Keywords

Your keywords are the words or phrases that will be used by search engines when they index your site. These keywords are also the words or phrases that people type into search bars when they are looking for sites on a particular topic. SEO is the process of tailoring your site for the search engines in order to get your site indexed as high as possible.

Your keywords are an integral part of SEO. You will use these keywords in your header tags (keywords, description, title), you will also use these keywords in titles to paragraphs (h1, h2, h3), and you will also use these keywords in lists (ordered and unordered), and finally you will also use these words, in italics or bolded, in your content. In your first paragraph of each page you will use your keywords and in the rest of your page two or three more times.

To search for keywords on your chosen topic go to Google AdWords Keyword Tool and type in a keyword or keyword phrase which represents your chosen topic, the tool will return alternatives which you may not have thought of. This tool is also useful in discovering the keywords to use in your description meta tag, title tag, keywords meta tag, and throughout your content.

In particular use your best keywords, two or three of them, in your first paragraph of each page and repeat them a few times throughout your page. Save these keywords in a spreadsheet or write them down on graph paper. Then go to the Google search bar and enter then in one at a time and take note of the results, the relevance of the sites returned, the number of sites returned. You are looking for high relevance, low number of sites returned.

Next take advantage of WordTracker's free trial software. WordTracker's free trial uses AltaVista only but it helps tremendously when choosing your best keywords. WordTracker returns an index based on the ratio of the number of times the keyword was typed into AltaVista search bar and the number of sites returned by the search. WordTracker will list the keywords in order of the most favorable index to the least.

What I prefer over everything is setting up a test Google AdWords campaign. Though there is an initial small startup fee it is worth getting to see the predicted number of hits a keyword will generate. Setting up a test campaign is also worthwhile because it helps you prune your keywords. You can set your maximum cost-per-click (cpc) and you can set your maximum spending per day (also see Google AdSense).

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