seo-advice-07102015

Do you know what keywords are the most important for your search engine rankings?

Every search begins with keywords typed into a search engine. Targeting the appropriate keyword is an essential part of a successful SEO marketing strategy. Optimizing various aspects of your web presence for certain keywords can have a positive impact on your search rankings. Keyword research is the foundation of effective SEO.

Which keywords are the most important for your business?

The best way to determine the most important keywords for your business is by asking the following questions:

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  • What keywords best describe your service/product? Think about the services you offer and the keywords that describe those services the best.
  • If your business is a local business, which cities do you serve? For example, if you are a web designer and you are serving the San Diego  market, you would want to target the “San Diego web designer” keyword phrase.
  • Which keywords do you want to avoid? For example, if you are a web designer, you might want to avoid “free web design”. If you are like me, you don’t want people come to your website who just want a free service.

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Finding the best keywords for your website is an ongoing process. Old keywords should be reevaluated at least once a quarter and new keywords should be considered at the same time.

Focus on the long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are often ignored, but a very important part of SEO. The best way to identify your long tail keywords is by expanding on your core keywords.

We can come up with the following long-tail keywords for “web designer”:

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Looking at the list above, you get the idea that you can come up with a lot of variations on your target keywords. The great thing about long-tail keywords is that there is a lot less competition for them than core keywords. Which means that you have a much better chance of ranking for long-tail keywords than core keywords.

Your long-tail keywords should be included in the content on your website, but don’t go overboard.

“Avoid keyword stuffing.”

It is important to optimize your website content for your target keywords, but do not go crazy. Keyword stuffing is not only ineffective and foolish, but it can get your website banned. If you are working with a great content writer your website can have well optimized content without keyword stuffing.

Your most important keywords should be part of your website content in the following areas:

  • Title tags – Each page should have a unique title. Keep your titles under 60 characters.

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  • Page URLs – Include your long-tail keywords in your page URL’s. Example: https://webene.com/web-designer/
  • Headings – Headings, especially H1, H2, and H3 headings should include your target keyword.
  • Text content – Include the keywords in the body of the text, but in a natural way. Don’t stuff keywords.
  • Image tags – Your alt tags should include relevant keywords.
  • Internal links – Your internal anchors should include your target keywords.
  • Anchor text

Your page title tag is a crucial part of your onsite keyword optimization strategy. The right keywords in your page titles is step one in your SEO efforts. Your page title tells the search engines what the page is about. Of course, the page title doesn’t guarantee that the search engines believe that the page is about what the title states, but it is a good start. It is a mistake to make your page title too long, 6-8 words is fine. Don’t try to cram too many words into your page titles.

Keywords in your URLs is another important step. It helps to include your target keywords into your web pages. For example, if you are targeting “san diego seo company” it helps to include your keywords in your page URL.

Here is what not to do with keywords.

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  • Resist the temptation to stuff keywords. You should include your keywords within your site in a natural way. Only include a keyword if it makes sense. If it makes sense to have it on a page twice, don’t force it there ten times.
  • Don’t hide your keywords. For example, sometimes people will stuff keywords on a web page in a way that is invisible to the human eye. The keywords are hidden by using the same font color as the background color. Sometime they hide text behind images. Hiding keywords is not approved by the search engines and it can get your website banned, so don’t do it.

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Contact us now for help with website optimization.

 

 

 

 

photo credit: CIMG1199