To successfully optimize your website for search engines, the first step is to identify keyword phrases. Keyword phrases are phrases that internet users will search for to find your website.
For example, if you have a website about fishing, keyword phrases that you’d use to lure internet users to your site could include “where to fish”, “fishing poles”, “fishing bait” and “catch fish”. The goal being that if an internet user searches for one of those keyword phrases, the search engines will show your website in the search results.
Keyword phrases don’t have to be phrases at all. Instead, a keyword phrase can be a single word. A successful keyword phrase should include between one and four words.
Identifying keywords is rather easy to do. Simply look at your website and think of phrases that correspond with your content. Make sure that the phrases are consistent with content. You don’t want to have a site about fishing and then have a keyword phrase of “NBA Basketball”.
You also don’t want to have too broad of a keyword phrase, such as “fish”. At the same time, you don’t want keywords that are too narrow, such as “small catfish in Texas”.
Luckily for those of use looking to identify keywords, there are a lot of tools on the internet that can help us do so quickly. The best such tool is a free service brought to you by Google.
The Google External Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) makes things a lot easier for those who are trying to think of keywords. All you have to do is enter a generic keyword, press “Get More Keywords” and Google will provide an extensive list of keywords. You want to look for keywords that make sense for your site and have a high search volume.
Once you identify your keywords, you have to learn how to successfully use those keywords to help you optimize your website for search engines. The most important aspect of using keywords is repetition. On your website, you want to repeat the keyword as much as possible, within reason.
Put the keyword phrase in your main text, in title of your webpage, in alt text of your images and wherever else you can mention the keyword phrase. If you are linking to your website from another page on the internet, use your keyword phrases as anchor text. Do the same if you are linking off your website to another website.
Basically, you want the search engines to recognize that your website is an expert on the keyword phrases you chose. Once that is accomplished, search engines will start sending internet users to your site who search for those keyword phrases.
Read the other parts to my SEO series:
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