Choosing the keyword phrase you want to optimize for on a Web page can be a difficult. There are so many keywords out there and it can be quite difficult to choose the right phrase so that you can rank high enough to be seen. But if you treat each Web page on your site as a new opportunity to optimize for a different phrase, you can enlarge your net and reel in more customers.
First think of all the possible keyword you can use. I like to think of the most generic keyword phrases for my page as possible first. This helps us find good phrases and keeps our options open. I rarely use the phrases I first come up with, as they are usually too competitive for me to consider for a new website or page. These are just to get started.
Some phrases like "horseback riding" is a very general description of what an article will be about. Phrases like this get an average search volume of around 500,000. This might also make it tempting, but unless you have a year of time on your hands and around $50,000 to spend on optimizing for that phrase, it will be very hard to rank in the top 10.
Start by brainstorming, once you have a nice long list of potential keyword phrases, you need to decide which one you want to focus on for this page. Look for phrases that get at least 100 searches per month, preferably closer to 1000. It can be tempting, as I said above, to pick the most popular keyword phrase and optimize for that. But unless your site already has a Google PageRank of 9 or 10, it will be very hard for you to rank high enough in the results to matter. A good strategy for most small businesses is to focus on keyword phrases that get some search volume but aren't terribly competitive.
So, look at your list, and pick a few of the phrases that appeal to you or that already appear in the page and load them into some keyword search tool. Once you've chosen your target phrase, don't forget to test it. You need to look and make sure it's in the page in the meta title, meta keywords, meta description, the first paragraph of text in the HTML, in link text, in alternate text for images, and scattered throughout the rest of the text on the page. Then, you post the revised article and wait. Standard time would be about a month. Then start looking for that page in the results of Google.
Search for your keyword phrase and see where it ends up in the rankings. Once you rank well for the less general search terms, you can start writing pages to target higher volume phrases.
First think of all the possible keyword you can use. I like to think of the most generic keyword phrases for my page as possible first. This helps us find good phrases and keeps our options open. I rarely use the phrases I first come up with, as they are usually too competitive for me to consider for a new website or page. These are just to get started.
Some phrases like "horseback riding" is a very general description of what an article will be about. Phrases like this get an average search volume of around 500,000. This might also make it tempting, but unless you have a year of time on your hands and around $50,000 to spend on optimizing for that phrase, it will be very hard to rank in the top 10.
Start by brainstorming, once you have a nice long list of potential keyword phrases, you need to decide which one you want to focus on for this page. Look for phrases that get at least 100 searches per month, preferably closer to 1000. It can be tempting, as I said above, to pick the most popular keyword phrase and optimize for that. But unless your site already has a Google PageRank of 9 or 10, it will be very hard for you to rank high enough in the results to matter. A good strategy for most small businesses is to focus on keyword phrases that get some search volume but aren't terribly competitive.
So, look at your list, and pick a few of the phrases that appeal to you or that already appear in the page and load them into some keyword search tool. Once you've chosen your target phrase, don't forget to test it. You need to look and make sure it's in the page in the meta title, meta keywords, meta description, the first paragraph of text in the HTML, in link text, in alternate text for images, and scattered throughout the rest of the text on the page. Then, you post the revised article and wait. Standard time would be about a month. Then start looking for that page in the results of Google.
Search for your keyword phrase and see where it ends up in the rankings. Once you rank well for the less general search terms, you can start writing pages to target higher volume phrases.
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