Keywords: Using the Words
One night a week I teach video editing at a local community college. Recently a student found out about my day job in the SEO business and the first question they asked was:
What are the magic words I need to put on my website to make it ‘Number One on Google’?
I have been asked this question one way or another so many times I figured it couldn’t hurt to review the concept of Keywords again.
In the next few articles I will talk about keywords – finding them, using them, and the myths about them. I will also cover the myths about the idea of being ‘Number One on Google’ and how this concept gets abused.
I’m going to go over the very basics, so don’t be surprised if you already know some or all of these ideas. I’ve taught a variety of classes over the years and I’ve learned that it’s never a bad idea to start from the very beginning – someone needs the information, even if most people already know it.
So let’s look at the most basic aspect of keywords.
“Keywords” are what a person types into a search engine in an attempt to find something. But here is where the website comes in. In order for the search engine to find you, those keywords must be on your website. It is the intersection of what is typed into the search engine and what is on the website – the intersection between the groups of words – that is important. If you do not have the right group of words on your website then the search engine will not find you.
Very basic, I know. But, in my reviews of websites I see a lot of sites whose owners do not seem to understand how keywords work. One great example is sites which have nothing but flash or other flashy graphics on the home page. This may look impressive but with no text on the page the search engines have no idea what’s there.
No idea what’s on the page = no listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs) = no possible traffic to your website. The only way such a site would be included in search results is if that search is for the website name.
Another way companies fail to connect with the search engines is by putting useless text onto their website. By “useless” I mean text which does not help them with search engines or with humans visitors.
The most memorable time I saw this problem was a website whose home page had only their mission statement on it. To make it worse, it was one of those ‘Dilbert’ mission statements: “We empower our employees to……”
Absent from this homepage was the name of the company, what they did or who was in charge — any of the information that most humans want from a company’s website. And this company could not figure out why they were not getting any business from the website!
When looking at or reviewing a website the first question I ask is: do they have the right words on the webpage? This is even before I start to question how to raise a website to ‘Number One on Google’. I’ll talk about the question of rising in ranking a little later; right now we are talking about building a good foundation to the website.
It’s so basic yet so often ignored, let me say it again. Without the proper words on the site there is no hope to even show up on the radar of the search engines.
Now that we have reviewed the basic concept we can move on in the next article to talk about picking out the right keywords for your site.
Technorati Tags: website, seo, keywords, flash, search engines, humans
This article was first published February 11, 2009 on the Tatum Marketing blog
One night a week I teach video editing at a local community college. Recently a student found out about my day job in the SEO business and the first question they asked was:
What are the magic words I need to put on my website to make it ‘Number One on Google’?
I have been asked this question one way or another so many times I figured it couldn’t hurt to review the concept of Keywords again.
In the next few articles I will talk about keywords – finding them, using them, and the myths about them. I will also cover the myths about the idea of being ‘Number One on Google’ and how this concept gets abused.
I’m going to go over the very basics, so don’t be surprised if you already know some or all of these ideas. I’ve taught a variety of classes over the years and I’ve learned that it’s never a bad idea to start from the very beginning – someone needs the information, even if most people already know it.
So let’s look at the most basic aspect of keywords.
“Keywords” are what a person types into a search engine in an attempt to find something. But here is where the website comes in. In order for the search engine to find you, those keywords must be on your website. It is the intersection of what is typed into the search engine and what is on the website – the intersection between the groups of words – that is important. If you do not have the right group of words on your website then the search engine will not find you.
Very basic, I know. But, in my reviews of websites I see a lot of sites whose owners do not seem to understand how keywords work. One great example is sites which have nothing but flash or other flashy graphics on the home page. This may look impressive but with no text on the page the search engines have no idea what’s there.
No idea what’s on the page = no listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs) = no possible traffic to your website. The only way such a site would be included in search results is if that search is for the website name.
Another way companies fail to connect with the search engines is by putting useless text onto their website. By “useless” I mean text which does not help them with search engines or with humans visitors.
The most memorable time I saw this problem was a website whose home page had only their mission statement on it. To make it worse, it was one of those ‘Dilbert’ mission statements: “We empower our employees to……”
Absent from this homepage was the name of the company, what they did or who was in charge — any of the information that most humans want from a company’s website. And this company could not figure out why they were not getting any business from the website!
When looking at or reviewing a website the first question I ask is: do they have the right words on the webpage? This is even before I start to question how to raise a website to ‘Number One on Google’. I’ll talk about the question of rising in ranking a little later; right now we are talking about building a good foundation to the website.
It’s so basic yet so often ignored, let me say it again. Without the proper words on the site there is no hope to even show up on the radar of the search engines.
Now that we have reviewed the basic concept we can move on in the next article to talk about picking out the right keywords for your site.
Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Conversion Rates, Traffic
Written by: Eric Gerds