What good is a web site if you can’t find it?

           To get visitors to your web site, you need a good mix of search engine promotion, good use of keywords, and traditional print and media marketing.

Keywords and their importance:

The primary tool used to find information on the Internet is a search engine.  The words your potential customer types into the search engine to find information are called "keywords.”  The search engine finds relevant web sites by matching these keywords to ones found in its database.  Search engines generally make databases by simply listing the words used in web sites.  This listing of website words includes, not only the words visible on the site, but hidden words included in lines of programming code that the casual web surfer does not see.  The unseen keywords in the programming code are in code phrases called “metatags” and are very important to search engines

Website Rankings:

Searchers on the Internet will rarely go beyond the first three pages of a search engine’s listing results, so becoming listed in the top twenty or thirty sites on major search engines and directories like Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, or Lycos is very important for a business web site.  Since there are more web pages than people on the planet, you can see that this goal is difficult to achieve. 

Finding good Keywords:

The first step is to find good keywords or key phrases.  Research your industry, talk to your potential customers.  The words must be relevant for your site and industry, but they must also be words that searchers will use.  It is important to brainstorm search words and phrases that are likely to bring interested visitors to your website.  Sit down with your co-workers and business partners and discuss which keywords are relevant to the products and services you offer.  Define what you are selling and what makes you stand out in your field.  Compile a list of search words that you feel best represent your company and which you believe people would type into a search engine when trying to find you.  Be specific; avoid generalities.  Look at competitors’ web sites and keywords.  Ask your customers what terms they used to find you. 

Tools and tricks:

Now you need to do more research to determine if there is a good chance you can achieve a top search engine ranking for those terms you have chosen or if the competition for them is already saturated.  There is software available to do this or you can use free keyword popularity tools available on sites like Word Tracker http://www.wordtracker.com/ or Overture Search Suggestion tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.  Identify the search phrases that have been little used by your competitors.  Some search terms may have fewer people using them, but are used by dramatically fewer competing sites. 

Don’t use words that may be popular but are not related to your site, as this will only frustrate your visitors.

Add variations, plurals, and common misspellings to your list.  The result will be your list of keywords.  A current popular maximum for this list is around 800 characters, including all letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation.

           Which words are most important and where to put them:  Not all search engines treat keywords the same, but most will place significance on keywords in your metatags i.e. title, description, and keyword list, and your web site text, so use the most important of your keywords to craft a site description and title.  They should also be used in your alt tags (words that describe your images) comment tags, and headings.

           Once you add a title, description, and keyword list to the programming code of each page of your site, you need to make sure that your visible text is filled with those words.  If your site has a lot of graphics, flash, splash pages, or frames and is short on content, you should consider redesigning it.  Search engines prefer pages with text.  More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search.  Each web page should contain at least 250 words.  Search engines will look at the text near the top of the page more carefully than at the bottom, so include your keywords there.

Keyword Density:

           Try to use each of your most important keywords 3-7 times for every 100 words in your web page text, making sure the copy still reads well for your visitors.  This is called keyword density.  You can use a keyword density analyzer to check your web pages to tell you if you have used too many or too few words in your web copy.  A free tool to check this is found at KeyWordDensity.com

Periodic performance evaluation:

You should periodically evaluate keyword performance by checking your website log traffic analysis and by checking your ranking for keywords and phrases in the major search engines.  A good site with a free ranking tool is RankWhere.com.  Sometimes one site will show different rankings for whatever reason.  You can also go directly to your favorite search engines and search for keywords and see where your site appears, but that is usually more time consuming. 

Resubmission:

Periodically resubmit your site to all search engines, especially when you change any keywords or make site revisions.