Rankings - Keywords are critical!
Most website owners or webmasters are intent on gaining a top 10 ranking in Google so that they are on the first page of the Search Engine search responses. If you can get in the top ten listings in Google, for good searchable keywords, it is possible to make some real money.
You do need to know the basics of how keywords work. Keywords and keyword phrases are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find something they are looking for online. If you have a site about "website consultants" then your goal is to get a top 10 ranking for the keywords "website consultants".
But if no one searches for "website consultants", it would be a useless keyword as you would get no traffíc - no matter how perfectly your site is optimised for that keyword.
So how do you find out if a Keyword is any good? The best method is to go to www.wordtracker.com and enter the keyword there. They have a tool that will tell you how many people are searching for that keyword and how many competing websites there are trying to come up in Google when that keyword search is made.
You can also use the keyword suggestion tools supplied by Google Adwords or Overture.
If you have a very-much-searched-for keyword like "website design", you will find it receives many, many thousands of searches each day. That's a lot of potential traffíc but you must understand that thousands of competing websites want to rank highly for that keyword so it may be too competitive, especially if you have a new website. You simply will not be able to compete for or be ranked highly for extremely competitive keywords. Only well-established sites and businesses with very deep pockets have the resources to completely dominate those keywords. You will have better success if you target low to medium competitive keywords.
And on-line marketers have discovered that longer keyword phrases are usually the most lucrative. These phrases deliver traffíc which is better targeted and more likely to convert into a sale. An example is "trout fishing New Zealand" which will be more targeted than the general term "trout fishing" or even worse "New Zealand". If you have a site devoted to New Zealand trout fishing, then this keyword phrase will drive more targeted traffic and improve your conversion ratio. This is often called a "Long Tail" keyword strategy.
So the Top Ten Tips are:
1. Make A Master Keyword Líst
Obviously these keywords should be closely related to the theme of your site. Chëck the keyword competition by seeing how many sites are listed in Google for that keyword. Check on WordTracker the popularity of those keywords - if they are very common, it may be hard to get ranked high for your keywords.
2. Choose Related Keywords
Once you have your master líst of keywords, find long tail related keywords to target. Again, chëck out the competition and daily searches made for each chosen keyword.
3. Use Quality Content For Your Keywords
Creating quality content should always be your main goal. Write for actual visitors who will see and read your content. You must have good useful content that your visitors will use themselves and recommend to their friends or colleagues. Tie this quality content in with your chosen keywords. (See the article on Content is King!)
4. Keyword In Domain Name, Title and URLs
Having your keyword in your domain name will score big points from search engines. That's why I scored when I took up Ben Kemp's suggestion to obtain the domain name www.trout-fishing-new-zealand.com. I also have www.new-zealand-trout-fishing.com in case people enter the key phrases that way round. Then each page of content should contain your keywords in the title & meta tags for that page. Ben Kemp suggests that if you have your keyword in the URL and use hyphens to separate your keywords, you will always rank highly as Search Engines recognise a hyphen as a space between words.
5. Do On Page Optimization
Keyword ratio is a much discussed topic by SEO experts and many suggest you should have your keyword in the headline title (H1) of your page. Sprinkle your keyword and variations of it throughout your page. Don't over do it but make sure the robot/spiders will clearly discover what your page is about. Many webmasters make sure they include their main keyword in the first and last 25 words on their pages.
6. Use Traffíc Modules
One technique that works very well in Google is clustering a closely-related topic or subject into a distinct separate section on your site. For example, this section on 'E-Business" has 50 to 100 keyworded pages all relating to the subject of E-Business. Place a keyword linked menu on each page to connect all your pages together. Keep in mind, your main objective is to supply quality information to your visitors. One reason Google favours this type of structure is because they want quality content returned in their responses to any Search Engine Question.
7. Try Article Marketing
Article marketing is writing short informative articles on keyword topics related to your sites. You then submit these helpful keyworded articles to ezine directories on the web. When your articles are picked up by related sites, you receive quality incoming links. The higher the quality of your article, the more links you will receive.
Google now only rate incoming quality links as they believe those show how worthwhile a website is (who would bother linking to a rubbish website??!!).
In this way, you also take advantage of the higher PageRank of the major ezine directories. Your keyworded articles on these high PageRank sites will get picked up by Google and displayed in the top 10 rankings. Now the displayed URL will be the article directory site but the links in the resource box will be pointing back to your site. Over time this article marketing technique will raise your own site's rankings for those keywords. It does take some work in preparing the articles but the effort is effective and it is simple.
8. Anchor Text And One Way Links
Off page optimisation can help in obtaining high rankings in Google. Getting quality incoming links is very important. Anchor Text simply refers to "the underlined clicked on words" in your links. Most webmasters include their keywords in their anchor text as this tells the search engines exactly what the links are about.
9. Tags, Blogging And Web 2.0
Take advantage of Web 2.0 by using blogs, RSS feeds and the social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg. Try AddThis.com for a simple social bookmarking system. At the very least your site should have a blog and RSS feed attached to it as this is an effective way of boosting your keyword rankings.
Tags have become very important for getting higher rankings. Keep in mind, in free blogging software such as WordPress, categories will automatically be seen as tags. Blogger, which is owned by Google, now has a form where you put your keywords (tags) for each post you make.
10. PPC vs Organic Search
Of course, one of the fastest ways to get your links displayed on Google is to pay for them by using Google Adwords. Your ad and links will sit side by side with the organic link results. In Pay Per Clíck advertising you bid or pay so much per clíck for your keywords and you only pay when someone clicks your links.
However, most webmasters would say that organic links (SERPS) will return better traffíc than paid links or advertising. In most cases, this is probably true because Google's organic rankings are becoming more respected and more trusted by users. They simply carry more weíght with surfers than do PPC's.
This makes it even more beneficial to obtain top 10 rankings for your keywords in Google. Depending on the competitiveness of your chosen keywords reaching the first page listing or even the favored number one spot is well within any webmaster's reach. It is not easy but the rewards are well worth the effort.
