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Keywords Are Digital
Oil
I'm going to tell you a
Fairytale because it's the traditional
way of getting a point across. Keywords
are described as digital oil because they
are the single most valuable concept that
you need to learn to if you don't want to
spend a small fortune in advertising - or
even if you do.
People who know
nothing about marketing but who have an offline
business often muse "I should have a site
on the web, a lot of people are making good
money on the web." They have no idea that a
website can only be found with seo
keywords. They create a site paying no
attention to this facet of websites and they
suffer immeasurably for it. The first thing you
need to do before you do anything else is
get the keywords for webpages
concept.
Once
upon a time there was a moderately
successful business man called Homer
Fathead. His father started
a furniture Store in Fantasyland and
Homer has just inherited it because his
father just married a young wealthy widow
he met in My Space. Homer doesn't much
like the internet but this event
has made it clear to him that the
internet is the way of the future and he
had better start moving with the
times.
Offline his
store is called Homer Fatheads Room Fillers,
because Homer was named after his father, just
as his father was named after his grandfather.
Feeling that twinge of mid life crisis,
Homer got tired of
waiting for his five minutes of
fame, so he insists his domain
name is homerfathead.com. In his more
modest moments he might have thought about
calling it roomfillers.com but his wife was
eyeing the young web designer with a predatory
gleam in her eye, so he felt it was time to
assert his identity.
The young web
designer had bought a book on html two months
before and this was his first project.
He insisted that Homer's first page
should be called by his company name and so
the home page's title is Room
Fillers. The first paragraph of his page
has a short description about Homer's mom and
dad in the 1940's discussing (no it was
definately a discussion, not an argument) the
benefits of calling their new business 'Room
Fillers' over Homer's aunts suggestion of
'House Fillers'. Homer's mother felt that Room
Fillers sounded more cosy and she pointed
out that no one puts furniture on their stairs,
which is a large part of a house.
There are many
pictures on Homer's page of lounge suites and
coffee tables and because pictures say it
better than words, Homer decides that
there is no need to add descriptive
text (like furniture) to the page because
anyone can see, that that's what Homer is
selling. In the menu links down the side there
are some very clever titles that Homer's wife
thought of; like Sleeping Room and Washing Room
and Homer's favourite, the Fridge
Room.
I could say they
all lived happily ever after, but in truth,
Homer's site never got a hit except from his
Aunt Cynthia who was snooping around on the
home computer trying to find out where MySpace
was and accidentally clicked an icon on the
desktop called MY Site - MY
Name.
The moral of the
story is that you do get what you ask
for. Unfortunately, before you do some
decent research, rarely do you know how to
ask for what you
need.
The End
Now if Homer had
wanted some cash business from his web page
rather than fleeting name fame, he would have
needed to do some basic keyword searches.
Keywords will bring up your links in a search
and keywords will help people find you, even if
all you have is a page of pictures and some
clever names. So long as you include good
keywords in the domain name, the header text,
the first paragraph and in the meta information
in your html, there is a chance that someone
will find you. At least this will then let
people know your offline address.
You have to
imagine what keywords people will use to search
with.
Homers website
domain name could have been
fantasyland_furniture, as anyone looking to buy
furniture in fantasyland would probably pick
these two words to search for a retailer. His
first paragraph could have included his
business name as well as the specific
keywords for the kinds of furniture he is
selling, such as lounge suites and coffee
tables. If they are of a special brand or type
then the brand name or description is also a
good keyword to include.
Had his young
web designer included these basic
keywords then someone searching for
Comfy lounge suites or food filled coffee
table types of furniture in fantasyland would
surely have found Homer's page. Unless of
course there are multiple retailers using these
keywords. Adding the store location in as a
keyword helps a little with this
problem.
You have the
option in the meta tags of each page to add
verbs and adjectives to make keyword phrases
and let the search engines know what
kind of page this is. The words 'buy' and
"shop" might be good keywords, so might red
leather, or donut filled, for surely any one
wanting to 'buy donut filled coffee table in a
furniture shop in fantasyland' would enter
some or all of these keyword in the search box
and expect the modern miracle of finding
exactly what they are looking for.
And if someone
typed in fathead and found pictures of
furniture, who wouldn't scratch their head and
wonder 'Why?', when it came up in the
search, but who is to blame?
Before you even
think of putting a web page up, do yourself a
favour and search for some keyword advice -
before you risk being called a
fathead.
Do you see where
I'm going with this fairy tale?
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