By thoroughly understanding keywords you are making a connection with the audience you are trying to reach through your writing. Analyzing keywords is a process that takes you across space and time for a glimpse into your audience’s mind.

This is a powerful weapon because it enables you to speak the language of your audience and effectively communicate with them. Effectively communicating with the audience is the ultimate goal of all writing.

Communicating effectively through the Internet is fairly rare. As a result people when people find something they can connect with or like they will share it with their friends and come back for more.

In turn, this will help your site to rise on search engine pages. What other people think of your content is vital to how Google especially will rank you.

There are five keys things to keep in mind in order to use keywords effectively:

  1. Keyword tools: There are many keyword tools available to researchers. For example, Google offers a free keyword tool.  Discovering excellent keywords relevant to your site should be part of your market research and not only a means to bring in more traffic.
  2. Specificity: The more specific you are in selecting your keyword phrases, the more likely you are to bring in traffic that is actually interested in your site. For example, Ivan is a dentist based in Cottage Grove, Oregon. He could try to rank for the keyword “dentist,” but there are millions of dentists around the world and most customers are not willing to travel halfway across the world for his services. However, there are only two in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Ivan would be much more likely to rank higher for “Cottage Grove Dentist,” or even for the region with “Willamette Valley Dentist.”
  3. Popularity: Take advantage of the keyword tools by examining the popularity of each keyword. Popularity is how often that specific keyword is used as a search term. If you are going to go to all the work of incorporating a specific keyword in your website, you want to be reassured that it will attract traffic.
  4. Relevant: It will do no good to rank for a specific keyword that has nothing to do with your content. For example, you decide to use the term “hiccup cures” on your site about greeting cards because it has higher popularity. However, the people searching for hiccups cures come to your site, see absolutely nothing about hiccups, and promptly leave. Even though your traffic increases, the content is not what they are looking for and they leave without buying anything. Most likely, they will not link to your site to help increase your rankings either. Keywords must be relevant to produce the most effect.
  5. Sales Tool: The keyword can do many things in addition to attracting traffic. It can keep people on your site for longer by providing them the information they are looking for, and it can be the first step in the sales strategy towards the viewer. If they like what they see, the keyword effectively made you a link that will help boost your rankings on Google.

Phil Sanders
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