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make a splash!

make a splash!

What are keywords and why do I need them?

Don’t believe it if an seo ‘expert’ tells you that your website can get top search engine rankings within a month. Excellent search rankings require a good strategy and some patience. That makes sense when you consider that the internet now contains over 3 billion pages… and growing everyday.

If all you know is that top rankings mean good business, you’ve got the most important point right. But here’s a little more info to help take out some of the mystery behind good website rankings:

Types of search engine software: spider, indexing and searching software. Working together, they collect, analyze and index those billions of web pages. The spider software looks for new pages and is interested in text, links and URLs (website addresses). Indexing organizes all the titles, page content, headings, links and URLs. It analyzes, scores and stores word combinations to decide how important that content is to the person who is using a search engine. Finally, searching is what you actually see when you’re using a search engine.

To be effective, your website should appeal to both searchers and search engines. Keywords in your content do just that; they help customers and spider crawlers understand what your business is about. A well-planned website contains keywords in content, titles, page descriptions, domain name and metadata to maximize the impact.

Types of keyword phrases: short-tail and long-tail. Short-tail phrases are usually one or two words total. They can sometimes be general, resulting in lots of searches with lots of competition too. For example, the keyword “beer” will get millions of searches every month, but because it’s a broad term, only a fraction might find a local brewery’s website in Denver. You certainly can get better results by targeting your short-tail keywords, for example, by including locations (Denver brewery). Long-tail phrases are typically 3-5 words in length. Consequently, they can be more specific with less competition. “Downtown Denver brewery and restaurant” receives far less monthly searches than “brewery”, but chances are the searcher is probably looking for a local place right now.

A good SEO strategy combines both short-tail and long-tail keywords into the various parts of a website, creating a good strategic balance by establishing quality, relevance and authority. It’s all about bringing more of the right traffic to your website.

Contact us to determine the best strategy for your business.

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