Unless you have a huge advertising budget, using SEO optimization and an effective keyword strategy will, in the long run, be less expensive than buying ad space or purchasing placement with click campaigns.
Knowing which words your customers will use when searching is fundamental. You might know what your customers search for. If not, find out. Will they search for ‘pants’ or ‘jeans’? One may be searched more often than the other, but why not target both? How about ‘executive gifts’? Maybe ‘desk accessories’ will broaden your website marketing strategy.
Ask all kinds of people. Get advice from people in all walks of life including management, employees, customers, vendors, friends and family on how they would search for effective search engine positioning keywords. Ask them how they would search for different products and services. It’s really not about what you think they would search for, its about what they think. Believe me, they can be two totally different things.
Once you have successfully harvested a meaningful keyword list, remove any keywords that are either too targeted or not to specific. Also remember that keyword placement is important. Try to put as many keywords as possible in the beginning paragraphs, and of course the title line.
The higher the value of the keyword the more competition you will have. The lower the value of the keyword the less competition we will have. There are a number of SEO keyword utilization tools available online to allow you to check keyword popularity.
You don’t want to aim too low but you don’t want to aim to high either. You need to find the middle ground. For you that may be a keyword with a value of no less than 1000 and no more than 10,000 searches. It will be up to you to determine what you deem reasonable.
Also, the keywords should appear regularly throughout the homepage of your website. It is especially important that they appear frequently in the opening paragraphs. However, resist the temptation to overuse keywords. The search engines can spot it and will reduce your page rankings. Tools are also available to help with optimal keyword density. However, avoid software that writes the site’s pages. Search engines can sniff these out too.
A good rule of thumb is: Never sacrifice quality of content for keyword placement. This will affect your page ranking. Most importantly, your website won’t appeal to visitors.[ad#in-post]
