Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Understanding Keywords When Optimizing A Website

There are millions of people who are all trying to make money online. Around 97% of online businesses will fail within the first year which asks the question what is causing these websites to fail. Well the simple reason is the people creating the web presences did not understand search engine optimization and therefore were unable to build free web traffic to their website or blog. If they ranked well for competitive keywords then there would be no reason they could not make money and have a successful business. If you want a successful business then having an understanding of search engine optimization will be crucial and keywords are a large factor when trying to rank in Google and the other major search engines.

The niche or topic of your website will determine the available keywords. This means if you chose to create your website about paid surveys then you wont be able to rank for terms such as internet marketing, poker, or other words which have nothing to do with your presence. This means for a serious online business professional you should know the potential traffic which your niche holds before creating any type of presence. Go to Google and search for “google adwords keyword tool”. This will bring up a tool which can show you the possible traffic of any term you type in. The great thing about this tool is not only will it show you the traffic of the term you type in, but also the 99 other terms which are closely related. If you type in something like “earn money online free” it will let you know that the term is not the highest searched for the niche and you may want to consider going after some of the bigger terms such as “make money online” or “earn money online”.

Now you can see the amount of traffic and are able to pick some terms you would like to rank well for it is time to add them to your website. The most important thing to remember about search engine optimization especially when you are changing around your presence is never sacrifice the value of your website for optimization. This means dont force your keywords onto the page, but let them flow with the rest of your content. It is good to make sure you use your keywords in the title tags and headings this will let Google know what the page is all about. Repetition is not the key when trying to optimize a website, but rather use alternates for the keywords you would like to use. It is fine to have the keywords repeat a couple times, but rather than repeating the same ones over try switching a word or two around. If we go back to the previous example “earn money online” you could use the alternates “make money online”, “earn money free”, “earn money free online”, even “make money free” will help push your website up.