Keywords – how to find them

Everyone is talking about keywords. What they are talking about is the words that best describe your website or product, those words that you’d like to be listed under in the search results. It is important to choose your keywords wisely. And to do so, you will need a little help. There are several tools you can use to find out which words people enter in search engines most. If you find the right words for yourself, you can now start optimizing your website towards them.

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Google itself provides a useful tool for looking up keywords: the google adwords keyword tool. There you can enter all the words and word groups that you think are most relevant to your site. Then you can have google tell you how often each and every word is searched for on google – globally and locally. Choose the ones that suit your website most. Even better if they have high search volumes. The more people who look up your keyword, the better your chances of generating traffic for your website.
Imagine: if only 60 people type in your keyword on google, only those 60 people might visit your website. However if 600 000 people look up your keyword, you might just get more visits. In some markets though – so called niche markets – keywords or keyword groups with a lower search volume generate just as much traffic. That is because in niche markets there are only few providers and few demanders. The latter will search far more specific terms when trying to find something online. Therefore out of 60 people searching your keyword, a high percentage might actually end up visiting your website.

Keywords – how to use them

Knowing your keywords is just the first step. Now the real work begins. Optimizing a website towards certain keywords requires a lot of time and effort. There should be plenty of quality content with the main keywords of the website. Simply stuffing the site with keyword repetitions will end up with penalities.
Here’s how to use your keywords right:

• Put them first – try to use your keywords at the beginning of sentences.
• Headlines get attention – therefore use your keywords in them.
• Use emphasis, like bold or italic letters to draw attention to your keywords.
• Keyword density is best between 3-5% (though those numbers are not written in stone)
  [addition 04.11.2012: In times post panda and penguin keyword density has become less important. What matters is that you use your kewords in a very natural way and place them only when it makes sense to do so] 

If you do it right, visitors and search engines will love your website.