Proper Usage of Keywords can fetch you Twice the Traffic
Keyword usage refers to the number of times people actually enter a specific keyword on the search engines. It is a fact that most web site owners target search engine keywords that they imagine their customers will use when looking for their products. Professionals agree that usage of proper keywords will fetch you twice the traffic with half the effort – but the question is how to target keywords.
People who have tried optimizing a web page for keywords will know that competing for those keywords is a Herculean task. Even if you get high ranking for a very competitive keyword, the amount of effort involved in maintaining that ranking is tremendous.
Keyword research, it may be understood, is a process of finding the most appropriate keywords and key phrases that people may type in search engines to find web sites similar to yours. In order to find and select the most relevant keywords for your business, you must know who your potential customers are. Here is a helpful guide for keyword research:
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Focus on identifying various keywords and key phrases bearing your target audience in mind.
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There are keyword research tools that will help you in a process of discovering what keywords people use to find your competitors' sites.
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Select less competitive keywords – which means avoiding most commonly used keywords by competitors.
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Make it a point to use the most appropriate keywords in your web site, HTML, visual text.
After you have finished your keyword research and selected the most appropriate keywords for your business, it is prudent to do a Competition Analysis – which means, you have to go to search engines and type your selected keywords in a search field. The results will show what competition is waiting for you in major search engines. If you have done your competition analysis and have selected your final keywords, it's time to use them on your web pages.
Keywords are critical to the search engine and the entire information retrieval process is linked to keywords. As the search engines crawl and index the contents of web pages, they keep track of those pages in keyword-based indices. The search engine decides which pages to retrieve based on the words entered into the search box by the user.
Further, sequence of the words, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization of letters provide additional information to help the engines retrieve the right pages and rank them. One of the best ways to optimize a page's rankings, therefore, is to ensure that keywords are prominently used in titles, text, and meta data.
Despite all the noise, the art of keyword usage is still not perfected and thus it may be worthwhile to engage in testing, and experimentation on your own sites and web pages. But bear in mind that imparting proper information to users should never be compromised with, for the sake of search engine optimization.
Most of your ranking power comes from just a few factors. Thus for keyword targeting, most SEO experts recommend:
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Use the keyword in the title tag at least once – still more preferably twice if it continues to make sense. Make it a point to keep the keyword as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible.
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Use the keyword once in the H1 header tag of the page. Have only one unique H1 per page and remember every page needs a different H1.
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Minimum thrice in the body text on the page. Repeating the keyword more than thrice seldom has any impact on rankings. Please know that search algorithms are sensitive to pages that do not contain the keyword they are getting links for.
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Use the keyword at least once in bold letters. You can use either the <strong> or <b> tag.
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Use the keyword minimum once in the alt attribute of an image on the page. This also helps with image search, which can often fetch valuable traffic.
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Use the keyword once in the URL. Preferably have static URL that can be read like human language.(Checkout Static and Dynamic URL)
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Once or even twice in the meta description tag. Note that the meta description tag helps to attract clicks by searchers from the results page.
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Set the stage for the search engine by using the keyword in your first or second sentence.
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Finally, you have to get links to further target the keyword
These recommendations of keyword targeting have been done after a detailed study because search engines have now advanced semantic analysis capabilities. Search engines can not only detect whether your page has the right keywords, but whether that page is actually targeting the proper subject. Blindly inserting keywords on a page and expecting rankings will be a futile exercise unless the document also contains appropriate content.
Many site owners fail to realize that if a web page can earn one or two extra links by providing good content - this will far outweigh any benefit from stuffing keywords repeatedly. It may sound strange but extremely competitive keywords do not convert. As a matter of fact, all the traffic those top keywords bring in uses up a lot of your bandwidth but does not result in many sales.
If you are keen in spotting out the highly relevant keywords that are not too competitive, then a keyword analysis tool is needed. Doing it manually is tedious and not effective particularly when you need to analyze thousands of keywords
Keyword research is a vital part of your overall search engine optimization process. It plays a major role in the success of your internet business. Remember that a thorough keyword research, your prospects will be happy for providing the information they were seeking. Search engines, in turn, will reward you with high rankings for providing apt information to the surfers.
The golden rule therefore is:
" Target the wrong keywords and you will receive no relevant traffic or more likely no traffic at all. Target the right keywords and you will get lots of quality prospects who can be easily converted into buying your products or services ."
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