How to Use Keyword on Your Website to
Get Higher Rankings in Search Engine Results
by Nancy J Wagner

I talked to a company that recently redesigned their website with new navigation, graphics, and copy.  The site looked beautiful, was easier to navigate, and it really appealed to me.  There was just one big problem, the owner revealed to me:  the site was NOT coming up in search engine results. 

I reviewed the words the site should have been coming up under in Google and Yahoo, and discovered those words were NOT being used in the critical places on the website.  That meant the search engines did not know which key words and phrases to rank the site under.

The first thing you must know in creating web pages the search engines will rank is this: search engines do NOT look at your website pages like you do.  Rather than looking at your pages in a browser, they instead read only the html code.  While reading the html code, they look at how often key words and phrases are repeated in three different places, then rank your site under those words and phrases if they find them in those places.

That means you must have your most important key words and phrases in those three places on each important page of your website.  Important pages are those such as Home, Services, Products, etc.; these are the pages you want people to visit first when they arrive at your website.

Before you start, though, you need to know what key words and phrases prospects use to find websites such as your own. I have tools I use to help determine that for my clients; otherwise, the words they THINK people are using are often NOT the words people use at all.  Instead, I help them find the real words people are using, then we work to get them added to the website.

Here are the three places where you need to add your most important key words and phrases. 

1.    Meta Description - this is hidden code on each page where you add your key words and phrases.  This is NOT to be confused with Meta Keywords - search engines no longer use Meta Keywords to rank a site.  They only use the Meta Description area.

2.    Headlines - These are the headlines that introduce the paragraphs that follow.  In addition, make sure you html tag your headlines as such to stress their importance to the search engines.

3.    Paragraph of copy following the headline - this is the third place where you add the same key words and phrases you added to the Meta Description and the headlines.  Weave your key words and phrases into the paragraphs after the headlines. 

Once you've added your key words and phrases to these three areas of the pertinent pages of your website, submit the site to the search engines.  Wait a few weeks, then check to verify your improved ranking in the search engine results.