Keywords - Don't Underestimate Their Importance
 by: Matthew Rankin

Everyone knows all about keywords right? Well, that's what most people think, and to a degree that are probably right. However, in this article we are going to look at not just the importance of having targetted keywords, but also which keywords you should use on your site, and in what order they should be listed in your META tags, and elsewhere on your site.

Ok, so you've got a list of 100 really good keywords. Here are a few steps you should take:

1. Remove any keywords that are only one word (eg. money). These keywords will not bring you targetted visitors.

2. Remove any keywords that don't directly relate to your site, you really only want a list of 5 - 10 keyword phrases of 2 - 4 words (eg. home based business, earn money from home etc.) Don't worry about having a short list if you do, it will change in the next steps : )

3. Ok, now for some good stuff. Open up the Overture Keyword Selector Tool. Enter in what you think your best keyword phrase is, then click on the little blue arrow. (eg. "work at home business")

4. Now, what you will see immediately is the popularity of your search term witht he number of searches done at Overture for the past month. You'll also see similar search terms with their popularity listed.

5. Create a simple text file and list in it each search term and it's popularity. Feel free to try different searches, and sometimes it is better to just use 1 word, and let the tool provide you with suitable phrases.

6. Sort your list by search popularity, ie. the highest numbers go at the top.

7. Now, delete any more than 10, and certainly anything that has a number of under 10,000.

8. Now you have your new list of keywords, ensure that you enter them into you META tag in the order they are listed. An example which I use for this page is below:

9. Now, the next step which is equally as important is to include the first 2 keywords in your page title, in your headings and at the beginning of your description META tags. The sonner a search engine see your keywords, the better your listing will rank.

10. Ensure that you use all of your keywords at least once on your site! Some search engines will penalise sites for list keywords in their META tag that do not exist anywhere else on the website.

Well, that's about it in a nutshell, remember that good keywords are imperative in driving search engine traffic to your website. The more people that search for a term, the more people that are likely to visit your site - sounds simple I know, but you'd be amazed at how many people ignore this simple rule!

About The Author

Matthew Rankin is the webmaster and owner of SearchPronto - a pay per click search engine. http://www.searchpronto.com.