It comes down to keywords…

When it comes down to it, every person who has a website is trying to beat out and compete with others for the primo spots when individuals search for products or companies. So, the question is, who determines who gets what spot and when? If you have read our previous blogs, you would be able to confidently answer the Search Engines via their website crawls. In the past we have given you some search engine optimization tips, here we are going to give you a little bit more information on what exactly the search engines look for and specifically the power of keywords…

Think of your website like real-estate… And like real-estate it all comes down to location… And frequency…

While Google, Yahoo and Bing all have their secrets regarding how they actually rank websites, there are a few things that are common knowledge. When it comes to the search engines algorithms, one of the most important things is keywords. And like we mentioned above, it also comes down to the location and frequency of the keywords. Search engines like to see “keywords” near the top or in the title of a webpage and especially within the first 200 words of the website article. For example, if you are trying to advertise the “Durability of Pavers” then title the page and then also make sure that “Durability of Pavers” is mentioned near the top of the website article. We also mentioned frequency… The search engines will also analyze your website and compare and contrast it to see how many times you are using keywords in contrast to your competitors – he who utilizes the most keywords wins!

Now people over the years have attempted to outsmart the search engines with something called keyword stuffing. This is essentially where there is a page with no really content on it – it just solely contains keywords, in addition people will try to stuff keywords by making the font blend in with the background of the page so that it is not noticeable. Keyword stuffing is a very bad “no, no” and the search engines will outsmart you; they will pick up on it and penalize you for it.

So we have been talking a lot about keywords… And some of you may be shaking your head saying what on earth are keywords! Well, think of keywords as the search terms that individuals would use to search out and find your company. For example, if you were going on vacation and wanted to rent a boat for your trip and went to Google and searched for “boat”, you would get millions and millions of hits that would not be anything close to what you wanted. But if you said “rental boats in Long Beach California” you may still get some unrelated content, but ultimately you will probably find what you are looking for. So take this concept and apply it to your business and your website, think of the terms that people use when trying to find you.