STEP #1
Finding Keywords That Are Relevant To Your Business

Keywords are what search engines look for when deciding if your website is relevant to a particular search.

When a local customer does a search for a product or service that you sell, automated programs called “robots” or “spiders” scour the entire web looking for text words or phrases that match the inquiry. In a fraction of a second, the results are then displayed in the order that the search engine thinks are the most relevant, or most popular.

Finding Your Keywords

So how do you find out what “keywords” the search engines are looking for? There are many sophisticated software programs for finding the right keywords.

One simple and FREE way to find out is by visiting the Google AdWords website,  http://adwords.google.com  (no www.) where you can simply type in a word or phrase that is relevant to your business (beauty salon, auto repair, plumber, jeweler, etc.).

Then, Google will show you what keywords were typed in over the last 90 days by people searching for what you sell – starting with the most popular words at the top.

You can then pick the keywords that you want and download them as a Microsoft Excel, or Plain Text document in order to use them in your website. Having this knowledge will enable you to complete the next 4 steps:

2.    Choosing The Right Page Title
3.    Keyword Insertion
4.    Adding A Relevant Description
5.    Writing The Right Copy

STEP #3
Keyword Insertion

Now the fun part – and also the simplest! You are going to take the keywords that you download from Google AdWords, and copy them into your page code.

Good Copy Is Essential (more on this in step #5)

I’m assuming that you’ve already done careful planning as to how your web page is worded. While this step is beyond the scope of this document, I want to touch on why this is important. After search engines scan your Page Title, they will look for the Keywords section of your document to look for a match to the customer inquiry.  But wait – are the same keywords strategically located in the body of the text on your web page?

For example, you are selling landscaping services and have inserted landscaping keywords into your page code.  But, if the page copy is completely irrelevant to landscaping services, or does not contain the words “landscaping services” then the search engine will make the comparison, and judge your page irrelevant to the search. So – make sure you write your page copy using as many keywords as possible!

How To Do It Yourself

If you used Dreamweaver to build your site, open up your page and switch to “code view”.  Unlike the “Page Title” tag, there is no “Keywords” tag in your page by default. So you have to create it. Creating this line of code right below the “Page Title” tag is just fine. Just be sure it appears before the closing “Head” (</head>) tag. Here is the code:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”your keywords here” />

Other website programs may  also offer an easy way to do this.

That’s it! Easy enough, right? Now, let’s move on to step #4…