Keywords: the Bread and Butter of Search Engines
June 20, 2008
Let’s talk about one of the very basic aspects of SEO: keywords.
You need to figure out what keywords your target audience is using to find what you are selling online. What are they typing into Google to find products/services related to your industry?
Even though there are very sophisticated keyword research methods, in most cases you can jot down an intuitive list of keywords and keyword phrases.
Once you have this list of words, you’ll need to add them to your page copy and to the code behind your pages.
When you add specific keywords to your pages copy, you need to make sure you don’t compromise the flow and the readability of your text. If during this process you lower the quality of your text, you are only ruining your users experience and damaging your site’s reputation, which will ironically have a negative effect in your SEO (more on that later.)
Adding keywords to the code behind the pages is a lot easier. You don’t need a copywriter to do this. Anyone with HTML knowledge is capable of doing this. In most cases, these are the HTML tags you’ll need to include your keywords in:
Title
Keywords
Description
Alt
This is what techies mean when they talk about meta tags.
Having the right keywords in your pages and in the code behind your pages is the first step to a successful SEO campaign, but it’s not enough to rank in the search engines.
The other variables that need to be taken into account when planning a complete SEO campaign you can read:
Links
The Trust factor
Usability
