SEO NOOB

SEO Keywords

Target the right SEO keywords

When you create a website or a blog you naturally want people to find it by using the search engines.
So what are the most important steps? There are some things you should consider when writing titles, description and header tags.
First of all decide what keyword you want to optimize for! Do not just take any keyword that you think sounds good and then fill up your page with it…

Important! Choose a keyword or keywords that is highly related to your sites content even better would be if your selected keyword would also be related to the keywords / keyphrases in your domain name.
If you are going to optimize for a subpage think about the keyword first and then create the page.
So if you are about to optimize your subpage for the keyword “seo keywords” as in this example you should create a subfolder named “seokeywords” or “seo-keywords“.
This way the search engine robots indexing your page will notice that you do have the keyword in your specific folder name and they make the conclusion that your site is in fact related to “seo keywords” as in this example, espacially if you also use the keyword in your content. (header + text etc)
It all depends on your already made filestructure also, on some websites you might not want to have subfolders cause of easy organization and such (If you have a lot of files or whatever the reason might be)
In that case just create a regular page like “seokeywords.html” or .php or any other extension you might be using.

Another thing to talk about regarding this is what the most optimal file-structure would be for you to use (that is for the search engines) , is it “seokeywords” or “seo-keywords” or even “seo+keywords” or should you just create a page that is as user friendly as possible if so use the combination: “seokeywords”
This is a completly different story and another post about exactly this will come later on…
Meanwhile check out this test regarding just this: Test on how to write URLs

Selecting the keyword

There are many things to think about when you are selecting your beloved keyword, you have to make sure you can get visitors to your site with this keyword also. Therefore try not to write exactly about what 5 gazillion people already wrote about instead you should find your own niche of the subject you are writing about. Here is an example: Your site is about basketball… now do not choose the keyword basketball (perhaps you can use it for your main page if you insist ) but try to find something more specific about just basketball that you feel you are interested in. If you make a search for basketball on Google.com you will notice that there are only really established sites at the top results down to rank 40 or so.
That is way to much competition if you are just starting out with SEO, now here is the trick: Extend your keyphrase to something more than just basketball. For an example take the place you live or something.
Like this: “basketball Long Island” now you narrowed it down a whole lot and thereby increasing your chance to get hits from the search engines. You can even take it one step further if you are just starting out for example: “basketball Long Island Mineola” or in any other combination you want like: “Long Island Basketball Mineola”

Ok so here comes another seo keyword tip…

Now that you know what keyword your website is targeting and you decided what to write about you also have to make sure that at least some people are searching for it (good idea huh?)
There are tons of SEO keyword tools out there made just to check these kind of things, here is one popular:

Overture keyword lookup

You can also use this tool to find out what the most commonly related phrases / keywords are:

Google keyword selector

By using these keyword tools and other tools such as this you get a good orientation and can decide for yourself what is hot and what is not. The perfect combination would be to find a keyword that people search for like crazy but at the same time with a low number of websites optimized for that specific keyword.
Of course someone else already thought of this! (duh!) because of the money making potential of such good finds and most of the jewels has already been picked up by SEO´s.
But do your research you never know what you might stumble upon

Here is a checklist on where your keyword/keywords should be located for best SE exposure:

URL of the page

In the page Title

In the Header tag

(h1, h2 etc)

In the Meta Desription tag

In the Meta Keyword tag

In your text content

Throw it in the footer also, just to make sure

Add comment April 9th, 2006