Choosing and Using Keywords to Optimise your Website

Written on the 2 July 2010

Keywords are the words that your target market are typing in when using search engines like Google, to find out about services or products they are looking into. You need to figure out what these key words or phrases are, then strategically place them throughout your website so you appear when someone conducts a search using those words.

Step 1 Keyword Research

Your choice of keywords can mean the difference between lots of search engine traffic to your website and none. So you need to put some time into choosing the best ones. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is very competitive these days, so you will most likely need to target niche markets by including things such as your location or a specific product name.

Here are some tips:

Think about your keywords from a customer point of view - what words would potential customers use to find your business/products/services
Brainstorm with your team, what you believe are the words your target marketing are searching with
Ask your existing clients (be aware often they use different terms than you do)
Use a free tool like Google Keywords Tool to find out what your target market are searching for (http://keywords.bloomtools.com) - these actual figures give you the facts to make a more informed decision
Break your target market down into niche target markets and work through their keywords (then possibly have specific pages for each -optimising their specific words, to increase your results)
Use your company name in phrases as people do search by company name
Use your geographic location as a keyword - people will often search for businesses within their local area
Review your competitor websites to get ideas of words you can use
Don't use keywords that are too broad. Instead use modifiers to make generic keywords and phrases more specific. For example, insurance related companies might use the key phrase 'health insurance quotes'
Try to use multi-word phrases, eg 'car rentals newcastle'

Get our detailed guide to the process of keyword research by clicking here

Step 2 - How to Use Keywords

To get your website appearing in the search engine results for your chosen keywords, they need to be strategically placed throughout your website. The most valuable places for keyword placement are the page titles, page names, headings and internal links within your content.

Tip Write the content for your pages first, then go back over them and add keywords in where possible. This ensures your copy reads well for humans, not just search engines.

SEO essentials:

Ensure keywords are included in the title of each page you create
Repeat your keywords near the top of each page as headings or use bold
Design your website with pages that don't have more than 300 - 500 words per page, with keywords repeated 3 - 6 times for every hundred words
Your overall keywords should be repeated throughout the whole website, not just the individual page - use links back to the home page with the keywords in them
At the bottom of each page, link to another part of your website using its keywords. Eg: 'Click here to view our tennis shoe collection'
Fill out the meta description and meta tags for each page in The Web Console
Give all your images alt text rich with keywords

A great strategy for getting qualified traffic to your website is creating pages within your website to target specific niche markets and optimising these with lots of keywords. For example, a law firm that specialises in family law could create a page with information about their family law services and optimise it for keywords such as 'family law gold coast' to attract that specific market.

Another thing to keep in mind with your content and keywords the search engines often reward websites that have fresh, regularly updated content by giving them a higher spot on the search results. So you need to be regularly adding to your content with new pages, articles or a blog and ensure you always use your keywords as much as possible with lots of hyperlinks.

Also use these keywords on your social media presences, and where possible link back to your website. eg. your YouTube video has your keyword in its title; your tweets often have your keywords in it - with your shortened link taking you back to your website (talk to your Bloomtools consultant about how our tools now work with social media sites to save you time and increase your presence online)

If you don't have these tools (articles, blog etc.) running on your new website, talk to your Bloomtools Internet Consultant once the website is live and they will help you take it to the next level with more functionality.