In this installment of my fine points of blogging, I would like to stress the vital importance of having keywords—that is, if a strong online presence is desired. Without key words, you might as well be shouting into the vast void that is the Internet.
Keywords are words used to search for content in a search engine. If someone is searching for “medical themes” or “online pharmaceutical help” about certain medical needs or products, the odds are that this blog should be high in the search results page ranking. That’s the key to keywords. You want to be found, you got to use the words people look for when they search.
This is what happens: a user turns on their computer and connects to the Internet. The user opens a Web browser and goes to Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, or whatever the user’s favorite search engine is, and types in one or more key words to seek out whatever it is the user is searching information on. Within seconds, the user has a list of thousands of choices before her eyes. The user can add some key words to narrow down the choices, or can start opening page after page to find out if that page or site has the information desired.
Using Key Words
When you write your meta keywords tag, only include words which appear in the text of your page. The keywords tag is meant to provide a short list of the most relevant words for each document or page. If you can’t narrow your keyword list down to 10-15 words, then the content on your page is probably rambling too much. Focus, focus, and get to the point.
Here are some typical top ten keywords to start with:
- WordPress (or blogger, livejournal, whatever program platform you’re using)
- blog
- blogging
- writing
- wordpress.com (livejournal.com, etc.)
- tips
- help
- design
- plug-ins
- themes
Once you have your top 10 keywords for your blog, re-read your blog. Look through your posts and see if the expectations you’re writing about match the reality of the topics on your blog. For instance, if you are a medical company, list all medical issues in the blog; if you are a pharmaceutical company, list all drugs that are discussed and that your company offers.
Do a search on your top ten keywords you have chosen. Do you get a lot of search results? If your list of keywords do not match your post content, nor scores high on your list, fix the list. Then you clean up the list so it realistically lists the top ten keywords found on your blog. These are the words you use repeatedly throughout your posts; they help to describe what you write about, what you services are, what your products are.
Wordtracker offers a program that will look up certain keywords for you, so you can see how effective they are. You can also try goodkeywords.
Keep keywords consistent throughout your blogs so that more results will appear when someone does a search online.
Have a question about blogging for your company and how a blog will effectively create a 300% ROI and what are the best key words you might use? Email me at [email protected], phone me at 619-274-7735, or write in the comment box below.
Next up – the use of meta tagging to catch the attention of spider bots.