The search engines are still the most cost effective method of promoting your web site. Before you think about improving your search engine rankings you MUST make sure that you know the very BEST keywords to describe your site!

Picking and using the right keywords throughout your site will drive more targeted traffic to your site! Please understand that when we say “keywords” this doesn’t just mean single words such as “car”, “computer”, or “software”. What we are really talking about are keyword phrases. A few of your keywords might be single words, but MOST should be 2-3 word key phrases.The reason for this is because MOST searches on the Internet are done using keyword phrases. Examples of keyword phrases would be things such as “car wax”, “Dallas Real Estate”, “project management software”, etc.

Step 1
Make a LONG list of your keywords

Figure out all the possible key words that are related to your web site. These keywords should be words and phrases that the average person would type into a search engine to find you. Using a tool such as Word Tracker (www.wordtracker.com) is GREAT for this because it tells you EXACTLY how many times a particular word was searched for and it gives you suggestions for similar words that you may have never even thought of! Make a long list of these keywords. When you’re finished you should have at least 50 keywords on your list.

Step 2
Narrow down your list of keywords

Review your long list of keywords and pick 12 of the most relevant keywords from the list. These should be your MOST important keywords and will be the ones you will track on a regular basis. You can track more than 12 but this is all that is required for most sites. Make sure that your 12 keywords are VERY specific.

The best way to tell if you've got 12 good keywords that aren’t too general is to test them. Test each one of your 12 keywords on a major search engine such as Google. Type in your keywords and see if sites that sell similar products are returned to you in the search results. If you see your competition show up in the results, then you are on the right track!

Step 3
Use your keywords

Now that you have your LONG list of keywords along with your top 12 keywords, it’s time to put them to good use. Remember, content is what Search Engine robots look for when they decide how high to rank a web site for certain keywords. Let's define what we mean by content. To a search engine, content includes words, sentences, and paragraphs that are FULL of the keywords that you want to be found for.

Please understand that all graphics are totally ignored by the search engines.

A web site with nothing but graphics will NEVER get good rankings on the search engines. Your front page has to sell the rest of the site! It should have at least a few well-written paragraphs that tell the world what you do or what you offer. These paragraphs should include as many of your 12 top keywords as possible.