Selecting targeted keywords for your content

Jun 22, 2008

A visitor in this comment asked me to write a blog post on selecting targeted keywords so here are my thoughts on the topic.

Careful keyword targeting can help you boost you search engine rankings. I’m not saying manipulating your content so that your pages rank higher on search engines; the sole purpose of your website content is to provide helpful and relevant information to your visitors and even search engine crawlers are looking for that quality when they are going to your website or blog. Nonetheless, it helps to know what keywords to target while generating your content simply because it can help you promote the right content in front of the right audience.

Selecting targeted keywords is not as cryptic as it sounds. Do your own research. When you are thinking about your keywords don’t think like a person who is designing the website or writing the content. Think like a person who wants to find what you can offer. How would he or she search for the type of content you are generating for your blog or website? What keywords or expressions would you use so that you make sure that you find this sort of content? It may also help if you can make out what sort of people you want to attract through search engines. Do they understand jargons? Are they techies or non-techies? This is because different people will look for the same thing using different words according to their background and preferences.

For instance, I provide online copywriting services; some people find my website by searching for "content writer" because they are familiar with the word "content" and some people simply look for a "website writer" because they are looking for a writer for a website (it is as simple as that). So if I don’t optimize my content for both sorts of expressions and many more expressions I will be losing (I do, in fact and I am trying to bridge this gap these days) customers who would have really loved to hire me had they been able to find me.

Finding the right keywords to target through your content comes with time, and sometimes you can also use tools like WordTracker and AdWords to find out all possible keyword combinations for your content. I find the AdWords tool more effective.

As a side note, it is better to focus on longer search strings rather than shorter keywords because people do use long expressions on the search engines. For instance someone may try to find me with "writer for my pottery website". It is easier to rank higher for longer search strings and in fact it is better to start your content optimization campaign with longer expressions so that you get at least that traffic and then later on you can start building content for more competitive, shorter search expressions or keywords.