How do you search for products, services or information on the internet? Most people would answer that: they go to a search engine, type few words related to the product, service or information in the search box and press enter. The search engine returns results and they go through the pages one by one.

The word that you type in the search engine to find out what you are looking for is called ‘Keyword’ – if it consists of multiple words, it is called ‘Keyphrase’ as well.

All the search engines are text based – they identify a web page via the keywords or the text written on it. Hence, as an expert SEO consultant, it is your responsibility to ensure that the keywords are properly used on the website.

You have to prepare a list of keywords first; for this you have to think of some words and phrases prospective customers may use to find your website. There are many Keyword Research Tools that help you find out keywords for a website. Once the keyword list is ready, optimize the Title tag, Meta description, Meta keywords, Alt tags, H1, H2, H3 headings and page content properly.

To rank high in search engines for all your targeted keywords, you have to use the keywords as link text while acquiring backlinks from other websites. Confused? Don’t know what is link text? Hold on, we will discuss link anatomy in our next post. Stay tuned!

Keyword selection is a crucial step in SEO – if you fail to choose the right keywords, your entire effort will render useless. Thousands of people use internet to search products, services and information everyday. You have to find out the words people use to search the type of products, services or information you are offering on your website. Once the keyword list is ready, your search engine optimization process should be planned accordingly.

Keywords should be used in both on-page and off-page optimization processes. Meta tags, URL, H1, H2, H3 tags, image alt tags should contain keywords. The content of the website must have the target keywords included in it. At the same time, you should concentrate on acquiring links from other websites with keywords in the link title. Combined force of on-page and off-page optimization helps a website secure top rank in search engines.

Some of the webmasters perform keyword research even before buying a domain. Keyword in domain name is of tremendous help; websites that have the target keywords in the domain name generally perform well in the search engines.

Hence, do the keyword research as early as possible. Prepare a list of useful keywords of high search volume and optimize your website around them. Prepare the base of successful online marketing.