Optimize Your Website – Part One: Keywords

Can you guess what the keyword is in this post?

Over the next few posts I am going to give you some simple tips on ways to optimize your website. Of course there is really no substitute for a professional who not only knows search optimization techniques but actually invests his/her time staying up with the changes in the SEO protocols.

Many times small business owners approach web site design and web management as a DIY type project. Some times this works OK but most of the time it lacks the underlying structure which gives the website the meat that the search engines really like to feed on. Keywords are an important part of that structure and demand special attention. The ability to select the right keywords requires a solid understanding of your target market and what information they are looking for.

Because the search engine algorithms are more carefully guarded then the formula for Coke SEO pros have always used a trial and error method for gaining rank. They would try something and if the ranking went up then they figured they were onto something and would use it for other clients.

We did that too. We would suggest to our clients that when they were creating content that they have a list of keywords in front of them and create paragraphs of content around those keywords.

It worked…for a while.

This is called “keyword stuffing”.

But search engines caught on and so did the site visitors who quickly realized that what they were reading was not meant for them but for a bot.

Keyword stuffing is dumping every possible keyword or phrase into the content or meta tags of the web page. Here is an example of a bad meta description. This is for our client’s film to DVD transfer site and would read as follows: “8mm, video, VHS, transfer, DVD, 16mm, film .” This example has only keywords and no sentence structure.

A good meta description would read something like: “Get the very best in video or film to DVD transfers including 8mm, 16mm and all video formats. Take a look at our services and place your order today!” As you can see this is not stuffed with keywords and has a call to action.

When a search engine bot crawls your site, it is gathering information about the site or page from the title tags, content and keywords. At the same time it is indexing this information to return selected pages on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It compares the words and “ranks” the site depending on how the information matches up.

Keyword stuffing no longer works because the search engine’s algorithm quickly determines if the keywords you stuffed into your content are used an inordinate amount of times. If your site contains a huge amount (according to them) of a single keyword, your site will actually drop in the rankings rather than rise. Not what you want to see.

If I knew what the threshold amount was for keywords being used then this post would have been a lot shorter. I would have said: Use one keyword per 183 characters of text and your ranking will rise an average of three slots per 48 hours. HAHAHA right.

Bottom line is don’t succumb to the temptation to cram your content full of keywords in an attempt to raise your rankings. The result will be detrimental to what you want to accomplish.

Leave the stuffing for Thanksgiving and just write good, solid content that humans and search engines will love. Or you could call us to handle the content creation and the SEO work.

On the next post I will talk about the do’s and don’ts of link building. Hit the subscribe button so that you will not miss it.