| Recently, I've worked with two websites which had, among their keywords, the single word "quality." I've also worked with two websites which had no meta keywords at all.There are those who will tell you that putting a list of keywords into the invisible section of your website, along with your title and description, is a waste of time. This is true if you are trying to trick people into paying you for cheap Viagra. For honest people honestly selling an honest product or service, those keywords are valuable. They're a noticeable (to search engines) part of your content, and they tell the search engines what you think is most important about your website. Herewith, three simple rules for choosing good keywords:Your keywords must be things that human beings type into search pages. Can you imagine a human being sitting down and thinking, "I wonder where I can find those goods and services I need... I guess I'll just type in the word 'quality' and see if that works"? Neither can I. People type in the name of the thing they want, and sometimes the geographical location where they want to find it. They also type in particular information they need. So you shouldn't choose random words that happen to be on your web page. You shouldn't choose words that you'd like to have associated with your company in people's minds. You shouldn't choose words that strike you as meaningful, philosophically. Just pick words people who are looking for someone like you will use.Your keywords should be things you can compete for. Companies that promise you #1 Google rankings know that it's very easy to get #1 for some terms and very hard to do so for others -- that's the basis of their promise. I was at #1 for "glow in the dark skeleton dice" once with absolutely no effort on my part. But your chances of being #1, or even on the front page, for a term like "books" is very slim. Even if you sell books and your target customers are people so unfamiliar with books and with search engines that their first thought upon feeling a desire to buy a book is to type "books" in the box at Yahoo, you still aren't going to show up in the top left-hand triangle on the search results. "Books" just isn't a good keyword. "Arkansas Bookstores" is something else again. There aren't so many that you don't have a shot at ranking for that keyword.Your keywords should be in your content. If you're being honest about your website and doing a good job with your content, then the words and phrases that make the best keywords for you will also be elsewhere on your page. I've seen many cases where that wasn't what happened. Maybe all of your text is embedded in graphics and therefore unreadable to search engines. Maybe you have a moody picture on your homepage, or a giant logo, and no text at all. Maybe your homepage talks about only one thing your company does, but there are other things you think are equally important, so you want them in your keywords. In all these cases, you're making mistakes with your content. Don't compound them by trying to let your keywords make up for the mistakes.When I do keyword development for a client, I look at a lot of data. I ask a lot of questions, and encourage the client to ask some, too. There are some specific things that make one set of keywords better for one particular situation than another.For example, my own clients often are savvy businesspeople who know they need a strong internet presence for success in their business in the 21st century -- but don't know a whole lot about search engines or internet marketing. I know this, because I've been there. When I was looking for an SEO expert for the store I managed, I didn't know the term "SEO," so I didn't type "SEO Fayetteville Arkansas" into the little box at Google, and I never did find anyone locally to help me.Instead, I had to go to the trouble of becoming an SEO expert myself. So of course when I chose the keywords for my own website, I used terms like "online marketing" -- phrases that occur to people like my clients when they search for the kind of help I can offer. I think that the people who were billing themselves as SEO experts probably couldn't really have helped me, actually, since they weren't able to make their websites visible to me back when I was desperately seeking that help.Don't make this error with the people who are looking for you. Choose your keywords well. Then use them consistently. The search engines want to help your prospective customers find you. Make it easy for them. |
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