Using Keywords for Website Marketing

Marketing your website for search engine optimization is an important step in leading potential customers to the information contained on your site. One great way to rank well for certain topics and in certain industries is to choose the right keywords to include in your generated content. A keyword is an industry-specific word that is repeated several times throughout the text on your website. Choosing the right keywords and the right frequency can drastically improve your marketing strategies.

Goldilocks Keywords

One good strategy for choosing high quality keywords that will effectively drive traffic to your website and help with marketing efforts is to think of the story of Goldilocks. This fairy tale story is about a small girl who visits the home of three bears. In the home of the three bears, Goldilocks tries bowls of porridge, chairs, and beds that belong to the bears. The first two tries of each of these things is too extreme. Goldilocks, however, discovers that the third choice is always "just right."

With regard to keywords, it's important to choose words that are "just right." Keywords that have too much competition will be difficult to rank with. There will be so many other businesses vying for those keywords, that your own website will have trouble competing with established websites. On the other hand, if you select keywords that are too obscure and that are used by no businesses, you may have a monopoly on those keywords, but you likely won't find any consumers who are searching with those keyword strings. Often, businesses use keywords that are too specific or too popular. For example, an attorney who uses the keyword "attorney" will have difficulty making any marketing headway. There are too many websites using this keyword. On the other hand, an attorney who uses a keywords string such as "Northern Ohio attorneys open on Sundays" won't get a lot of traffic because consumers aren't likely to search for all those words at once.

Choose keywords that are not too popular and not too obscure. Remember Goldilocks when searching for appropriate keywords, and stick to middle of the road words that are "just right."

The Keyword Stuffing Epidemic

Some businesses try to over-optimize their websites by virtually stuffing content full of industry relevant keywords. This, however, is not an effective marketing strategy. In fact, stuffing content full of keywords can actually be detrimental to your website. New search engine algorithms have begun to equate too many keywords with low quality content. Because so much keyword-rich content on the web is poorly written and useless, Google and other search engines believe that content stuffed with keywords is not relevant to the average consumer.

Don't Be Afraid of Keywords

Marketing with keywords can seem like a complicated and difficult process. Most marketers, however, don't have to be worried about choosing the right keywords. When you focus simply on creating high quality content that your targeted audience will enjoy reading, keywords will naturally start occurring in your content. If you're overwhelmed by keyword research, focus instead on generating the most informative, helpful, and interesting content you can. Let the keywords take care of themselves.