In our last article The Entrepreneur’s Advisor | Choosing What To Do With Your Website we talked about various things to consider when setting up a website. As promised, this post is an addendum with a better explanation of what keywords are and how to use them.
Entrepreneurs Should Choose Keywords Carefully
Before you post any content to your site or create your pages it is best if you understand the role that Keywords play in establishing a web presence. This section describes what keywords are, types of keywords and how to use them.
Why Keywords are Important
Keywords are the words or short phrases that are used throughout your website/blog to tell search engines what is important about your page. They are the terms that someone might write in a Google or Bing search box. Once entered into the search engines the goal is to have your website show up on the first page of search results, preferably one of the first three choices. Research has shown that approximately 95% of web traffic comes from the first page of search results with the top 3 spots getting over 66% of the click through’s. Keywords are the cornerstone of SEO.
Types of Keywords
When choosing your keywords, keep in mind that not all keywords are created equal. The more popular the term, the harder it will be to move up in the search results. For example, if you typed the word entrepreneur into Google search, you will get back 35,800,00 results. My website is nowhere to be seen, because the word entrepreneur has been around for a long time and is used in many articles, websites, blogs, schools and so on.
On the other hand, if you type in the words entrepreneur advisor Google returns just over 2 million results and my website shows up as # 1 and 2.
The above example highlights the use of keywords and long-tailed keywords. Both entrepreneur and entrepreneur advisor are keywords but the long-tail version is far more productive. When choosing keywords try to be realistic about obtaining results.
How Keywords Are Used
For SEO purposes, keywords can be placed in domain names, page titles, blog titles, h1, h2 and h3 tags, meta descriptions, links, anchor text and throughout the website content. Keyword density is important but not as important as their placement or having quality content.
How Entrepreneurs Can Get Started With Keywords
There is no magic formula for deciding how many keywords you should choose to help you establish your web presence. Some companies track hundreds of keywords and yet others just a few. We would suggest that you list about 25 to 50 keywords to begin with and then add or subtract as you get a better feel for what your content will look like.
For now list your keywords and make sure you use some of them in every post and on every page. How to increase keyword effectiveness without the help of paid SEO services will be discussed in the next major article Learning The Basics of SEO.
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Keywords are such an important element within optimizing your website. This is a nice overview of how to develop and use them effectively. Thank you for providing this information.
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