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Last updated: Thursday, June 7, 2007

How to pick keywords for search engine optimisation

What are you trying to achieve

Search engine optimisation is not as much of a mystery as the new comer may think.
In principle it is as simple as being the most “relevant site” for the search term that the user enters.

That means having the best information on your readers topic.

So how does google judge that?

Search engine rule 1 - Page content matters

Well first of all, if you are most relevant the title must include the term,
and also that text must appear in a number of other parts of the page too.
So we will discuss the important factors shortly.

Search engine rule 2 - Site quality matters

But also google likes sites with lots of good information:
Lots of pages on relevant subjects
Google construct a site parameter “page rank” to express this

Search Engine 3 - Links Matter

Clearly an authority site, will have other sites refer to it.
So the right type of links matter!
In fact it matters more what other sites say about you, than what you say about yourself!

Key word searches

So what is your customer searching when they come to search engines?
You need to identify the expressions your customer uses for each of your products.

In picking keywords to target, it is important to know how many are searching.

Whilst paid tools are best, you can use:
inventory.uk.overture.com/d/
This tells you how many searches were done on yahoo last month.
Multiply by four to guess at total searches including google

“Baby Furniture” gets more than 50 times as many searches as “Baby High Chair”

So first find how popular searches for different keywords are.

Key word competitiveness and being on page 1

The difference between page 3 and page 5 of google rankings is irrelevant. If you are not on page 1 then you will not
get search engine traffic.

So you need a way to determine whether you can get to page 1

To do this you need to understand how to measure your competition.

The easiest way to do this is:

Download the google tool bar and install
Allow page rank to be displayed
Type into google one of your keywords
Click the top search result
Hover your mouse over the page rank bar to see the page rank of your competition
Then from the page rank drop down see how many back links there are.

The trick is to find keywords for which your competition only has rank 2 or 3, and
only as a handful of backlinks. Because those sites you can beat!

No matter how many searches, dont tackle competition with PR 5 or 6 sites or those with hundreds of backlinks

Selecting your keywords

So the trick is to find keyword expressions, for which the competition is weak, but there are hundreds, preferably thousands of searches.

Optimising for your keywords

SEO is a complex subject but here are some basics to follow.

Produce one page to target each keyword expression.
Make sure the search expression appears in the title tags
Also ( less important to google) in the Meta Keywords and description
Use H1 tags to title the page, and include the keywords there too.
Write pages of 300-500 words.
Use around 5-6% of the keywords: not too many, not too few.
Also use the keywords in alt tags for images
Use a meny system that has the keywords in the menu item on every page

Building links

The next job is to build links.

And here are a few hints.

If google hasnt found you yet, DONT register.
Register with the other engines.
Register with DMOZ
Use your link in articles, and submit to search engines.
Use social book mark tags.
Provide testimonials on related sites that allow your URL
Approach related sites with page rank 4 and above , and offer reciprocal links
Advertise, but not on link farms: use links on related sites, with text that describes your page.

Beating the competition

IN essence all you have to do is:

Have at least as many optimisation features as your competitor.
Have at least the number of quality links
Do these and you will win!

So keep checking up on your competitors!

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