Search Engine Optimization and What it Means
As was mentioned in my last post about the basics of Google, Search Engine Optimization is the key to getting your website found. If you don’t make the correct keyword selections, to put it simply – you most likely won’t be found.
When I first started blogging,I had no idea what I was doing. My understanding of keyword selection was just the way it sounds – in each post I picked out several different single words and scattered those words throughout the blog. I even went so far to bold those words but I doubt that helped at all. I hadn’t done a lot of research and didn’t realize "I was missing the boat". No wonder my first blog just sat out there gathering dust. Several people found it but it was almost always by accident – they stumbled over it while looking for something else. There was literally no way anyone could possibly the find material I was writing by looking for it unless they just happened to type in by accident the exact wording of some of my blog titles – how likely was that?
Several times a week, I would go into Word Press and look at the statistics just to find out that Google didn’t even know I existed. So what I was actually doing was pretty much writing for myself. To this day, that blog needs work as I have been so busy I haven’t gotten back to it. Someday I probably will as it is a diary of an American military family living in Iran during the last seven months of the Shah – a personal and rather fascinating experience.
Unfortunately, what happened to me has also happened to a great many others. Many just decide they want a website or blog, pick out a theme, put what they believe to be interesting information up and hope for the best. And they don’t realize just because a web designer did the site that it might not be well optimized. Web design and SEO are two entirely different things and a lot of us don’t know how to do both.
Keyword Selection – What to Pick?
Keyword Selection is extremely important to Google and can help determine whether you will be indexed or not. It is not the only factor but it is a very vital one.
First of all, there needs to be proper research into what keywords to use. There are some really good tools out there that can help out in the direction. One is a free Google took called Wordtracker. What to look for is some really good strings of two or three words that are being searched for but do not have a great deal of competition. Build your writing your writing around those. Once I determined that it was smarter to pick out the keywords first and then write the material around them, it started making my writing a whole lot easier.
The next step is make sure when picking your keywords try to get into the mind of the people who are going to be searching for your material. It doesn’t matter what you think they are searching for – it all boils down to them and what they want. Consider what types of phrases " they" would type in the Google search box when looking for the information? Don’t think that just because you think a phrase or a term sounds good that everyone else is going to be looking for it.
Google wants the keyword selection to be relevant to what the blog or website is about. Your material may be well written and informative, but as I am still learning – that doesn’t mean a thing if the keywords and the content don’t tie together.
So to sum it up, think about keywords that are relevant to the material that you are writing about. Secondly, consider what people will be typing in the search box when looking for your topic. That’s a good start.
