Guest post by Pat Tate.
In today’s world everyone has a website. Whether it’s a business, organization or individual, the Internet has made it possible for users to sell products, share information and express themselves on their own webpage. Whereas it’s more accessible and easier to create a website, it’s harder to generate visitors due to the fact that there’s a high volume of competition. By following these quick and simple tips, you’ll be able to have a website that stands out amongst your competition.
To start, the core of your website should center on keywords. Keywords are the words people use when typing into the search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc.). For example, if you’re looking for golf equipment you may want to type in “golf equipment” (golf and equipment are keywords). The search engine will then display a list of websites that sell golf equipment. If you want to make your search more specific, you would enter in “women’s golf equipment” to get a more detailed list of golf equipment specifically geared towards women. Your keywords also tell Google what your site is about since Google uses a complex algorithm to determine which sites are relevant or not. Another reason why keywords are important is that most website hosts use them. So if you’re not utilizing keywords, you’re only giving your competition more of an advantage.
Quality content is always important when building your website; however, with the right keywords, your content is more likely to be seen by users. Instead of assuming what keywords are useful, it’s more effective to research and find the best keywords. When researching, you’re looking for keywords that are:
- Relevant to your website topic
- Get a certain percentage of searches in the search engine
- Profitable
The amount of traffic a keyword gets tells you how popular that word is. One easy and free program that allows you to search words is Google’s Keyword Tool. The keyword tool will give you an estimate of how many times a keyword has been searched and will propose alternative keywords that are similar. In addition, Global Monthly Searches, which is located at the bottom of the page, tells you the amount of hits a keyword gets from every country per month. If you want a more selective search, you can limit it to a particular location.
The tricky aspect of keywords is making sure a keyword gets enough searches but not too much. If you select a keyword that is extremely popular, then your website will most likely have more competition. For example, if you type in “cats” into the keyword tool, you’ll see that “cats” gets over a million searches per month. When selecting a keyword, you want a word that gets around 10,000 hits per month, which equates to 300 give or take pr day. As noted earlier, the Keyword Tool is a reliable source to find related keywords. As with a thesaurus, you can type in your keyword and obtain a list of similar words that might be more helpful in generating visitors to your website.
We’ve covered what makes a keyword and how to find popular but not over-used words, now let’s see how we can obtain profitable words. You can determine if a keyword is profitable by the amount of monthly searches it generates. The more searchers a word has, the higher probability that users are looking to purchase what they’re looking for (golf balls, golf bags, etc.). Yahoo Overture offers advertising on Yahoo and is a great source for finding profitable words. You have to pay to advertise but you don’t have to pay to research! On their site you can enter in a keyword and see how much money they charge customers to use that keyword; the higher the cost, the more profitable the word. Once you’ve found a few high-cost words, you can take them as use them as your keywords.
Along with researching the cost of a keyword, see which advertisers and affiliates are using this word. If you go to your basic search engine and type in the word, you’ll see multiple ads displayed on your page. These advertisers appear every time someone searches their keyword. Also check out ClickBank, where you can see if a word is profitable or not by counting how many affiliates are promoting that word. ClickBank’s “Gravity” tool displays how many affiliates are signed up for a product.
Finding the right keywords is only half the process, now it’s time to circulate them throughout your website. The way you utilize your keywords will play a crucial role in determining whether your prospective visitors find you. Keyword density refers to the amount of times you use the keywords in your text. A few guidelines to keyword density are:
- Place your keyword(s) in the title of each page.
- Insert your keyword(s) in the first and last paragraph of every page with content.
- Place the keyword in the upper left-hand corner of the page (Google reads from left to right).
- Your primary keyword should be in your domain name.
- On each page, insert your keyword in the title, first paragraph, last paragraph and within the middle paragraphs (every other paragraph).
Keyword density, expressed as a percentage should be less than 2%. A 2% keyword density means that for every 100 words, your keyword is listed twice (or that 2% of your text is your keyword). The reason you want less than 2% keyword density is that if your density is too high, Google will ignore your website thinking its spam. By using a variety of different keywords related to your website, you’ll be able to expand them more throughout your page will gaining a higher probability that visitors will find you.
The last ingredient to creating a successful website is anchor text. Anchor text is a link on your page that may look like “click here” or “join now”. To maximize your keyword, include it in the anchor text, such as “click here for the Ping Faith Golf Clubs”. Anchor text is valuable to your success rate in that Google uses anchor text when determining which sites are relevant to a keyword.
These tips and guidelines will give you the assistance you need in creating a website that generates visitors. The main components to remember are keyword, keyword density and anchor text. Utilize Google and Yahoo for their free and easy-access tools that will help you select the right keywords. Remember, that whereas keywords are important, they’re useless if your content lacks quality. Make sure to spend as much time and effort on your design layout and text so visitors will stay on your website and hopefully notify others about your site as well.
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As a senior Pat Tate started to explore Internet Marketing. She uses her blog as a journal to keep track of the people and programs that she has met along the way. Grandma’s Internet Marketing/blog. She is an avid golfer and invites women to join her to talk golf at Women’s Golf Center. She has always loved toys and as the proud Grandmother of five beautiful Grandchildren she gets to play with new ones at Grandma’s Toy Review
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