Keywords - A brief explanation

Keywords are the words that people enter in search engines to find websites containing information they want. If you want to get in front of your potential audience, it's important that your website has good search engine rankings for your keywords that are related to the theme of your website.

Knowing what your target audience wants and how they search for it is crucial to your online success. Optimising your web pages for keywords that nobody uses in the searches is pointless. In order to get targeted visitors, the keywords must not be too broad or too general, your page copy and metatags should support the keyword phrases your market uses and entice them with information that meets their needs and compels them to action.

The Right Keywords for Your Website

The first step in successful SEO copywriting is choosing the right keywords. You can directly survey your target market for their keyword usage or use keyword research tools. When conducting the keyword research and analysis:

Use focused keyword phrases that are common enough that ordinary people would use them but selective enough that they don't return millions of matches. Most people use a two to four word phrase when they search online, so phrasing is very important. For example, if you are offering a service like dog training or Internet Marketing, you wouldn't target the key phrase "dog training" or "SEO", but something more specific like "dog trainer Manchester " or "Search Engine Optimisation Hereford". Very specific keyphrases generate highly qualified, targeted traffic that increases your sales opportunities.

Remember - Single keywords are much harder to rank for and rarely bring worthwhile traffic, human beings search with phrases of more than one word!

It's unrealistic to think that a new web site could possibly rank number one for a popular phrase like "Marketing". You are better to target "Internet marketing strategies" or even better, "Internet Marketing Strategies UK ". More established companies who have been on the Internet for several years will have the advantage of strong link popularity and a high Pagerank and therefore better rankings in the search results for these broader or general keyword phrases.

Use your targeted keywords that you found during your keyword research and analysis in your On-Page SEO and Meta tags.