How To Make A Website | SEO - Selecting keywords

You have successfully registered your domain name, got website hosting, created your site, uploaded files on a web server and submitted your website to the search engines. Congratulations with doing all of the above.

Your site might be indexed by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN - Live), but can people find your site from millions of similar type of sites?

It is very common that webmasters don't know about SEO or the importance of keywords rich content and the impact it has on website design. The last thing you want is to have the best looking website , but people cannot find it in the major search engines.

What is all the fuss with keywords?

Whenever people search for information and use a search engine, they will have to type in a word or phrase in the search box. This word(s) or phrase(s) is called a keyword. Keywords play a very important role to the success of your website and SEO campaign. It is very important to add your niche and keywords (what people will use to get to your site) on your web pages.

Search engines look for the following when a keyword is typed in the search box

• Meta tags (description and keyword)
• On your webpages with the exact phrase match
• Links on pages with keywords in it
• Images with keywords in alt tags
• .....

How to select keywords for your website?

Put yourself in the shoes of your potential visitor and think what keyword(s) they will use to get to your website. It is a good idea to choose keywords that include your products or service.

• Do some keyword analysis (check what people are searching for) with a keyword research tool
• Do some surveys and ask people what they would type to search for your product or service
• Check what your competitors are using
• Use your website logs to see what is the most popular keywords that people use to get to your site
• Check for variations on your keyword(s) - hyphens, misspellings, singular, plural etc.

Keyword research tools that you can use to do your keword research

Wordtracker

Wordtracker is a very popular keyword research tool that SEO professionals use. With this product you can find the best keywords for your website, which will drive more traffic to your sites.

A free keyword analysis tool that you can use

You can use a free tool called Overture

overture

Sometimes keywords can be very competitive. In a case like this you will have to choose variations of your keyword phrase(s).

The keyword of this site is how to make a website :)