Nothing draws more visitors to a web site than the proper use of keywords. Search engines employ the use of programs called bots which scour the web in search of unique pages, and these programs index web sites with popular keywords, potentially increasing traffic for those web pages that have been indexed. However, without the proper use of keywords on your web page or blog, the chances of the site being within the top fifty, or even hundred web sites listed by a search engine is practically nil.
Create a list of keywords which you believe pertain directly towards your web site. If your web site offers coats for dogs, keywords such as “custom dog coats”, and “handmade dog coats” are just a few of the keywords that are possible. There are tools available online which can help people decide which keywords to use. These keyword trackers make suggestions based upon the amount of times a keyword was searched for in search engines. Take your list of potential keywords and run the list through one of these programs in order to find which phrases are most effective.
There are several places which keywords should be placed. Including a keyword or two within the actual domain name of a web site is not at all a bad idea, and can drastically improve the amount of page views. Never put more than three, or four keywords on each page. Overloading a page with keywords is something that is not suggested, and can potentially lead to being banned from search engine indexes. The title space is a great place for keywords, as it is normally what a search engine will display within the search results. Places that are ripe for keyword placement are the headers of articles, posts, and blog posts. Most web page visitors tend to scan through pages quickly, searching for terms which interest them. Headers pop out much more than keywords within paragraphs of text. Keywords placed within paragraphs are good, but in order for them to pop out to visitors, embolden the key words.
Meta tags are an incredibly important facet to maintaining high traffic on a blog. These tags give the page viewer a brief description of the web page through the search engine, and can be key to coaxing visitors onto a site. Those who are lacking meta tags will lose a lot of potential traffic as some search engines will not even see a web site that does not have meta tags. Meta tags must be placed within the head tags of a web page, otherwise the meta tags will not work. Most search engine bots will look at the meta tags first, and if there are any words on the page that match these meta tags the searchengine placement will be improved.
There are ways to increase traffic using keywords which users should absolutely not use, which are called black hat methods of search engine optimization. This includes overloading a web page with keywords, or using invisible text designed to attract more search engine bots to a site. Doorway pages are designed to only be visible and accessible by the search engine bots, and is another tool designed to increase search engine ranking that is considered unethical by many. These methods of increasing traffic do work in the short term, but can cause problems as many search engines will eventually discover these types of keyword manipulation and will cut the web site off from the search engine bots.
Michael Cash is a twenty something freelance writer and internet consultant residing in western Michigan. When he’s not coaching people out of 1990s era web practices and providing SEO services, amateur astronomy and hiking take up his time. A completely random fact about Michael is that he used to “ghost hunt” as a youngster.
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