The arena of online marketing is a battle of keywords. While a website filled with keywords does not automatically translate to outright profits, clicks often do.
Heavy traffic means big bucks for websites, as it is one of the key metrics advertisers look at when determining where to put their money.
The process of methodically including targeted key phrases in your website with the overall goal of ranking high in search engine results is called optimization.
When you optimize your website, articles, blog entries, press releases, and so on, you establish a formidable online presence not just today but more importantly in the long term.
People turn to popular search engines first when trying to look for information online. All online businessmen should be aware of this fact.
There are over 2 billion websites today, and the number is increasing by the minute.
Know your target market and take steps to make sure you lure in prospective clients by optimizing everything in your site.
If you don’t make any conscious effort to rank high, your site can languish in the bottom of search engine results, and you might as well not put up anything at all. Placing beyond the 20th spot should already concern you.
Meta tags
By far the most important determinant of rankings on search engine results, meta tags are invisible to visitors. These include the title tag, description tag, and keyword tag. This is crucial as these are what the search engine spiders consider when ranking your site. If you don’t have meta tags, it’ll be as if you don’t exist to search engines.
For the title tag, try to condense all the keywords pertinent to your page in as few words as possible. When you use fewer words, Google puts more weight on each word, therefore, the higher the rank. Thus, make title tags specific, clear, and short. Don’t bother with connectives like “and.”
The description tag should ideally summarize the page’s content. You can put up to 500 characters including spaces in this field, which translates to an average-length paragraph. Make it descriptive, relevant, and concise. If you can, lift a sentence from the content of the page.
Keywords essentially include the categories that your content falls under. You can add anywhere from 5 to 10 keywords, and it is usually wise to have your URL as the first one.
Take note that geographical keywords are also vital to successful meta tags when applicable. Meta information can be added to blog posts, articles, photos, music, and videos.
Alternative image tags and text
Now there are users who might be on a lookout for pictures. Some search engines also automatically show pictures even if one is doing a web search.
Thus, be careful with the often ignored alternative tags when you upload your images. This is more than just text that appears when a user’s mouse pointer hovers over an image.
Search engines also use this parameter to rank image search results.
Make Your Content Relevant
But take note that your website might rank high in search results and people might click on the link, but they won’t stay if you disappoint them with your content.
This also plays a factor in how your site ranks because not a lot of websites contain keywords specific to the query.
As such, be sure to have keyword density in mind when you compose your text.
The rule of thumb in the number of keywords and phrases is normally at least 3 times every 500 words.
Eight times and beyond is often considered overdoing it.
