Are you really targeting those keywords ?

When you are trying to create an optimized web site you will have to face some problems, or should I say , you’ll have to make some decisions. First of all decide on why you need a web site. Then you’ll have to choose a domain name, relevant keywords that also generate enough monthly traffic. And after you build your content targeted on the keywords you’ve chosen you’ll have to try and build links to that content. Any mistake you make in any of these choices will lead to a failure or to some low results. The most common mistakes are made on keywords.

Mistakes that people make when choosing keywords

Some of the most common mistakes about keywords involve :

• not relevant : there are cases when people choose the keywords without thinking to what is relevant to their business. If I have a Chinese Food Restaurant keywords like : “Chinese”, “food”, “restaurant” have low relevancy to my business : keywords should describe what you do and not the single things that compose your business. I might have an office supply business but I would not want to get traffic from the keyword “paper” or “pens” because it’s irrelevant to what I do – sure it has some type of connection but it’s not expressing my business;
• not enough traffic : another mistake is choosing keywords that will generate no traffic. Many SEO companies optimize a web site on some keywords that have no traffic (this means that no one is searching for those keywords) , simply because the competition is low and it’s more easy to get a good ranking. Many times these keywords are proposed by the site owner and companies don’t try to show him the data : that keyword might be relevant to your business but nobody is searching for it and therefore it’s useless;
• huge competition : if your web site is new and has no authority in a niche then you will have to start working your way up. At first, without links pointing to your website and enough good content, you won’t be able to get traffic even from keywords that have only 1 million pages competition. What you’ll need to do is to start targeting long tail keywords that are more easy to rank well and get traffic from it. Don’t go after competitive terms right from the start because you’ll waste your time. This doesn’t means that you should not use those high competitive keywords in your content – but don’t expect to get any benefits right away;
• average competition but first page is full with authority websites : this is the most difficult to beat : a first page full with authority websites from your niche – my advice in this case, especially if your web site is fairly new, is to target other keywords – at least for now.

What does it mean to target a keyword ?

When I start to optimize a web site I also ask the owner if he’s already trying to target some keywords. In almost all the cases the answer is Yes, followed by the list of keywords they say are targeting. And the first thing I do is to check the status for those keywords : things like titles, description metatags, images alt property, title of anchors, URLs, content, links pointing to those pages with a similar anchor text.

Many times the results are the same : people are not targeting the keywords they say they target. Many pages have the keywords in title. But then, they don’t have unique titles, there is no description metatag or the page is talking about something else that has no relation with the targeted keyword. Why is this analysis important to me ? Mainly because this is telling me what the web site owner knows about SEO. I learn how to talk to them and how to better explain what I need to do, why and what I hope to obtain by doing it.

Targeting a certain keyword I consider to be formed by two big components : on one hand there are the things you can do on your web site and on the other hand there are the things related to other web sites. Basically what you’ll need to do on your web site are some simple things :

• create an SEO friendly link architecture that will power your internal pages and offer authority
• create unique titles that contain the keyword targeted on a certain page
• create a description metatag that will help you increase the click rate
• use the keywords in h1 tags, alt property, name of files, URLs, anchor’s text
• you will also have to use the keyword in the actual content : don’t concentrate on obtaining a certain keyword density – write in a natural way that will appeal to people.

The things you’ll have to do that are related to other sites are :

• market your content on other web sites : blog comments, social networking, guest posts, press releases, article submission
• build incoming links from other websites to your main domain or better, to the specified page

The top places to get incoming links to your web site are :

• articles about your niche – editorials
• blogrolls
• links from partner sites
• quality web directories or niche directories
• footer of a targeted web site

Tips and suggestions for better targeting the keywords on your page

The top places where you should use your keywords on your page are :

1. title of the page
2. description metatag
3. anchor text
4. file names, image names, alt property of images, link titles
5. URLs
6. content

If you can build more pages on the same major subject, but each page talks about particular things about that subject you can link all together on one single page to increase authority.

Here are some articles on how to better target your keywords on a page :

• SEO Top Places to use Keywords : Titles and Description Metatag are #1
• All you need to know about keyword relevancy to a website
• How to Create SEO Friendly Links

Let me know what you think about this and what are your suggestions and tips.