Optimization Begins from Keyword Research
Written on 3/25/2010 12:28:00 AM by Martha Ballesteros
Choosing the right words or group of words to tag your website and its content is one of the essential steps in the whole SEO process. Selecting the relevant keywords significantly helps in generating site traffic as well as improving page rank. However, due to the improved and updated knowledge about SEO, keyword marketing and popularity has been quite difficult to establish especially to highly competitive niches.
Research studies suggest that businesses have a tendency to increase their allotted budget for keyword research and optimization due to the significant decrease in hits and site traffic. To aid this dilemma, there are a lot of professional keyword researchers out there that provide you with "potentially profitable" keywords from less-competitive niches. Aside from hiring professionals, there are also a lot of keywords selection applications and softwares that not only help in identifying relevant and profitable keywords but also provide a quick analysis of your website. However, if you're on a tight budget and cannot afford to spend a few hundred dollars on professional researchers and keyword selection tools, you can just do it yourself. I listed some of the significant factors you might want to consider while doing your own keyword research.
Stick to What Your Website is About - Be Relevant
Since more than any other person, you yourself know what your website is about and who is your target market. You know this even without SEO experience. In addition to the main keyword or keyphrase, choosing a few secondary keywords can significantly help in increasing clicks and hits from prospective visitors searching for those keywords.
Aim for Your Target Market - Be Specific
With 80% of users refining their search after unsuccessful results, it is a must specific key phrases. It's just like putting yourself on an internet searcher’s shoes and think of what keywords would he would usually search on to be directed to your site. People now have been more specific in putting together search terms, often including the brand, location, make, model, and even year.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is overrated. Considering the unpredictable changes on how Google and other search engines rank sites, they have also become more strict and stringent in how they crawl and index one. Previously, everybody's got a notion that the more keywords there are on one's web content, the more optimized their site is thus, increasing chances of landing on the first results page. However, with all the improved and updated SEO techniques, keyword stuffing has been one of the lamest kind. With most search engines and directories only accepting content with only 2 to 3% keyword density, you might want to check out if yours exceeds these values. Otherwise, it may be considered as spam by both search engines and directories which may lead to the deletion your submission or even worse, being banned from future submissions.
Posted in
competitive keyword niche,
keyword density,
keyword optimization,
keyword research,
keyword selection guide
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