Keywords can be loosely defined as the words that other people use to find pages on your Web site. The “other people” part is important, because if you’re not using the words that they will use, they will never find your site.
For example, I’m prejudiced against the term “freelance”. I hate the term, and if I could, I’d never use it. BUT… unfortunately “freelance” is a popular search term, so I have to use it. It’s the term that other people will be using to find my sites, after all. I’m a freelance copywriter and writer, and that’s what people will type into a search engine query box to find me.
This sounds obvious, but it’s not. I managed to blog happily at my writers’ blog at http://copywriter.typepad.com/ without ever using “freelance”. It never occurred to me to use the term, because I never use it. This means that all unknowing, I’ve been missing out on lots of traffic.
How much traffic? Looking at the stats since I’ve started to include the “freelance” term more, I’d say it’s upped the traffic 200 per cent. Amazing!
Of course, this blog is not a money-maker for me. I love writing and helping other writers, so losing traffic for a couple of years to my personal writing blog is not a big disaster.
However, it’s certainly made me keener to use keyword-research tools to ensure that I’m using those terms which WILL get the most traffic on my SEO clients’ Web sites.
Take a look at your own site – are you SURE that you’re using the keywords that other people use?
Technorati Tags: keywords, keyword use, traffic, SEO, search engines
Angela Booth, top copywriter, author and writing teacher.
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