How to Use Keywords to Attract the Search Engines

Yet another important aspect when it comes to good web copy is being able to write good page titles and META descriptions.  These are what will be grabbed hold off by all the people who see them on the search engines, as these often will be the deciding factor on whether a person clicks through to your site from the search engines.

There are some search engines and directories that do not show the META descriptions, but they do show snippets of your content from your site.  So getting the titles, the META descriptions and your copy right are crucial.

Where the search engines are concerned, I have listed the particular areas of your site structure in order of importance, where you need to incorporate your chosen keywords to get people to click through to your site.

1.                 Page Title – this is what is usually brought up in the search engines results and is the first thing that people see when conducting a search on the web.

2.  META Description – This is usually the second text blurb that the visitor will see when carrying out a search through a search engine or directory.   Both items 1 and 2 are usually included on the Search Engine's Results Page (SERP's)

3.  Heading Tags – The search engines will take notice of heading tags within your copy, so when you put in your headline and subheads, make sure to make them H1 tags and include your keywords.

4.  Visible Content – The actual content on your site is important as well.  You can scatter keywords throughout your copy, as well as including them in the following ways:

a.               Hyperlinked Text and Title Attribute – When you have hyperlinks within your copy, you can also have a title attribute, with some keywords included.  This will show up when the cursor moves over the hyperlinked text.

b.               Alternate Text Tags – When you include an image in your content, you can also include an alternate text tag with a couple of relevant keywords included (they have to be relevant to the image – do not keyword stuff).  In the same way as the hyperlinked text, when the cursor is moved over the image, this alternative text will show.

c.                META Keyword Tags – These used to be important to the seach engines, but unfortunately, due to unethical marketers, search engines no longer put a great emphasis on these.  You can still include keywords here, but  make sure you use the same keywords in the visible content on the page. 

From this chapter and the previous one, you can see how important keyword research and putting these keywords into your site is, for effective web copy. 

After all, what is the point of writing any copy if you do not know what your visitors are searching for?

Targeting keywords is one of the most important processes in writing great web copy.