See Also The Following Related Pages:

SEO Part 3 – Why Choosing The Right Keywords
For Websites Is So Important

This is the third of three pages on Search Engine Optimization.  To cover all the fundamental aspects of this subject, make sure you also read the pages on content and link building (see links above). 

For advice about effective SEO Tools to help you, click here.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to get this aspect of search engine optimization right, and it is much easier to get it right before you start your website, otherwise you might have to do it all again (like I did – many times!). If you choose keywords that no-one is searching for, then your site will have no visitors.  Similarly, if you choose keywords that millions of other sites are using, then again you will have no visitors unless you are prepared to work for years to beat the competition.  Get this wrong and everything else you do is a waste of time.

You need to know how much competition you are up against as well as how many people are actually searching for a keyword.  To have any chance of showing up in search results, you need to target keywords that do not have too much competition (ie they don’t produce millions of search results when you search for them on Google).  At the same time, you need to choose keywords that people regularly do search for.  You might find a phrase that perfectly describes what you do, and for which there aren’t too many search results, but if no-one ever searches for that phrase it will not get you anywhere.

There is no way of doing this without using research tools.  To find out how much competition there is for any word or phrase you just type it into Google with quotation marks before and after and see how many results show up.  The trickier part is finding out how many people are actually searching for that keyword and also being able to find good alternatives that might actually give you much better results.  Finding the keywords that will actually get traffic to your site is an essential step in search engine optimization, for which you will need to utilize some sort of tool.

When I discovered keywords and research tools I found out things that made me revise my entire website.  The pages and content stayed very much as before, but I optimized each page for different keywords and my visitor numbers jumped almost overnight.  I really can’t tell you how important it is to KNOW what people are searching for.  There are lots of tools out there that offer to help with keyword research, but some do little more than slightly speed up what you can do yourself manually.  A few free versions offer such limited functionality as to be useless.  I use a tool called Wordtracker, which does everything I need it too and more, and in my experience provides the best value of the tools available.

Research Tools To Find Keywords For Websites – Wordtracker

I have found this to be invaluable.  You can use it to explore keyword ideas and get absolutely loads of suggestions that you would probably never have thought of yourself, then you can drill down into each keyword and find all the different permutations, how often they are searched for and how much competition there is for them on other sites.  You can also save and organise all your research and results to ensure the time you spend is as effective as possible.  A free trial is available and they offer a full money back guarantee.  The annual subscription works out much cheaper than the monthly one. Check out the details or sign up for a free trial here.

Research Tools To Find Keywords For Websites – Keyword Discovery

This is a good alternative to Wordtracker, though is geared a bit more towards the professional webmaster.  Its results are based on a significantly larger database than Wordtracker (about 36 billion searches!), so in theory at least it should be more accurate.  For that reason it works out a little more expensive.  The monthly cost is only slightly more than Wordtracker but the annual fee option is quite a bit more.  A limited free trial version is available as a taster, but the functions of this version are limited. Find out more on  their website.

For my purposes Wordtracker is perfectly adequate, and certainly made a huge difference to my own site.  Keyword Discovery is great if you can afford to push the boat out.

You will probably require a research tool on an ongoing basis, as you will need to add pages and refine your site(s) continually.  You will certainly require more than just a handful of keywords because you should choose different keywords for each page of your site.  The keyword tool will also give you ideas for new pages for your site too.  Having a primary and secondary keyword for each page will enable you to target different people entering different search terms, pulling traffic to your site from many directions.  The difference this makes to your daily traffic is enormous.

Each page needs to be written with one or two particular keywords in mind.  The content for each page needs to have a high enough incidence of the keyword so that Google knows that it is important.  Don’t go overboard though, as overuse can have a negative effect – Google does not like ‘keyword stuffing’.  People get into extraordinary detail about the right proportion of keywords to use, but I think the best guide is that your content has to still make good sense to the reader, but should include repetition of your keywords just a little bit more than you would otherwise consider natural.

You can also signal the importance of your keyword by using it in bold text and headings, which is what I am doing on this page for ‘Why Is Search Engine Optimization Important’.  Telling you that was a good excuse for writing why is search engine optimization important once more…oops - there I go again…

Why Is Search Engine Optimization Important:

The Use of Meta-Tags On Your Website

Meta Tags contain important information about your site and are found in the ‘head’ section of each of your web pages.  The information in these tags does not appear directly on your page, but it is read by Google and other search engines and used when ranking and displaying your pages in search results. 

The ‘Title’ metatag is the most important one as this is the most influential in telling Google what your site is about, and so must contain your most important keywords.  Your important keyword should be at the beginning of the title, and preferably near the end too.  Avoid using commas or full stops in you title as it is thought that sometimes ‘bots’ will stop crawling when they come to these, and may miss the end of your title. 

When you search for something on Google and you are presented with a page of results, the underlined heading you see for each result is what is in the Title tag for that page.  For this reason it is important that as well as containing keywords it actually tells your potential visitors why they should visit your site.

The ‘Description’ metatag should contain a more detailed description of your site than your Title tag, and it is the wording that appears under the main title in the Google search results.  Again, you should consider your potential visitors.  What can you say to convey that your site does contain what they are looking for?

The other main meta tag is the 'Keyword' tag, which I wouldn’t worry too much about.  Much used to be made of this but it is highly unlikely that Google pays any attention to it at all these days.  There may not be anything to gain from adding it, but it can’t do any harm.  Just put in a list of all keywords and phrases relevant to that page, with each keyword separated by a comma.

Why Is Search Engine Optimization Important:

Submit Your Site To Search Engines

Google and other search engines trawl the web endlessly looking for web content, so your new site will probably be found eventually, but it is always best to tell the main ones that it exists by submitting your URL direct.  There are plenty of companies that try to get you to pay for submitting your website to hundreds of search engines, but why bother?  Who uses them anyway compared to Google.  Just stick to the top three and you will get indexed where it matters.  The following links take you straight to the URL submission pages for  Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.

Have you read the other SEO pages on content and links?

If you are considering building a website, visit the ’How To create A Website’ page first.