Proper Keyword Targeting to Increase Traffic

Increasing your website traffic with proper keyword targeting

Although other factors (like linking) add high value and are important to website optimization, keyword usage is still at the core of targeting search traffic.

The first step in keyword targeting is to understand your audience and generate a list of terms and phrases your audience will be searching for to find the content, products and services your company offers.  Once you have a list of those terms, you need to include them in your pages in creative and interesting ways.  Great content development is a reverse-engineering process that most website owners don’t think about until after their site is built and they’re wondering what they need to do to begin ranking higher in the search results; however it can still be done after the fact with a well-designed and logical content strategy campaign.  A content strategy campaign can be implemented by the owner of the website, or it can be done by providing the keywords and keyword phrases to a copywriter.  It can be done aggressively or in small increments depending on the needs and budget of the website owner.

Build content around your most important keywords and keyword phrases

One of the important considerations to remember is that you want to build content around some of the long tail keyword phrases that searchers will type to find your site.  These long tail keyword phrases will help you tremendously, as there is less competition for them and you will have a higher likelihood of ranking well for them.  Once you have all the keywords and keyword phrases you wish to rank for, you need to write content that is interesting and relevant which includes those keywords and keyword phrases.

For example, if your company provides laser hair removal services, there may be a lot of competition for the keyword, ‘laser hair removal’ and it may take a while before you can rank highly for that keyword.  However, the keyword, ‘affordable laser hair removal in New York’ might be much easier to rank highly for.  You will still have the keyword, ‘laser hair removal’ in your content, but if you do some keyword research before writing your content, you can do a much smarter job of enhancing your website content and increase the amount of traffic you bring to your site from customers who have a high probability of using your services.

Create good title tags, header tags and anchor text

Proper keyword usage includes creating title tags, meta description tags, heading tags, anchor links, image tags, and boldface text.  These are the important factors that help the search engines see your content as important and relevant, and must be part of a proper content strategy campaign.  These will be discussed further.