Keywords, Content

Creating keywords that match content is becoming a science in itself, which can get confusing and complicated. In its simplest form, the keyword/content matrix describes matching words you choose for copy on your website with content of your copy. Keywords are what search engines look for when they are researching what your site is about.

Before the explosion of the internet, we would search for what we wanted to read in a library or book store by title or subject or author. For example, twenty years ago if I wanted to read a book about gardening, I would go to that subject area in my local library. I wouldn't go to books about making wine to find gardening material. Cyberspace gurus simply adapted that system for internet use and expanded it when search engines were born.

The same is true for internet searching today. Your keywords need to accurately reflect what your site is all about. So let's take a look at some considerations for writing keywords.

Copy on a website needs to make sense and it needs to be easy to read. If keywords are overused, the content will be boring and it will be obvious to the reader that you just want to attract traffic to your site rather than provide quality information. A natural sound is appealing and readers will stay on your website to read your material if you remain focused on quality writing.

Check on the popularity of keywords that relate to your content. Even though popular keywords are used by hundreds of websites, you need to use them anyway, knowing you may not rank well in the beginning. Because of their popularity, your ranking will be 'diluted'. However, over time your rankings will improve, so don't be discouraged with initial ranking information.

Another strategy for use of popular keywords is to use them with qualifiers, which will help improve rank. Most commonly used qualifiers are geographic, targeting a specific city or state or country and sector, such as business or telecommunications. Thus while 'gardening xeriscape' might rank poorly, 'gardening xeriscape Arizona' might rank quite highly.

There is a lot to learn about matching keywords and content for maximum traffic to your site. Keeping some basic considerations in mind is a good place to begin.