Keyword strategies

A proper keyword strategy forms the heart of a successfully web site. This can be said from a SEO point of view as well as selling your product to your visitors. The so-called secret to keywords are to be able to find a balance between the two.

First of all before starting out the design of your web site. it is important to plan it. Keyword research and targeting forms a very important part of it. A very handy tool for this can be found at Digitalpoint.com .

The next step will be to look at the planning of your web site and to decide what keywords will be targeted on which pages. You should not target more than three keywords and one keyword phrase at a time. After submission to the search engines you should ensure to monitor the results you are getting from these keywords.

Use of keywords

When planning a web site it is important to understand where keywords should be integrated. First of all lets list the factors.

On page Links - On page links are important factors especially with the #2 search engine Yahoo. Yahoo! clearly make use of it in its algorithm.

H1 - H4 tags - These tags are one of the key factors in most search engine algorithms and should contain the targeted keywords.

Title tags - the Title tags are #1 on the list of many SEO's for On page factors and must contain the targeted keywords

Meta tags - Meta tags are a burning issue on many SEO forums and many SEO's feel it is a complete waste of time. These remarks are normally made without rational thought as many local search engines, directories and the ODP are using meta tags as a guideline and as part of their algorithm. Yahoo! for one has admitted to this at the SES conference in London in June 2004! The only rule that applies here is that the keywords and description tag must not contain keywords not found in the text of that page.

Alt tags - Although this on-page factor isn't regarded as that important for SEO it is important when people with sight disability wants to make use of your site. They make use of software that makes use of alt tags to describe an image. In their case no alt tag = no description. It is also part of the W3C coding standards that images should have alt tags.

Of page links - Google depends allot on links to a page. This means that the back links that you have pointing to a page in your web site, should have a descriptive text that suits the theme of the page it is pointing to. Also try to make back link text different for every page that links to you.

When looking at the effort that goes into a web site, it is clear to see why you should ensure that you plan it properly before the actual design is attempted. Remember, there is nothing more frustrating than having to redesign a site because of no or poor planning.