Keyword Research and Rankings

Knowing the terms people use to search for specific products and services is essential for developing an effective search engine strategy that draws the right people to your website. This concept is termed keyword research. Using the specific keywords as seeds on specific pages will help the website achieve a higher rank.  When a search engine indexes the website, the engine looks at all aspects of the page – both visible and invisible (meta-tags, etc.) to help determine the content of the page.  A page cannot be overloaded with terms, as this practice was abused in the past, resulting in lower rankings by search engines. As the web matures, new techniques have been developed to fully understand what a phrase or keyword search generates.  Newer techniques like short tail searches, long tail searches, keyword counts KEI and seeding are evolving and increasing in complexity.  Search engine optimization requires an expert understanding of the following:

• What terms people use to search for specific products and services on a daily basis
• The number of people searching the major search engines with those keywords
• The relevancy and expected conversion of select keywords
• Traffic and purchase patterns around specific keywords

Keyword analysis requires a balance of knowledge, intuitive thinking and experience. Contact Alfa Web Solutions, your internet expert, today!

The Purpose of Keywords

The purpose of keyword research is to understand the behavior of customers who use search engines to find products and services.  What words do customers type when they are seriously ready to purchase?  What phrases, when searched, have the highest conversion rate to sales?  What terms indicate that a customer is not yet ready to buy?  All of these questions are important to understand and apply correctly.  The closer the keywords on your site match the keywords customers use who need your products or services, the more traffic your site will receive.  Applying keywords is a careful balance between increasing traffic of all customers and increasing traffic of specifically targeted customers.  The better your SEO Company understands the complex nature of keyword research, the higher the return on your marketing investment.