Keywording your website
Choosing keywords for your website
All of your text content on your website pages are liable to be scanned by the search engines and you don't want to waste the opportunity of getting rich keywording within your text.
The easiest way I can explain keywording to you is to explain to you how the search engines work. Search engines frequently spider your website and make a note of many things. Your page titles, your META data, your domain name, your text content as well as many other important factors such as page load speed and ease of navigation.
When looking at your text the search engines are trying to work out what your site is about, so the clearer this is to them the better.
When deciding what text to put onto your website pages, try and think of the person searching the internet and what they may type into the search engines.
All of your text content on your website pages are liable to be scanned by the search engines and you don't want to waste the opportunity of getting rich keywording within your text.
The easiest way I can explain keywording to you is to explain to you how the search engines work. Search engines frequently spider your website and make a note of many things. Your page titles, your META data, your domain name, your text content as well as many other important factors such as page load speed and ease of navigation.
When looking at your text the search engines are trying to work out what your site is about, so the clearer this is to them the better.
When deciding what text to put onto your website pages, try and think of the person searching the internet and what they may type into the search engines.
However, one very important thing to note is that many website owners fight over the same keyword phrases and so in turn you are competing for a page one slot with thousands and sometimes millions of other websites, so think carefully how you can get around this.
The best way is to try and go for a keyword phrase that is more unique to you and what you offer, thus limiting the chance of many others competing for the same phrase.
Here is an example to explain what I mean:
The best way is to try and go for a keyword phrase that is more unique to you and what you offer, thus limiting the chance of many others competing for the same phrase.
Here is an example to explain what I mean:
As well as the area you cover, try and think of anything else unique to you that may help you get better results on the search engines as well as target a better audience. I would rather have 30 people a day to my site who were interested in my products or services than have 300 people who weren't. So there is no point in trying to reach to people who are unlikely to want to become a cutomer in any form.
I am astounded by the amount of websites I see that just by adding a few lines of text or even a couple of words could make the difference of being on page 19 or page 1 of Google. I want to phone these people up and tell them how much they have wasted on their effort to have a website when they miss out on such an easy opportunity, but my phone bill would be sky high!
Whatever is unique to you, your area, the type of goods you sell, the service you give, if it is unique then use it as your selling point.
Whatever is unique to you, your area, the type of goods you sell, the service you give, if it is unique then use it as your selling point.
If your website is aimed at attracting potential business from within your area only, don't do what I see far too often and list all 150 towns and villages at the bottom of your home page as this is known as 'spamming' and will do your site more harm than good. Just put two or three major towns in your area that covers the majority of your clients, and or your county, this will suffice. Also get yourself listed on the Google Local database as this will help your website show on the results when people in your area are looking for your services.
Although you must ensure your text on every page is keyword rich, please do not type tons and tons of paragraphs to fit as much as you can in as it does not work this way. Short simple and well spaced paragraphs or better still bullet points will ensure the search engines will pick up on the important aspects of your website business as well as ensuring your visitors have a pleasant and easy experience whilst browsing your pages. See my page on optimising your web content for more in-depth detail on this.
META Data
The Meta data is what goes into your page coding and is primarily for the search engines when they spider your website to get a good feel of what it is about. The main aspects of the META data are Page titles, Keywords, Page descriptions.
Most if not all web building programs will have a section where you can add META data to every page of your website. If in doubt seek professional help on this as the META data is extremely important to get right.
Page Titles
Page titles are what you see at the top of your browser window rather than your website (see image below) and are probably one of the most important parts of your site and can make a huge difference to where you get placed on the search engine results.
A lot of website owners don't make use of this feature and so often I see 'Home Page' or 'About Us' in page titles. A page title is the very first thing a search engine will see so you must make good use of this with keyword rich phrases and wording. You are limited on the space you can use here, two or three short phrases are plenty, any more could be seen as spamming. Use the page title area to give an accurate descriptiuon of every page of your website, ensuring that every page has a different page title as the search engines do not like you ro repeat page titles throughout the site.
Although you must ensure your text on every page is keyword rich, please do not type tons and tons of paragraphs to fit as much as you can in as it does not work this way. Short simple and well spaced paragraphs or better still bullet points will ensure the search engines will pick up on the important aspects of your website business as well as ensuring your visitors have a pleasant and easy experience whilst browsing your pages. See my page on optimising your web content for more in-depth detail on this.
META Data
The Meta data is what goes into your page coding and is primarily for the search engines when they spider your website to get a good feel of what it is about. The main aspects of the META data are Page titles, Keywords, Page descriptions.
Most if not all web building programs will have a section where you can add META data to every page of your website. If in doubt seek professional help on this as the META data is extremely important to get right.
Page Titles
Page titles are what you see at the top of your browser window rather than your website (see image below) and are probably one of the most important parts of your site and can make a huge difference to where you get placed on the search engine results.
A lot of website owners don't make use of this feature and so often I see 'Home Page' or 'About Us' in page titles. A page title is the very first thing a search engine will see so you must make good use of this with keyword rich phrases and wording. You are limited on the space you can use here, two or three short phrases are plenty, any more could be seen as spamming. Use the page title area to give an accurate descriptiuon of every page of your website, ensuring that every page has a different page title as the search engines do not like you ro repeat page titles throughout the site.
Page Title - Top of browser
Do not use this space to type your website address or the name of your company, unless you are a household name as people searching for your goods or services will not know who you are by name.
Your page title is quite likely to be used as your title in the search engine results, so don't let people searching for a dog kennel find the title 'Home Page' as this will likely make them look at the website below yours on the page
On the right is a cutting from a page one result on Google. The page title of the home page has been used by Google in the description title and so anyone looking at this will know what this site is about within two seconds.
META Keywords.
These are seperate from the page text keywording I talked about earlier. This information goes in to the back-end of your website pages in the META section as with the page titles.
Now Google and a few other search engines are not taking META keywording as much into account as they did a while back as they tend to go straight to your page content now, however, some search engines are still using META keywordind in their ranking factor so it is still worth doing if you know how to. If you are unsure how to keyword it is better to have nothing in this section than a poorly keyworded section.
Again I have seen total abuse of the keyword section, the worst crime I see a lot of is people overspamming with hundreds of keywords a mile long. This is more likely to get your site banned from the search engines rather than up the ranks so don't do it!
You want to pick only 3 to 4 main keywords or short phrases (not sentances) for this section but the trick here is to ensure whatever keywords or phrases you use, they must also be repeated within your page text too. Not just listed on your pages but in proper paragraphed sentances. So for example the site above could have this as its keywords:
These are seperate from the page text keywording I talked about earlier. This information goes in to the back-end of your website pages in the META section as with the page titles.
Now Google and a few other search engines are not taking META keywording as much into account as they did a while back as they tend to go straight to your page content now, however, some search engines are still using META keywordind in their ranking factor so it is still worth doing if you know how to. If you are unsure how to keyword it is better to have nothing in this section than a poorly keyworded section.
Again I have seen total abuse of the keyword section, the worst crime I see a lot of is people overspamming with hundreds of keywords a mile long. This is more likely to get your site banned from the search engines rather than up the ranks so don't do it!
You want to pick only 3 to 4 main keywords or short phrases (not sentances) for this section but the trick here is to ensure whatever keywords or phrases you use, they must also be repeated within your page text too. Not just listed on your pages but in proper paragraphed sentances. So for example the site above could have this as its keywords:
This would mean however that on this page we have used these keywords we must have somewhere the phrases 'Dog Kennels Worcesteshire' and 'Dog care'. This is vitally important.
Think carefully of your choice of keywords, as I mentioned earlier on this page try and go for keywords and phrases unique to you to make your search results more targeted, hence why I added the area to the above keyword meta data.
When entering your keywords place a comma between each word or phrase but no space and use the keywords in your page title and page description.
As I mentioned earlier, keywords are very rarely used by the search engines now so keywording your META data may have no effect, but at present it will not do any harm so is still worth doing.
Page Description.
The page description META is a sentence, consisting of betweeen 20 to 25 words maximum that describes each website page. In the description tag, use as many keywords as possible, but make sure it is in a sentance form and not just a list of keywords. Each page must have its own unique META page description and try to avoid phrases like 'we are the best' 'we are the cheapest' etc. Use a well constructed sentance to describe exactly what the visitor may find on this page. Your page description is very likely to come up on the search results (see image below) and if it gives a good acurate description of your services can make all the difference of someone clicking on your site or not.
Think carefully of your choice of keywords, as I mentioned earlier on this page try and go for keywords and phrases unique to you to make your search results more targeted, hence why I added the area to the above keyword meta data.
When entering your keywords place a comma between each word or phrase but no space and use the keywords in your page title and page description.
As I mentioned earlier, keywords are very rarely used by the search engines now so keywording your META data may have no effect, but at present it will not do any harm so is still worth doing.
Page Description.
The page description META is a sentence, consisting of betweeen 20 to 25 words maximum that describes each website page. In the description tag, use as many keywords as possible, but make sure it is in a sentance form and not just a list of keywords. Each page must have its own unique META page description and try to avoid phrases like 'we are the best' 'we are the cheapest' etc. Use a well constructed sentance to describe exactly what the visitor may find on this page. Your page description is very likely to come up on the search results (see image below) and if it gives a good acurate description of your services can make all the difference of someone clicking on your site or not.
There is a real fine art with keywording and it is not to be taken lightly. A poorly keyworded website can ensure your website is rarely seen. A well keyworded website can get you seen by hundreds of visitors and likely to get you a good page ranking.
Remember, if you find my advice to confusing or if you just don't have the time then I would be happy to give you a free quote to optimising your existing website myself. Please call me on 01608 684796 or email me.
Remember, if you find my advice to confusing or if you just don't have the time then I would be happy to give you a free quote to optimising your existing website myself. Please call me on 01608 684796 or email me.