Website Keywords - Linden Gross

If you’re going to bother creating something, you probably want someone to actually see it. That means they have to find it and you have to help. A website is a great start, but a website is a lot like a billboard. Place a billboard in the desert where no one drives by and no one will ever see it. Similarly, if you put up a website but don’t direct traffic to it, no one is going to come. In short, when it comes to websites, Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams was dead wrong. If you build it, they will not come unless you make sure they know about you. On the Internet, that means that you have to optimize your website so that search engines like Google or Bing can find you.

Optimizing a website involves a number of factors that shift regularly when Google decides to change its algorithms. Two things don’t change. You need top-notch, informative content that educates visitors rather than just touting your products or services. And even though this has become less important with the last Google shift, you still need to use search terms (also known as keywords) that people are already searching for. Those change regularly as well, so ideally you want to check often to figure out what terms your prospects are typing into the search fields most often when searching for someone like you.

You can do this by checking Google’s Adword Keyword Planner. You can also start to type in the keyword you think is popular in your search box and see what terms come up. SEO by Yoast will also offer suggestions when you’re identifying the keyword for a particular page. Finally, you can check out your competitors through services like Traffic Travis and see what keywords others are using. A quick search of some of mine revealed the following list of search terms: