Unlock the Power of Your Website with Keywords!

One of the most important elements for improving your rankings in the search engines is strong keywords. When selecting the most appropriate keywords to use, you should have one primary goal in mind; choose the keywords that will bring in the most qualified visitors to your website.

Selecting the best keywords for your intentions is just the beginning of a process in order to improve your search engine rankings. You need to analyze the purpose of your website and what you want to accomplish with it carefully and try to consider all the words that possibly relate to the services you are offering.

Ask yourself "Who needs my services?" Once you have determined your target demographic, consider which terms would be the most desirable and beneficial to those clients. For example, if you service a college town, you would probably want to consider using keywords that address the common properties in that area like "[College Name] Condos," "Student housing in [City]" and more.

In a perfect world we could read minds and know exactly how our visitors are going to word their search terms. However here in the real world, it all comes down to an educated guess at best. Combat that by varying your keywords with common alternatives such as "homes" and "houses." You also want to be sure that you're not using "Stop words" in your keywords. Remember, the search engines only want to see the nitty gritty in your Meta Keywords, so the use of proper English and conjunctions is not only unnecessary, it's taking up valuable space!

Keywords are not only meant to be used in your Meta tags. Once you have established the best keywords to use, you should be using them throughout your site including your content, Meta title and description, Alt tags and anchor text. A word of caution; don’t over-do it! If your keywords do not make sense in relation to your website and its content on the whole, search engines will be able to tell. They also notice if you're using your keywords in a way that seems "spammy," which includes repeating keywords over and over again, hiding them on the page and more.

If you're unsure of a particular keyword and if it is relevant, try asking a friend for advice. Ask them to sit down in front of your website with a pad and paper and have them write down the terms that came to mind when they read through your content. It's never a bad move to ask for a second opinion in regards to your website and in this case, your friend may hold the "key" to you improving your rankings!