Editor note: This is part 2/2 of a series about do-it-yourself SEO from Scott Fox, author of Internet Riches and the E-Commerce Success Blog. (Part 1: 6 Tips on Link Building and SEO Friendly Web Design)
C. SEO Keyword Tips
7. Understanding Keywords
To rank highly in the search engine results you need to pick appropriate key words and phrases with which to promote your site. You don’t want the keywords to be so broad (e.g. "cars", "shirts", "consulting") that your site is lost in a sea of competitors on page 28 of Google’s results. You also don’t want to target keywords that are so narrow that few people are likely to search on them.
You can use free online research tools like Google’s Keyword Tool to help you brainstorm appropriate keywords, and Google’s Traffic Estimator Sandbox to find those keywords where there is customer demand to support your website’s business.
The key to uncovering your best keywords is to think like your customer. This means avoiding industry buzzwords or lingo to use simple, "natural language" instead. So try targeting "warm socks" instead of "men’s support hosiery", for example.
8. Meta Tags
While not as important to search engine ranking calculations as they used to be, the "meta tags" hidden in each web page’s HTML code should be tweaked to maximize their potential impact. This means including your keywords so that they appear in the "title", "description", and "keywords" meta tag fields. This is easily done in most web page publishing tools or content management systems (or ask your tech guys to do it). Many search engines reference these fields to identify what keywords you see as most representative of your page’s content.
9. Headline Placements
The visible elements of your web pages’ headlines, links, and text should all be reviewed for keyword inclusion also. The search engines give extra weight to any words that are included in the titles of each page and section, and wherever text is bolded, highlighted, or linked. Their logic here is that if you are emphasizing those words visually to site visitors, then those words are probably key to your site’s content, too.
10. Keywords in Your URL
You want to use your keywords in as many other appropriate places as possible, too. For example if you can use them in your website’s URL that can help your ranking. (Of course, you must balance this against making your URL longer, harder to remember, and perhaps more difficult to spell, too.)
11. Page File Names
Further reinforcement of your keywords by using them in your page titles and file names is also a good idea. This can result in URLs for your popular pages that look like this: http://www.yourbrandnamekeyword.com/keyword-keyword.html
Caution: Avoid Keyword Stuffing
NOTE: You must balance all of this keyword advice against the rules that many search engines have about "keyword stuffing". This means that you shouldn’t go crazy with the keyword insertion -- search engines are wary of sites that overdo it. They prefer your text copy to appear like normal conversational or sales copy.
This suggests a keyword "density" of less than 15%. In other words, for every 100 words of copy on the page, you don’t want to have more than 15 of them as your keywords. Many experts advise even lower, down as low as 3-5%.
Bonus SEO Tip: How to Index Your New Web Site Fast!
For new websites, it is often frustrating how long it can take before the major search engines find, index and add their sites to results pages. (Many search engines even make money on this by offering "rapid submission" services with recurring fees often in the hundreds of dollars.)
One simple tactic that can accelerate a new site’s appearance in search engine results is to have it linked to from an already established, highly ranked site. Big sites are crawled regularly by Google, Yahoo, etc.
(Entrepreneurial small businesses interested in a link exchange with an established site can visit the E-Business Links Directory on ScottFox.com. This free service offers link exchanges that can help improve both search engine submission speed and results ranking. I have had new sites of my own appear in Google’s search results in just days using this technique.)
Overall, the basics of SEO are well within your technical reach. I recommend implementing each of the DIY techniques detailed above before spending money on SEO consultants. There are many more advanced strategies that good SEO consultants can help with to improve your web site rankings.
Follow these DIY SEO guidelines, and you can save your money for that fancy stuff.
About the author: Scott Fox is the author of Internet Riches, the best-selling guide to how anyone can start their own business online. He blogs about e-commerce small businesses, online marketing, and startup strategy at ScottFoxBlog.com. Scott is a regular contributor to About Online Business.
