White Hat Blogging in Black and White and Now Muted Colors

You are here: Home » SEO » Choosing the Right Keywords

Choosing the Right Keywords

Choosing the right keywords for a post is one of the most important decisions you make about the post. First off I am going to say don’t listen to anyone who tells you keywords are no longer important. Every word you tell the search engine is in the post will affect the traffic you get for a long time to come.

This doesn’t mean you can just stuff any keyword into the meta information and expect to draw traffic. This happened quite a bit in the good old days as some of us dinosaurs like to call the nineties. Things have changed the search engines actually look to make sure you used the words in your post. If you fail to meet that challenge regularly, Google and others will simply ban your site. A site ban for the record is bad for traffic.

Just how good are your keywords, well only a good analytics program like Google Analytics or Woopra will really be able to tell you that after the fact. Take for example back in late April of 2008 I wrote a post about Miley Cyrus and her Vanity Fair photos. I titled the post to draw lots of attention while making sure some of my keywords were in the title. I also made sure I used provocative phrases I knew would be fine keywords. How I knew was a matter of doing my homework on both Google Trends and researching what certain other high ranking sites used.

So what have the analytics told me about my keywords? Well nearly two months after the controversial photos were published and everyone moved on to the next bit of celebrity gossip, I receive between 2 and 5 hits from Google every day, with an equal number from Del.icio.us, and Technorati. I expect that trend to continue and to be at the forefront on any search the next time she does something gossip worthy.

In the market to be number one on any search you need to know your market, know your material, but most of all you need to know your keywords.

Next Post Topic: Simple Anchor Text