Optimize Keywords

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Keywords—Optimizing Your Site to Get Top Billing at Search Engines
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This week we will discuss the key to improving your siteslisting in the top Internet search engines.
When a user enters a search term, also known as a ‘keyword,’into a search engine, the engine runs through the billionsof pages in the database and awards each one a ‘relevancyscore.’ The higher your score, the higher your listing. Ifyour site doesn’t contain the keyword used by the searcher,the only score it’s going to get is a big, fat zero. Yourfirst task then is to make sure you know which keywords aremost relevant for each of your sites.
There are three ways to figure out your keywords:

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Ask your competitors
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This is the cheapest way to find many of the most importantkeywords. Simply log on to a search engine (AltaVista isgood, Google is better) and carry out a search for siteslike yours. Open the top site, and once the home page hasdownloaded, click on ‘View’ in your browser, and then‘Source.’ That will reveal all the HTML used to build theWeb page, including all the keywords that have beenspecially inserted.
For example, let’s say one of your websites sold nutritionalsupplements. You could carry out a search for ‘vitamins’ inGoogle. The top site there is called DrugEmporium.com, andthe keywords they list are "The Katz group, Snyders, DrugEmporium, Drug, Drug Store, pharmacy, stores."
Some of those keywords will be relevant to your site.Others, of course, won’t be relevant and there will be lotsof other keywords that aren’t obviously listed—like‘vitamins’ for example. But you can repeat the process onother sites, using different keywords, and build up a prettylong list.

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Ask the pay-per-clicks (PPC)************************************************************

Pay-per-click sites actually let you see how popular akeyword is. They’re not being kind; they’re trying to makemoney. The more webmasters bid on those keywords, the higherthe bids are going to rise—and the more money thepay-per-clicks are going to make. FindWhat, for example, hasa Keyword Center, and Overture a Keyword Suggestion Tool.Both are very handy, but they also require you to open anaccount. That can cost a few bucks, but when you have a lotof sites covering a lot of different areas, it’s usuallyworth the expense.

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Use a specialized tool
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Not too surprisingly, a number of companies have popped upto supply specific keyword services for a fee. The best ofthese is WordTracker.com. They’re not bargain basement, butyou get what you pay for. They’ll give you all the keywordsyou need and in my experience, they’re a sound investment.
Googlefight.com is another useful tool to see whether onekeyword is more popular than another. The site compares twokeywords and tells you which is more popular. It’s free andhas a limited use, but it’s fun to play with.
As you make up your list of keywords, bear in mind that it’salso worth looking at key phrases. It’s quite possible thata user looking to buy flowers online might search for ‘redroses’ or ‘cheap bouquets’ as well as just ‘flowers.’ Keyphrases are often overlooked by competitors, so you’ve got apretty good chance of getting a high placement with theright combination.
Don’t worry too much about the competition though. Somepeople will tell you that you’re better off trying to findkeywords that no one else has thought of—as if there wereany!—and others will tell you to throw in keywords that areonly slightly relevant to your businesses.
In my experience, that’s a waste of time. If yourcompetitors are using certain keywords, it’s because theyknow they work. And if you pick up any users usingirrelevant keywords, you’re not going to sell them anything.Don’t try to reinvent the wheel here: just try to figure outthe most popular keywords and the best key phrases to put onyour site.
Whichever of these methods you use—and I tend to use morethan one—you should end up with a pretty comprehensive listof keywords that you can stick into your website. The nextquestion then, is how do you use them? When a search engineassigns relevancy to a site, it looks for the keywords in anumber of specific areas.

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Title Tag
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The title tag is written in the "head" section of the Webpage and after the "title" tags. It’s usually the linelisted in the search results as well. For example, the NewYork Times’ title tag is “The New York Times on the Web:Daily international, national and local news coverage fromthe newspaper, breaking news updates, technology news,sports, reviews, crosswords, classified ad listings.”
That looks long, but the title tag is usually between 50 and80 characters including spaces. Different search engineshave different limits so you want to make sure that yourmost important words are near the beginning of the title.When you look at the New York Times’ site, you only see “TheNew York Times on the Web”.
The rest of the title is made up of keywords and phrases butin fact, you don’t want to put in too many keywords here.Just place one keyword as the second or third word in thetitle. Too many, and your site could be seen as spamming.
You can also list more keywords in the "meta" and "meta" sections of the "head" area, but becausethese areas have been so abused in the past, a number ofsearch engines today will skip right past the title tag andgo straight to the Web copy.

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Web Copy for SEO
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The search engines will scan the text on a Web page to seeif your site is relevant to the search term. That means thatin effect, your Web copy is going to have to do two things:to persuade a customer to buy, and persuade a search engineit’s relevant.
When you write your copy aim for about 500 words a page, butthrow in between four and eight keywords. You’ll have to tryto balance a smooth text flow with getting in all thekeywords you need to be listed.
You can also consider adding text-only pages such as how-toarticles, tips or tutorials to your site. Throw in somekeywords and they can turn up in search engines and createopportunities for link exchanges.
So there’s a few ways you can try to improve the position ofyour site in a search engine. More important than where youput the keywords is choosing the right keywords. That’s notreally a huge challenge as your competitors are likely tohave done the job for you.
Of course, even if you do get everything right, it doesn’tmean you’re going to shoot straight to the top of Google.One of the criteria for relevancy is how long you’ve beenonline, so success on the search engines won’t comeovernight. The sooner you start submitting though, thesooner you can start to rise.

Warmly,
Mr. Wisnu