How To Locate The Right Keywords For Your Website

Written by Constance Q. Xavier Tuesday, 12 April 2011 14:26

Building a website with the specific intention of attracting traffic through the search engines is known as SEO, or search engine optimization. In order to do a proper job of SEO, then keyword research is absolutely essential. If you are targeting the wrong keywords, you can waste precious time and money. However, with the right keyword research, you can be on page one of Google sooner than you think. In this article, I'll go over the keyword research basics, so you can build a more profitable website.

Building a website with the specific intention of attracting traffic through the search engines is known as SEO, or search engine optimization. In order to do a proper job of SEO, then keyword research is absolutely essential. If you are targeting the wrong keywords, you can waste precious time and money. However, with the right keyword research, you can be on page one of Google sooner than you think. In this article, I'll go over the keyword research basics, so you can build a more profitable website.

The first thing to do is to determine the basic idea of your site. This is sometimes referred to as 'seed' keyword, as you can use this one keyword to get many others. For example, if your site is about how to invest in the stock market, your seed keyword may be "stock market." Of course, if you were to try and rank for this particular term, it would take quite a bit of time and effort. Since that's out of the question, what should you do?

You'll need to choose some keywords that will be the target of your site. Since 'making money in the stock market' is a pretty broad target, you've got a lot work with. You need to find some keywords that have a decent amount of traffic, meaning that people are actually typing those keywords into the search engine, as well as a low level of competition.

The best possible scenario is to get a keyword with high traffic, that is a lot people searching for that keyword, and a low amount of competition. The amount of competition is the number of sites that Google and other search engines consider to be about that particular topic.

There are lots of different ways to find these specific keyword phrases. You can use Google's free keyword tool, which offers some pretty good data. There are also a few other free keyword research software you can get, which do a pretty good job. Of course, there are paid versions out there that do the best job. Two of the most popular, and most highly regarded, are Market Samurai, and Micro Niche Finder. Both of these are quite expensive, but do a great job of finding some excellent keywords.

Next, after you've got chosen your keyword phrase, it's time to optimize your site. This means making sure that there's no mistake your site is about this keyword phrase. Use it in at least 2 percent of your text. Put it in your title, and in the H1, H2, and H3 tags as well. Also make sure you have at least one image that uses the keyword phrase as the alt tag. This will give your site the best chance of being found by others.

If you put in enough effort ahead of time, your site should stand a pretty good chance of getting found by others. If you've got some decent content, that means that everybody wins.