SEO and key words and how best to use them

The old way of doing things with key words in a web site has changed. In the past people would stuff fifty keywords about your company or products on the first page and then also on every other page. This is called cramming or stuffing the keywords and it is no longer an accepted practice.
What do you do you ask? Focus on key words that are specific for the page that it services. For example, if you decide to target “software development” on your services page, than you should not use it again on the homepage. Instead, target a keyword like “software development company”, or another keyword that describes what your company does, on the home page and save keywords like “software development”, which describes your specific services,  for your services page. If your business is locally based, consider using descriptive keywords such as “software development Boston” on your home page to ensure that potential customers will find your site.

Depending on the products/services you offer, some of your pages might be targeting incredibly long-tail keywords to avoid double targeting. For instance, “mobile app development services” only gets 110 searches a month, but it’s still worth incorporating into the “app development” service page on your site—it’s exactly what you offer! Many site owners get so hung up on search volume that they forgo the best keywords for ones with a higher search volume or ones they wanted to target on another page but couldn’t squeeze in. Remember, you can tell the search engines whatever keywords you like for your page, but if your site doesn’t back it up with the content you’ll never do well. You might list “banana” as a priority keyword for your site, but if you don’t sell bananas don’t expect to do well. I tell customers to think about what they would search for specifically. If you do solar electrical work in Franklin County Kansas put that in because you would potentially get a lead from someone from Franklin County Kansas.

Once you know which keywords you’ll be using on your site, there are some guidelines you need to follow in order to make sure that your site is optimized well. Here’s an overview of what you should do:

• Relevant keywords. Make your keywords relevant to the page. Only place keywords on that page if it has something to do with the overall content. If the keyword doesn’t exactly match the content, leave it off that page.
• Placement. You also need to understand where to place the keywords. Select a strong, relevant keyword to go into the title of your page and in the meta description. Next, you’ll want to incorporate that keyword when/if it sounds natural.
• Don’t over optimize. Resist the urge to stuff the relevant keywords into the content. More isn’t better. In fact, doing so can give you a penalty! Place the keyword one or two times into the body copy, but only if it reads naturally. Otherwise, you’re better off taking a conservative approach.

I have been using key words for a long time and yes the use of them has changed but as I have told many that have told me that keywords are dead, I say they resurrected and shine again in the area of SEO.

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