Strategic keyword use and positioning – SEO Lesson

December 14, 2008

You definitely want people to visit your site. You’ve heard that you need to consider keywords that define your business and title tags that work around those keywords. So you spend hours and days coming up with what you think are the best keywords to describe your site’s message. With that, you need to get your strategy straight.

1. Prioritize

You could have thought of tens if not hundreds of keywords relative to your site’s message. But of course, you cannot expect those ninety or something keywords to fit your title tag or get considered by each and every search engine. Do a shortlist of the keywords you came up with. Come up with the 5, or at most an even ten, really-really relevant keywords that reflect what exactly you wish to convey in your site’s message. When you have them, consider their use in the site content, the frequency, and even where you position them.

2. Don’t hard-sell.

Even if you shortlisted to maybe five keywords, the next temptation is to sprinkle those five into each and every corner or page of your website. It will be ridiculous to have your keyword present in every sentence, sometimes two at a time in a sentence, throughout each page of your site. Even if you are say in the bathroom fixtures business, it is silly to have each page or paragraph of your content peppered with bowl or cistern or bathtub.

Common sensical and strategic positioning of your keywords help you build that important rapport with your publics. Let the interest build gradually and don’t hard-sell.

3. Maintain a structure to your keywords.

Look at your shortlist. From that shortlist, identify again the most important keyword. Put that on top of your list always, whether in the title tag, or in the actual texts. Be as concise but direct as possible. From your keywords, conceptualize on the content as a whole. Your content must build up to the overall message of your site. One other tip is to come up with a theme for your site. The theme will be the source of your keywords and the actual content. Sprinkle prudently and position strategically and relevantly the keywords on the pages of your site. Your keywords about your products or services go naturally to the products or about page but may not sound too good to be seen in the contacts page. Positioning or structuring your keywords is common-sense at the least, and strategy at the most.

4. Be open to diversifying.

Don’t you wish your site makes it to the top 10 searches always, but having a multitude of keywords may not be the answer. If you crowd your site’s contents with this multitude, you not only bore your site visitor, you can even lose credibility. If you want to strengthen or add interest to a specific keyword or content, you may do a separate blog where you reinforce the interest to the content, or do a knol or online forum to be more credible and authoritative.

In strategic keyword selection and positioning, sometimes it’s not always a numbers game.

Written by admin · Filed Under SEO