Your marketing strategy may be made up of a number of different sources such as web sites, blogs, article submissions and social media channels, but in any of the above situations using the correct keywords, correctly, is essential.
Search Engine Optimisation can have a dramatic effect on your business. Do it well and site visits and sales can increase, do it badly and the results of your marketing efforts are greatly reduced.
Keyword strategys are a fundemental part of any SEO project.
Proper keyword optimisation can yield excellent Search Engine rankings, and therefore a higher number of site visitors.
The search engines use the text on your site to identify the relevance of your site against the search phrase that the ‘search user’ entered. If you don’t use enough keywords you will suffer, and likewise if you cram too many keywords into your copy you will get penalised.
There are three main areas that you should focus on when it comes to keywords. Accuracy, Positioning and frequency.
Accuracy
Keywords should be relevant to the topic of your web site. Search Engines are very clever when it comes to understanding the relevance of the copy on your site through technqiues such as LSI. If you don’t follow the strict practices of white-hat SEO you can quickly find yourself buried in the rankings.
Positioning
The placement of your keywords on the page is absolutely essential. Where possible use the keywords in the title of your page (even name your page using keywords if you can), and also use them in the description of your page. The description is often picked up by the search engines and displayed in the search results.
Remember that your copy must make gramatical sense. Google can pick up on that aswell. Write you copy for the site visitor, not for the search engines.
Frequency
Don’t get carried away with key words in your copy. It’s easy to over use key words and phrases to grab the attention of the search engines. Keyword spamming or stuffing is generally marked down when it comes to SEO, and could end up dropping your site down a few pages in the rankings.
The big question is what weighting should you look at when it comes to using keywords. Opinions vary as there is no strict rule, but anything between 2-5% of the copy as keywords is generally safe. There are many free keyword density tools on the market to help you in the right direction.
Finally, never forget the golden rule. Be natural with your copy. Write it for humans, not for Search Engines.
