Keywords and How to Use Them

People talk about keywords all the time online about how important they are and how to find them. But do you know how to use them correctly? Do you know how best to place your keywords so that they generate more visitors to your website?

Keywords are of paramount importance when it comes to getting traffic (visitors) to your site.

But what exactly are keywords?

They are the words that people type into their browser's search bar to find what they're looking for online. And if they're looking for a website like yours then you need to be using the correct keywords to make sure they find your site first.

And don't think keywords aren't significant. Even if you have a website selling pet accessories you need to make sure you're using the correct keywords.

For instance. Say you have a pet website and you're selling dog collars (or you're an affiliate of a dog collar company). Then you need to make sure that whatever type of dog collar people are searching for, you have that keyword on your webpages somewhere.

As an example, I used the free Google Keyword tool to look up the keyword "dog collar." At the time I checked, this one phrase, is searched for 550 thousand times a month. That is a lot of searches.

Then there are the more exact search terms people were using. As well as the words "dog collar' they were also adding prefixes such as spiked, waterproof, personalised, embroidered, engraves, studded, small, fancy, diamond, dimante, and a whole list of other terms too.

So once you know people are looking for these specific items, you need to make sure you have these keywords on your webpages.

The words need to be in your text. Particularly the first paragraph. And with so many dog collars available it would be wise to have a different page for each type.

Try and only have one keyword per page and don't flood the page with it. Make sure it's only used in a 2% density.

Also put your keyword in the page title if you can, your heading and your meta tag description in your source code.

If your website is new, don't compete with the most searched for keywords. Instead, go after the lesser searched for words.

For example, if the term "leather dog collar" is searched for only 500 times a month, then you'd have a better chance of getting your site listed on the first page of search results with that term than with the words "dog collar" that is searched for 550,000 times a month.

The search engines rank sites in order of relativity and usefulness, and if you have a new site, it won't rank high to start with and so if you compete against high volume search terms, your site will be listed on the last pages of the search results and not many people look beyond the first or second page of results.

Just remembering these basics of using keywords will get you far in the search results and getting more visitors to your website.

Just remember:

Place your keywords

In your meta tag description

In your webpage title

In your heading

In your text, preferably in the first paragraph

Don't compete against the high ranking keywords. Instead go after the long-tail keywords.

Only target one keyword per page so that your pages don't look 'keyword stuffed.' Google will penalise you for that.

Doing all these things will help drive more targeted visitors to your website and help you turn it into an authority site at the top of the search engine results.