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Introduction to keywords

1. Title Optimization

• Your Name/ Business Name / Site Name: This is very important for breading propose. If you feel that your customers may search you by your brand name than it’s also useful to put it somewhere in your title.
• Keywords: If you want to rank for a certain keywords it is always good to place some of them in your title tag. A Title tag represents the whole flavor & content of your website. So if you are selling pizza online you can include keywords like – order pizza, home delivery pizza etc in your title tag. Don’t staff too many keywords in your title. Write a title which is readable to humans & also good for the search engine. (e.g. Domino’s Pizza, Order Pizza Online for Delivery – Dominos.com)
• Include your 1-800 or other toll-free numbers: Some may not agree with me on this, but I think including your phone number in the title tag does help your visitors to take a direct action! It also makes your site look more professional and legit when it’s being displayed in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Searchers are likely to ‘click’ on the result that has a phone number attached to it because in their unconscious mind, they will have a good impression on the authenticity of the business and the level of support. If you prefer not to include your number in the title tag, you can alternatively include it in your Meta Description which will give you almost the same benefits.

2. Meta Tags Optimization

• Include your Selling Point– Tell your customers what they want to hear through your site’s Meta Description, and you will definitely get some advantage over others in the SERP. For instance – if you sell ‘cheap web hosting’ then including a phrase like “hosting starting from only $0.99” may result in more clicks and visitors because your description will exactly match the flavor of search performed by the user.
• Keywords – Including some of your keywords will give you some advantage in Google’s relevancy algorithm.
• 1-800 or other Toll Free Numbers – if you haven’t included this already in your title, you can rather include it in your Meta description. If the users have skype installed on their system, any number on their browser will become clickable which will result in a direct skype-out call. So basically, if your number appears in the Meta description some of your customers might just prefer to call you directly instead of going through your site.

3. Important HTML Tags

• Header 1: Header 1 should be used to define the most important section of your page. Usually Header 1 is used for Site’s title or header text.
• Header 2 & 3: Header 2 and 3 can be used for Page/Post titles or important sections of your pages. Separating your content with headers is a good practice as it makes your site more readable and easy to navigate.

• Bold: You can bold (e.g. [strong]) certain words which are of high importance. Sometimes it’s good to bold your keywords where appropriate. However overdoing this may get you penalized.
• Italic: You can use the [em] tag to emphasize certain words which will appear in italic.
• Quote: This is very useful when you are quoting from someone.

4. Keyword Optimization & Synonyms

• Research: Do a proper research before you decide on your keywords. There are plenty of free tools out there that can help you to do keyword research. Some of my personal favorites are: SEObook Keyword Suggestion tool, Google Adwords Keyword Tool & Overture Keyword Tool.
• Keyword Density: Try to have a moderate keyword density so that it can help the search engine to determine that your page is indeed related & relevant to the keyword that you are targeting.
• Synonyms & Related Keywords: I personally like to use synonyms instead of having a high keyword density. This helps to make my content sound natural but still helps in SEO.
• Long Tail Keywords: It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as they are comparatively easier to rank for. During your keyword research you should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize your site for. But you can also come up with your own long tail keywords; for example try adding some common words like – ‘best’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’, ‘top’ etc. along with your actual keyword and you might eventually get some good long tail keywords.

5. Link Optimization

• Try using good Anchor Text when you are linking to other people. Include the appropriate keyword in the anchor text which gives the outbound link a ‘proper meaning’ and value.
• A good & clean Internal Link Structure with proper use of anchor text will definitely help. E.g. “Credit Card Application” is a better anchor text compared to “click here”
• If you are using a CMS, then try using permalinks. This way your keywords/post title will be on the link itself and thus it will valued more by the search engines.

6. Image Optimization

• Alt text : ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. If your browser can’t display the image for some reason, the alt text is used in place of that particular image.
• File name : always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “apple-iphone-cover.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC24045.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text.
• Image Title : always use the title tag in images which will show the title as tool tip when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=”http://imagelocation.jpg” alt=”Image description” title=”Title of the Image”]
• Image Linking : Whenever you want to link to your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Apple iPhone”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text.