ENABLING BUSINESS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY ANDTEAMWORK
KEYWORD YOUR WEB SITE FOR SUCCESS!
In the past, I have written about SEO (Internet Marketing) and the importance of using the right keywords to attract visitors to your web site. With the importance of the Internet in our daily lives and buying on-line options, we need to take another look at what we are using to get found on the major search engines. Why? Because our needs for knowledge, information, new products and even everyday necessities can be met with a single click of a mouse. We type the description of what we want into the search engine and click, a wealth of websites related to our search comes up. No wonder more and more people everyday elect to search and shop the NET rather than drive to the mall or the shopping center. My wife does most of your Christmas shopping on the Internet and arranges for direct shipment to our children and grandchildren. Easy, cost-effective and you don’t even have to dress-up.
Shopping on-line has sparked a revolution in the strategies used to market on the Internet. Web site owners or companies such as mine compete with so many other sites to get A TOP 10 placement on the major search engines. One of the best tactics is to craft the best keywords or keyword phrases.
An old strategy was to saturate the page with dozens or more keywords. The philosophy behind using multiple keywords was appropriate at the time but the NET is changing and people are searching the internet using specific words or phrases. To be effective in choosing the right words think about what a potential client would use to find your product or service. For example, if a person was searching for a portable music device, what words would most likely be used in a search for this product? How relevant can you make the keywords on your site to a search for music playing devices? The best way to start is to think about what you would search for. Start with “music players” but get more specific. The more generic the keyword is the more generalized the search will be. People who are seriously looking for something will be much more specific in their search. So it is not just the short keywords but also complete phrases, or “multiple key words”. In the music device example, a potential customer would probably be more likely to search for a “Ipod or IPod Nano” rather than just “music player”. They also may be likely to do a search for specific features they are looking for like “capacity “.
So how can a web site owner capitalize on the searches conducted by users?
The first result that comes out of a search engine is usually the website that contains the most similar number of keywords in the exact same order as the search. For instance, if I used “IPOD NANO 4 GB” for my search string, the search engine will look for the exact same words and word placement. The search engines will also bring up any website names that match my search.
To be able to fully use your website’s potential as a top search result item, you need to orient your website towards the product or idea you want to promote. If you cannot have the .com name, you can rely on keyword optimization to help you with your search engine rankings.
As I mentioned before keywords will not work if they are generic. Most customers log onto the Internet already knowing what they are looking for. Remember, most Internet users are looking for information first and prices and opportunities to buy second. An Internet shopper cannot examine the product or speak to a salesperson so most are looking to find out what they can about the product or service first. Often they will end up buying but these shoppers can’t hold or examine the merchandise so they want to find out about them first before they actually buy. When they do decide to buy, they have a specific idea in mind. They will use this idea as their search string in search engines. If you have multiple products, you need to be able to generate a fair amount of information containing relevant keywords for all of your merchandise (an alternative is to have more than one web site.). If you choose to limit your business to a certain area, be sure to include the name of your chosen location into your keyword base.
Use keywords effectively and you will see the results of your research and hard work.
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