How Do We Use Those Keywords? PT4

Now its time to put forth a little effort. I’m going to ask you my favorite question:

What do you have to say to your customers, viewers, and peers?

Notice I never asked you what you had to say to a search engine. Your content is king, and if you ever start filling your web pages, press releases, articles, and blogs with randomly placed keywords, they will no longer be keywords. They will then be useless, lifeless gobbledygook that will only make you look uneducated, and there’s absolutely no authority in that.

Page by page, start writing quality content. Remember your audience. Some will be looking for information, some will be looking at their competition, and some will be looking for your services or goods. Write to them, and although a call to action on every page is a good idea, you want to spend more time expressing the benefits to the customer than the blatantly over-done, hit-them-over-the-head sales pitch.

Pick one keyword phrase per page. Pick the best one for your landing page. Most times your landing page will be your home page, but sometimes it’s a services page. What page is your customer coming to first? That will depend on where you send them from social media links, email, and directories. That is where you use your primary keyword.

Hint: Its not in the drop-down menu. Current logic is that every page a person lands on must be considered a landing page.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Can you use the word or phrase in your title header, naturally? 80% of all SEO results are from the page title and anchor text.
• Can you mention the word or phrase in its entirety within a natural sentence, and will that sentence work in a 2-3 sentence paragraph?
• Can it be used naturally in any h2 bullet or numbered list?

If you believe those conditions apply, see if they work into the text you’ve written. Read it out loud.

• Does it flow?
• Did it lose meaning?
• Will your customers, viewers, and peers find value in what you’ve said?

If not, then try again. If your writing doesn’t meet those conditions, you’ve wasted your time on keywords. Trial and error, my friend. In the end you’ll be glad you put effort into the quality and style of your website copy.

Is SEO Just About Keywords?

ABSOLUTELY NOT. You also need to consider and address:

• The number of pages on your site. You want several pages of good content, including drop down 2nd and 3rd tier pages.
• The age of your site. Even when it’s built right, time improves rank because familiarity will bring necessary clicks and comments, and links.
• The frequency of updated, quality content. Blogs, calendars, and product reviews all add quality content if updated regularly.
• The internal linking strategy, and quality external links. We’ll be talking more about that in our next post.

Our next and final post in this series addresses where those keywords will be most effective. Did you find this helpful? We’d love to hear from you, please leave any questions and comments below, and be sure to use your name (not your keyword phrase) in the name box, and a link to your blog or website in the URL box. We’ll explain why that’s so important in our next post.

Photo Credit: Le Petit Poulailler on Flickr

For more information, go to Tweak Your SEO Regularly.

Related Articles:
Very Basic SEO – Pt 1
SEO Where Do You Find Your Keywords – Pt 2
Using Keyword Research Tools – Pt 3