Improving Your Rankings - Keyword (part 1)

by Victor J. McCoy
3V Design Media.com

Your markets keyword demand is the first step to improving your keyword rankings. A doughnut shop and a lawn care business will not have the same top keywords, nor will they have the same search phase(s).

There are specific things that you can do to improve the ranking of your website. Having the right keywords and phases is the most important. When people are searching for your product or service you would like for your website to rank well. Your website pages, tags, etc. must be built around specific keywords and phases. You goal is not get any visitor to your website, your trying to get the right visitors to your website.With keyword research and market information you can predict shifts in demand and respond to changing conditions more quickly. This will also help you adjust your content to meet the change. There are many keyword research tools available online to chose from.

1. Keywords- I can not stress it enough. Choose specific keywords that relate to what you provide and make sure they are in the content of the page your are presenting. Your keywords should be in the  page title. For example, if the page provides information about purple-widgets, the title of the page should be purple_widgets and the words purple widgets should be mentioned several times in the page content. Don't just list them with unrelated text. The search engines will recognize that and know that you are trying to trick them - that could hurt your rankings. Generate as large a list as necessary with words that relate to all that you do. List the top and most important words you really want to rank for then include the minor ones. If many companies dominate your top choices see if alternate words are an option.This leads to the next point.
2. Content - Write interesting and relevant content for each page. Tell the reader things that they may not know. For example, did you know that a planet is currently defined by the IAU (International Astronomy Union) as “a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.” Now you may say "so what?" But now you know something that you may not have known. Is that information of importance to you? Get the point.
3. Try to get other websites to link to you.The best way to do this is identify what sites would benefit from linking to you and vice-verse. Then, once you have identified them send a personal email with your request. I'll address this subject in another post - very soon.
4. Add meta keywords and meta descriptions to you site.