Keywords – What Are They?

If you are just starting out building your website you will already have an idea of how you would like it to look. That is always a great starting point but what next? Well, of course, it has to be filling your site with really good content. If you want your site to be found my loads of people it needs to rank well. In order for it to rank well search engines will be looking for good original content. That is where the real hard work beginnings. But before you, or somebody else,  start writing this content there is one thing you must do. Identify your keywords.

So what are Keywords?

Keywords are important words and phrases that you decide you would like your prospective customers and search engines to find your site because of. They are used to define what your website or web page is about. Also, they might form the basis of any Pay per Click (PPC) marketing you might be doing. Maybe it is better if I give you an example.

I am setting up an online shoe shop called Toe2Toe. My shop will sell all types of shoes. So a good keyword might be ‘shoe’. But what I really need to think about is what people might actually search for. People are not likely to search the term shoe. If I was looking to buy a pair of shoes that is what you would search for, shoes. A lot of people may also search the term footwear so I will include that as well as the term shoes. So I now have two keywords for my front page, shoes and footwear.

Now I have my keywords creating the content becomes quite easy because I build it around my keywords.

Welcome to Toe2Toe. We sell shoes for every occasion. All our footwear ranges come from the biggest brands and we think you will love our prices.

Keyword stuffing

You must never overuse your keywords or the search engines will punish you. It is called keyword stuffing and not something we ever want to do. Sprinkle keywords into your content don’t ram them in. An example of keyword stuffing would be.

Welcome to Toe2Toes shoes the online shoe shop. Will sell all kinds of shoes and footwear, shoes and footwear for every occasion. So come take a look at all the shoes and footwear we have for sale in our shoe shop.

Whilst the sentences make perfect sense nobody would ever write like that, it is not natural. Your prospective customers and search engines will not like it.

So there you have it a quick introduction to what keywords are.

What next?

In my future posts, I will show you some great tools for taking the hard work out of identifying keywords for your business. I will also be introducing you to long-tail and short-nose keywords and how and when to use them.