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<META NAME="keywords" content="make money, work at home,
internet business, international, website, web site, homepage, home page">
This is the meta tag that we are looking to fulfill. Keywords are
probably one of the most important things you can do in order to get yourself
properly listed in the search engines.
First, the reason why. Most search engines use a bot, or robot
(sometimes called a spider) to spider your pages. What this means is when
you submit your site to a search engine, its spider or bot will come and look at
your page. The bot runs through your site from link to link and indexes
the words in your site. It looks at your metatags on each page and
compares them to the words it has indexed on each page. If everything
seems to be on topic, you can get a good ranking on that search engine.
All search engines use different rules and look for different things when
indexing your page.
There are 3 main steps to follow to do this right. It takes about 10 or
20 hours to do the research and formulate your word list
if you have a good fast Internet Connection.
If you don't have a fast connection, you may want to do this at a library,
friend's house, or Internet Cafe, where you have a DSL or Cable connection at
least. A slow connection can add about 10 hours to this task as it is
heavily internet dependant.
Generally, the more specific you can be, the better.
On the other hand, you don't want to use keywords that are too unique,
because no one will ever think to look for them.
Use keywords that someone who has never heard of you,
but who would be interested in what you offer, is likely to search for.
Many search engines limit your description to around 25 words.
So your description needs to be crammed with suitable keywords.
The more keywords, and the more strictly they describe your Web site,
the more highly targeted traffic you're going to harvest.
Your keywords are crucial.
The Keyword Selecting Procedure
Step 1 - Getting a list of 50 to 100 good keywords to begin working with
To see an actual example of a clients keyword search that we did that follows
the following procedure click on the "Example" tags throughout this
tutorial.
- Make a list of at least 50 to 100 words that describe your Web page.
Just put down the first things that come to mind, until you have 50.
Don't spend a lot of time fussing about how pertinent they are.
Just do a little brainstorming and keep writing until you have at least 50.
Keep in mind words that people would research in order to find a company like
yours. Maybe product names,
or other competitor's company names or
brand names. Click Here to go to a memory
jogger to help you come up with your 50 to 100 words.
- Remove all the words that appear in the name of your site.
(Your listing will include these anyway).
- Take the remaining words, and rank them in importance to your business.
EXAMPLE
- Make a new list of the top 20 -50 words after your ranking.
Step 2 - Researching your 20 - 50 words to find out which ones are the most
powerful on the Internet
- Go to the goto.com network's Search Suggestion Tool.
You can find it at this
https://www.goto.com/s/dtc/signup/.
One by one, put your 20 -50 words in to this system and write down the number of
times each word was searched in the previous month.
- Then use goto.com's search engine to put all the words one by one into the
search engine. Write down the top bid paid, how much you would need to
bid to get the third spot, and how much you would have to bid to get the
40th spot.
EXAMPLE
- These numbers will help you to re-prioritize your keywords
based upon the people actually searching for them, and the cost to you to get a
good ranking on the words if you are going to buy into the goto.com system.
Then you can look at your priority list and the people's priority
list and build a new priority list for your
keywords. Also note any other words that come up that apply better
than the ones you are searching for, or help you to narrow down your search,
start a new table and analyze these words as well.
EXAMPLE
- Search for keyword combinations and keyword phrases.
Try combining the first two keywords on your list.
Try other combinations based on the numbers you got back for
each individual word.
Try each of your first few words combined with other words on your list.
You'll probably discover some combinations that will give you more of
an "exclusive" listing combinations that only return a few (or no)
other relevant listings.
If you find combinations that would likely be searched for by your
customers and don't return very many other relevant listings
make a note of these. These are your commanding combinations.
- You may want to change the priority of your keywords based on what you find.
So go ahead and re-prioritize your 20 top keywords.
Step 3 - Researching your new 20 words to see which are the most powerful
compared to your competition
- Search for each of the 20 words or commanding combinations and keep
track of how many
relevant listings you get for each one at a major Internet search engine
like MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com), which is a multi search
engine. I would next try then Lycos (http://www.lycos.com),
HotBot (http://hotbot.lycos.com/) and WebCrawler
(http://www.webcrawler.com/) another multi-search engine.
Make sure to keep track of the results.
- Look at the listings you get back for each search,
perhaps follow a few links, and see how the sites compare to your Web site.
This will give you a good idea of what your competitors are doing,
and how they're listing their Web sites.
Make a note of 5 or ten of your competitors websites.
- Go to your competitors websites and us the reveal source button (found
under the view source menu on your browser if you are using Internet Explorer)
to see what their "META keywords" tag consists of.
See what keywords they are using here if any.
If they have some that you think you should be using and didn't come up
with, go back to step 2-1 and run them through the process to see if they
are better than the ones you have selected.
- You should now have a list of 20 keywords, keyword phrases, or commanding
combinations that you can set your web pages up to get higher rankings in the
search engines.
So now you have a list of keywords. You have just finished a process
that 95% of the people on the internet don't ever do. You are on your way
to forming a successful Internet Strategy.
Finally, to lighten things up at the end of this long grueling tutorial
that you have made it through, here is something fun.
Want to see what keywords people actually enter into
search engines in Real time? Check out the links below and you can
see just that!
I caution you though. The some pretty graphic words come up very
regularly. Metacrawler Metaspy also offers a G rated version.
The next step is to utilize your keywords and use our
Title and Description Tutorial.
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