| Title : The Importance of Keyword Marketing I |
I can't tell you how surprised I am that so many
people who are new to promoting their product or
service online, that don't know the importance of
keyword marketing. Believe me, your keywords are
one the most important aspects of your website,
even more so than content, and I'll explain why in a
minute.
If you came to do an interview with me, a renowned
dog expert, about dog shows but I never mentioned
dogs ONCE in our conversation, would you think I
was an expert at all? Would you tell ANYONE I was
an expert after that experience? So, if someone you
knew asked you if you knew anyone they could talk
to about dogs??.would you refer them to me?
Probably not. That's how search engines work.
Let me ask you something. Go take a look at the
keywords (just after the [meta keywords> tag in
your home page's source HTML. Let me guess what
they say. They have in it the name of your web site,
the name of your product, and a few, very broad
keywords such as "golf" or "pets." Right?
So, when someone you meet on the street asks you
what your website is about, what do you tell them?
Let's go with the golf example. You tell them, "Oh,
our site is all about golf. We have a whole section
on Ping and other brands of golf clubs, a section on
the best golf courses in the US, golf clothing, and
great novelty golf items!: Now, go check out your
keyword marketing phrases: golf, golf clubs,
clothing, Great American Golf Source.
Well, those few words are what the search engines
are looking for when they come to check out your
site. They come and find your keywords. You're
telling them your site is all about things like golf,
clothing, American, Source, Great, clubs????So, these
engines are going to start giving your site the
reputation for those words.
A reputation? How does something like a web page
get a reputation? This sounds like I'm back in high
school!
Yep. The search engines take note of what you are
saying are the most important words that describe
your web page. Then, they categorize you so that
when someone is searching for those same words;
your page will get served up with any others that
have those same keyword marketing phrases too.
So, here I get online, and I'm looking for a golf gift
for Father's Day. I go to Google and do a search for
"golf gifts." Do you think Google serves up your
page to me at all? You told the guy on the street
you have great novelty golf gifts, but did you tell the
search engines?
No.
You told them your site is about Source, golf,
clothing??..
So the chances of me ever finding your site is pretty
close to zero.
Here, let's do a Google search for the phrase "golf"
right now. Go ahead, pull up another browser and
let's do this exercise together. Right as I write this
article, there are a total of 689,000,000 pages that
have "golf" as one of their keywords. Yikes. That's
a lot of pages to compete with! And yours is just a
little site.
So, now, remember what you told that guy? "Novelty
golf gifts." Let's do a quick search for that. Oh wow,
only 9,000,000 pages have that more specific
keyword phrase in their [meta tags>. What are
the chances that I will be able to find your page if
you are competing with 9 million pages versus 689
million pages?
Um, sorry to say?? both are millions and millions of
pages to compete against!
So, what do you do?
If you are new to your niche market online, the best
keyword marketing strategy is this:
1. Pick about 8 keyword phrases that describe what
your site offers, but don't have a bazillion competing
pages. Just do a search in Google and see how
many pages you would be competing with.
2. Go to overture.com and do a search for the
phrases you have chosen, and make sure they have
enough people actually searching for those phrases!
If you have a great keyword phrase that doesn't
have a lot of competing pages, but only 2 people per
month search for that phrase, you aren't going to
get many visitors to your site! A good amount to
shoot for is phrases that get about 2,000 searches
per month at overture.com.
A general rule of thumb is that you can double the
overture search counts (which are by month) and
that is about how many searches there are per
month in Google (Google doesn't have a way for you
to find out how many people are searching for exact
keyword phrases each month).
That's why a phrase like "Great American Golf
Source" is a terrible keyword to have in your list.
Unless you are a household name like McDonalds or
Q-tips??putting your business name or product as a
keyword marketing phrase is not as valuable to you
as using a more descriptive word such as "novelty
golf gifts"
3. Next, once you have put your keyword phrases, it
is imperative that you actually use those words in
the content of that page! If you are telling the
search engines that you want to be known for
"novelty golf gifts" but never mention that phrase
EVER in that page??.will you get a reputation for
being an expert in the area of novelty golf gifts?
Chances are slim to none.
So, search engines look for what you say your site is
expert on, and then looks through your content to
see that you really ARE an expert in that field
because your page talks all about things relating to
your keywords. They take note, and the next time
someone does a search for your keywords, your site
makes it into the list of pages that are served up to
them.
There's a lot more you need to do now that you
have your keyword marketing list set up correctly.
In my next article, we'll talk about some optimizing
you should do to your pages to ensure that when
you are served up in that list, that you make it up
high enough (like in pages 1-3??of 9,000,000) so
that people will actually find your link, click on it, and
go visit your page!
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