After my post yesterday on Search Engine Marketing I thought I would discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the kind of search marketing where you optimize your web site to rank well in search engine results. To rank be successful in SEO you need to both optimize your site content, known as keyword optimization, and generate links to your site, known as link building. This article focuses on keyword optimization and your site content.Even a web site with a million back links will not get a lot of search traffic, if the keywords it ranks well for are not popular. One the other hand, even if you ranked first in Google for a very popular keyword like “cars”, it would do you no good if your site sold fishing rods. Both of these are examples of very poor keyword optimization.
In other words, keyword optimization is all about targeting keywords that are popular among search phrases (have a high search volume) and related to your web site. Becoming good at search engine optimization requires having a good grasp of keyword optimization.
Lets first look at which keywords are popular. Searchers who have any experience with search engines will not write a question like “What is the height of the highest mountain?” to the search area. Instead they will try short keyword pairs like “mountain height” or “highest mountains”, and only move to longer phrases if the results are not what they are looking for.
That is the reason shorter keywords usually have a much higher search volume that longer ones. Therefore you should ideally target short and popular keywords. You can find out the relative popularity of different keywords by using online tools such as Word.
Usually it is quite obvious which keywords are relevant for a given web site, but you might not always figure out all of them. For example, if your site is about movie theaters, keep in mind the difference in spelling used in British and American English: theatre and theater. Sometimes one will be more popular and so a better choice.
Once you have found out exactly which keywords it is you should be using, you need to make sure they appear in your site content. The most important keywords should appear in page titles and important headings. You should also use important keywords several times throughout a page, but be wary of overt use. That is known as keyword stuffing and can lead to search engines penalizing or banning your site.
Search engine optimization requires understanding of keyword optimization. You need to make sure the keywords you use are targeted and popular. Finding out good keywords and learning to use them effectively are the key to successful keyword optimization.
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