Keyword University

Writing the perfect article for submission to an article directory for marketing purposes is all about striking the right balance. You need to provide web publishers and readers with well-written, entertaining and informative content. However, you also need to be keyword savvy so that your articles will do well in searches in both the article directories and on the major search engines. But which is more important?

Without a doubt, good content should always take precedent and the major search engines are finding more and more ways to reward good content on the web, while penalizing keyword heavy content that holds little value for readers.

However, that is not to say keywords should be abandoned altogether. They are still vital for good search engine optimization and article marketing, but they should be used with carefully.

We have all run a search on Google or Yahoo! and clicked on a result only to be presented with a pointless, barely readable article that is stuffed with keywords. In 99.9 per cent of cases the immediate reaction is to click away from such a page as quickly as possible.

The point here is that whoever published this page effectively used keywords to get a high search engine page ranking and get visitors to the page. However, the poor quality of the page’s content means that the visitors are lost immediately.

Therefore, the secret is to find a good balance. With a little work you can produce an article that reads well and has enough targeted keywords to help with SEO. In general, keywords should never go above a 2 per cent density. So, if your article is 500 words long, you shouldn’t have more than 10 keywords.

Also, it is not about how many keywords you have, but where you place them. Above all, the keyword should appear in the headline, the description, the opening paragraph and the last paragraph. These are by far the most important. The remaining keywords can be interspersed with the main content at any points you choose and where it reads well. If this is done well, the reader won’t even realize that there are keywords in the article.

So when you are writing article marketing content, you will first need to decide on a subject you wish to write about and the keywords and keyphrases you want to use. Researching these keywords well is vital and there are many tools available online to help you with this. In general, your keywords should match the words a potential reader who is interested in the subject of your article might type into a search engine.

Your first priority when writing an article is to create something that will keep readers attention and that flows well. For this reason you should forget entirely about keywords at the outset. Write your article but do not worry about where they will appear in the text. Although often they will find themselves into the text naturally as you write.

Once the article is written you should edit it to make sure it reads well and achieves the purpose you intended. In general, an article should be informative or entertaining. When you are happy with the article you can then worry about inserting the keywords. Sometimes you will find places where they will slot in naturally with the flow of the articles, while in the other cases you may have to change the wording a little. However, do not leave keywords interfere with the structure, meaning or readability of the content.

Look over your article carefully at least once to make sure all is in order. Ensure that there are no grammatical or spelling errors. Sometimes, as you reread your article you will often see more opportunities to subtly work in a few more keywords without disrupting the article.

Now, you have an article that will serve you on two fronts. It has the good content to get it noticed and published by web publishers and it has the keywords needed to draw the attention you need to both the article itself and your website.

There are no guarantees that your article will be appearing on the first pages of the search engines within days, or perhaps ever. However, if you maintain these methods over a period of time you will find that your articles will begin to bring the traffic you desire to your website.

Most Webmasters only think of their main keywords when the term, ‘targeted keywords’ come into their mind. More often than not, we only target our main keywords and forgetting the importance of the other long tail keywords. This is a major mistake that I have realized.

Every Webmasters should have a list of the targeted keywords for their sites and keep expanding this list when they have done optimizing for a specific terms. There are several advantages for doing this. The greatest benefit is that we can concentrate on less competitive keywords since they are much broader and more specific. It is definitely much harder to optimize for ‘SEO services’ than for ‘Affordable SEO Services’.

There are two ways we can go about to increase and expand our existing targeted keywords list. One is to increase its depth, while the other is the breadth.

To increase our current keywords depth, we can examine the Search Engine auto-complete feature. For example, you will see other suggestions offered by Google if you were to key in ‘earn money ‘ into the search box. The suggested options include ‘earn money online’ and ‘earn money quickly’. These are keywords that you can target and it builds more depth into our current list.

Another great example of improving the depth of your keyword list is to use the online keywords tool such as the Overture and Free Wordtracker tool. These tools help really by providing other related searches that help the Webmasters to further expand their keywords.

In terms of expanding the breadth of the keyword list, we must constantly check out our visitor logs and incoming links to analyze what are the keywords that constantly brings in traffic. You will be surprised at times to find out that some unexpected keywords are actually the major source for your traffic. Cpanel provides a very comprehensive list of referring keywords and it is highly advisable to check our the logs provided by them.

To conclude, it is very important to target on new set of keywords from time to time as this will also help you to attract a new crowd. Focusing on much specific keywords from the start also make your optimization effort much easier.

A keyword can be defined as a word or phrase that can be utilized in searching for a website. Keywords can be placed in titles, a body of text, online catalogs, abstracts, indexes, notes and subject headings. Using the right keywords is very important, and keyword optimization, if done correctly, will aid in driving traffic to your site. In order to know which keywords will be most effective for your site, there are a few things that need to be done:

• Examine your websites’ first page; make sure that it contains a central theme.
• Find the words or phrases that best describe the content on the websites’ first page.
• Make a list of the aforementioned words and/or phrases.
• Do not use highly popular keywords that are being used by a thousand other websites.
• Figure out the popularity of the words you have chosen by utilizing a keyword directory or one of the many keyword suggestion tools.
• You can now narrow your list down to just a few optimal words.

Use the above process for every one of your pages, and you will be able to more effectively optimize the power of your keywords. Remember that when you are determining what keywords will work best for your site, that there are different types of keywords. Knowing about each type will aid in the optimization of your keywords.

When determining what words to use as your keywords, you should first determine what the focus of your website is, what value the websites’ information has to offer, as well as who your target audience is. Knowing these particulars in advance will help you to choose keywords that will be optimal for your website.

Types of Keywords

Generally, keywords can be grouped into three different categories. These categories are as follows:

• Theme Keywords- these types of keywords are used to target a highly specific audience of people. They are normally used on every single page of the site, and are quite effective at boosting page rank.
• Single-word Keywords-these types of keywords are normally used between 5 and 7 times on a page, and are used to target a wide, general audience.
• Multiple-word Keywords- these types of keywords, sometimes referred to as “keyword phrases”, are used to target a specific audience, usually in a specific location. These types of keywords are also good at improving page rank.

Tools to Use

There are many tools available that will allow you to examine just which keywords are overused, which ones are not, and which keywords will best benefit you and your website. Since there are so many tools available, you will need to figure out the one that you are more comfortable using. Some keyword tools are free, while for others there is a charge. Some of the tools that can help you find good keywords for your site are:

• Keyword Search Tools
• Keyword Research Tools
• Keyword Lists
• Keyword Software
• Keyword Databases

All of these tools can be located on the World Wide Web, and will help you in researching certain keywords and phrases and that you may wish to use for your website.

Although finding good, effective keywords can prove to be a bit time consuming, it is better to invest a little more time in order to achieve the best results. Rushing through the process of choosing keywords and incorporating them into the content of your site will just be wasted time, as it will not get traffic to your site, nor will it improve your page rankings with the search engines.

With so many tools and processes available for you to use in your quest to find the right keywords, with a bit of time and patience you should be able to get your site optimized with the right keywords that will prove to be highly effective. Remember that good keywords and keyword phrases are vital to the life of your website. Make the task of finding good keywords a top priority when it comes to your website. You may be pleasantly surprised when your websites’ traffic increases and your page rank goes up with the search engines; all because of a few, well-placed keywords!

Great keywords lead to great content.  So learning how to come up great keywords is a great first step towards having great content for your site.  While there is still work in creating that content a good first step always involves coming up with the right keywords.