Thursday, January 22, 2009

Keyword Research and SEO

By Julie Johnson

The importance of proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques is well known by most web developers and designers. The mysterious multitude of SEO techniques which are employed with the desired result of higher search engine rankings is a murky world for most, but these methods must be used to their greatest extent if you are to draw traffic to your website. For small companies, the task is usually assigned to a webmaster, but for larger organizations, there may be development teams of dozens of people assigned to the task.

One important step in SEO is called keyword research, and it might be the single most important step. In order to benefit from SEO, you'll need to make sure that you write and develop web content that revolves around a particular set of keywords.

Internet articles are one of the many different external places where you will be using your set of preferred keywords. In them, you will want to repeat the keywords several times, while avoiding using them excessively. The point is to get the words out there and noticed by the search engines, while still maintaining the integrity of the article.

In order to maximize this effect, you can also use other words that are similar to your keyword. Synonyms work well, as does changing the capitalization of one or more words. Some SEO specialists even misspell words on purpose in an attempt to boost their exposure.

The challenge of determining what keywords to choose is up to you. If you think about it, you likely know best what terms people will use if they are searching for your website. There are some search engine sites which will provide you with lists, but the answer ultimately remains with you. Test some out and if they don't perform well, then tweak the list and keep tweaking until you get the results you want.

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