Only Main Keyword Targeted
Most Webmasters only think of their main keywords when the term, ‘targeted keywords’ come into their mind. More often than not, we only target our main keywords and forgetting the importance of the other long tail keywords. This is a major mistake that I have realized.
Every Webmasters should have a list of the targeted keywords for their sites and keep expanding this list when they have done optimizing for a specific terms. There are several advantages for doing this. The greatest benefit is that we can concentrate on less competitive keywords since they are much broader and more specific. It is definitely much harder to optimize for ‘SEO services’ than for ‘Affordable SEO Services’.
There are two ways we can go about to increase and expand our existing targeted keywords list. One is to increase its depth, while the other is the breadth.
To increase our current keywords depth, we can examine the Search Engine auto-complete feature. For example, you will see other suggestions offered by Google if you were to key in ‘earn money ‘ into the search box. The suggested options include ‘earn money online’ and ‘earn money quickly’. These are keywords that you can target and it builds more depth into our current list
Another great example of improving the depth of your keyword list is to use the online keywords tool such as the Overture and Free Wordtracker tool. These tools help really by providing other related searches that help the Webmasters to further expand their keywords.
In terms of expanding the breadth of the keyword list, we must constantly check out our visitor logs and incoming links to analyze what are the keywords that constantly brings in traffic. You will be surprised at times to find out that some unexpected keywords are actually the major source for your traffic. Cpanel provides a very comprehensive list of referring keywords and it is highly advisable to check our the logs provided by them.
To conclude, it is very important to target on new set of keywords from time to time as this will also help you to attract a new crowd. Focusing on much specific keywords from the start also make your optimization effort much easier.
Developing keyword orientated content for your website means to have a vision of the whole. It’s a matter of knowing the main keywords you want to target, the derived long tail keywords for each main keyword, how to use it in articles and how to link articles to get the results you want. Don’t make the mistake of paying too much attention to only one article and not realizing the importance of the whole.
The First Connection
This is basic knowledge for keyword targeting. Choose the keyword you want to target in an article and then make sure you use it in title, first paragraph, anchor text and the content of the page. This is the first connection: having the keyword present in all those places.
When you’ll use the keyword for that page in anchor text link only internally: you don’t want to help other websites outrank you, do you? It’s very important to use the keyword in the first paragraph and also in the rest of the content.
My advice is to use it naturally, as you would do it a real conversation with someone: don’t force it and don’t try to do keyword stuffing or achieve a certain keyword density. Although you follow some technical rules for search engines, in the end you write for people (those that will link back to you if they like your content – so keep this in mind).
Don’t limit the use in content to only the exact keyword: experiment with singular and plural form, synonyms or related words. This way you escape the danger of repeating the keyword too many times
The Second Set of Actions
You can also use keywords in other places as well, to enforce the relevancy of the page to that specific keyword:
- Description metatag: although using the keyword here will not improve your rankings it will help in attracting the eye on your link since this piece of information is displayed by search engines right bellow the title of the page and with the keywords in bold
- URL – using the keyword in the actual URL of the page can have a positive impact on your rankings but it’s not a decisive factor
- File names, especially images and the ALT property of the images can help with image search or different other file types search
- Subheading like h1, h2 and h3 can help especially when someone reads your page: it will be easier to follow the main ideas
Targeted Keywords
When I say Targeted Keywords I don’t mean single Keywords like “Gardening”, if your website was on gardening that would seem like a good Keyword to aim for. However it is not Targeted and your chances of ranking first for the Keyword Gardening is extremely bad, there is way too much competition for single Keywords. Let’s say your website is on gardening with fruit trees or something, a better Targeted Keyword would be something like “growing fruit trees” or even more Targeted you could have the actual name of certain fruit trees. I don’t know many types so a simple example would be “growing apple trees”, “planting apple trees”, etc or something like that.
I know there are less searches for longer Targeted Keywords but there is also a lot less competition and you will end up receiving more traffic than if you Targeted short Keywords.
Keywords For Your Keywords
Confusing? It is actually quite simple, whenever you find a good Targeted Keyword for your website do a little research on that Keyword and find some other Keywords that Search Engines like Google find relevant. So for every Main Keyword you enter into your “Targeted Keyword List” enter a few sub Keywords for that Main Keyword. Check out “Keyword Research” to learn how to find good Keywords and relevant Keywords.
Using Your Targeted Keyword List
Using your Targeted Keywords is just like using any other Keyword, for a full guide on how to use Keywords check out “How To Properly Use Keywords”. Keywords are not only used in the Meta Keyword tag, in fact that is probably the least valuable spot for Keywords. Since search engines don’t rely on what we put in the meta Keywords tag they search the content of your page and determine suitable Keywords from that.
So the best place for you to use your Keywords is throughout the content on your web pages. This includes smartly including your Keywords in the Title Tags, Header Tags and placed throughout the body of the content. As mentioned above you also want to use related Keywords to the Keywords you are trying to rank for, so you need to mix your Keywords throughout. If you haven’t already I recommend reading the “How To Properly Use Keywords” guide.