How to Choose New Keywords for Your Website?

KeyWords are one of the most important factors to consider when attempting to increase traffic to a website. Search engines use keyWords to categorize websites and rank them within their results. Therefore selecting a keyWord or keyWord phrase that does not properly explain the purpose of a website will confuse the search engines and make your website difficult, if not impossible, to find. Fortunately, selecting new keyWords for a website can be a very simple process, when following a few simple tips.

1. The first step in selecting new keyWords is to determine what your website or web page is specifically about. For example, if a person owns a website that focuses on teaching others how to earn money by filling out online surveys, they should choose keyWords that specifically target that niche. Choosing keyWord phrases, like “make money” or “make money online”, are much too broad. Instead, keyWord phrases like “money from online surveys” or “making money with surveys”, will help the search engines, as well as internet users, know exactly what the website is about.

2. The next step in choosing new keyWords is to determine how competitive particular keyWords are. Longer keyWord phrases are generally much less competitive than very short phrases. Additionally, very popular topics, like those that deal with finances, weight loss or web design, will include keyWords that are also highly competitive. The key is to choose keyWords that are commonly used in searches, but do not have an overwhelming amount of other websites targeting them. There are a number of tools that website owners can use to determine the competitiveness of certain keyWords, or they can simply perform a search and observe how many matches are found.

3. Once new keyWords have been chosen, it is important to place them correctly throughout the website. These keyWords should be used in the URL, the title, in article tags, and throughout the text. These keyWords should also be used as “anchor text” on the website and in any separate marketing materials, which means that they contain a link pointing back to the homepage. However, it is important to keep a these keyWords at a density of about 2 - 3% and avoid overusing them. Properly choosing and using new keyWords, will help increase a website’s traffic, search-ability, and overall success.