Keywords; Why they are important and how to use them

Search Engine Optimization, it's the word on the street and there is money being thrown at it left, right and centre.

The cornerstone of SEO at least I would argue is content. Content is King, repeat after me 'Content is King!'. The words you use in your site will have the most power in determining where and how you will be indexed in google. The industry name for these little chestnuts are keywords. So now that we have established this foundation, how do we know how to use them to our optimal advantage.

The first step is to do keyword research. That is to prepare a list of keywords that are relevant to your site, that will return the most conversions and have appropriate levels of competition. You may also be find a keyword niche that with incorrect spellings or a branch off your subject matter.

All Keywords are not created equal, some keywords generate traffic but no conversion, that is that the user doesn't stay and interact with the site or if the site is e-commerce, they do not purchase. This can be because the keywords are not relevant to what the user is actually searching for. Keywords also have competition, I would likely hazard a guess that the keyword 'Porn' (sorry but it is the highest searched term) would be close to impossible to get ranked on because of the sheer amount of competition.

The key (pardon the pun) is to find profitable keywords and this is done using a keyword program to research internet user data.

Keyword Country (www.keywordcountry.com) is scarily good at creating profitable lists for keyword searches. It does this by comparing data about who is currently indexed in these keywords, competition levels and even pointing you to where niche markets exist. It helps you create keyword lists by aggregating a list of thousands of possible words and than through a formula narrows these lists to a potent few.

Once you have your list of keywords that is going to send you straight to the top, you have to integrate them within your content, your url's and your page titles. It is important to use these keywords in a human fashion, that is don't start talking like a computer in order to condense as many keywords as possible into a cloud, google will be onto you....