like the building blocks of SEO. Keywords can be defined as the words user types in order to find any information (news, articles, blogs, products, services etc.). It is very important to use keywords in the website or a web page which you want to rank higher in Search Engine. So it is very important to select right keywords that can bring the relevant traffic to the website.Optimizing a website includes:

• Keywords
• Making Changes in the content
• Title Tags Optimization 
• Creating heading tags
• Meta Tags Optimization
• Removing HTML errors
• Image optimization
• Making the website according to the search engine guidelines
• Using dynamic content on the website
• Promoting a website to create back links
• Creating Inbound Links for the Website
• Promoting the website on Social Media Sites

 SEO Techniques can be further divided into two categories i.e. White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO

 White Hat SEO

White hat SEO practices involves those techniques that do not violate any search engine guidelines and involves no trickery or deception. Every search engine has its own guidelines or rules that must be followed by webmaster to make the website more search engine friendly. For an example you can read Google Guidelines.  So if you are making a new a website then it is recommended that you should read search engine guidelines. The most important thing in white hat SEO is that website should be made for the users and not for the search engines. Some webmasters stuff excessive keywords and uses other tricks to deceive search engine and get higher rankings, such practices can ban your site forever. Now search engine like Google has very advanced algorithm which can easily find out the sites that are using illicit practices to get higher rankings on Google.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO techniques involves those activities that violates the search engine guidelines and  uses illicit SEO practices to achieve higher rankings on search engine. It includes putting excessive keywords on the website, using hidden texts on the website, cloaking etc. 

So if you want to make your website rank higher in Search Engine Organic results the first thing you need to do is to read the guidelines of search engine and make sure make your website is made for the user. Big giants like Google, Yahoo loves those websites that are relevant, provides information, do not use any illicit practice and main thing which provides the best experience to the use visiting the website.