More on Keywords

by Sharon Housley

Published on this site: July 1st, 2005 - See more articles from this month...

Keywords are the heart to effective Internet searches. Whether optimizing a web site or searching for a hard-to-find item, consider tapping resources to locate a variety of keywords. Identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to the products, services, or information you are promoting or searching for.

1. Synonyms
   
   Use a thesaurus to find terms that are related to a primary keyword. Searching on a synonym will often bring up different Internet search results. A thesaurus groups words that are similar in meaning. Usually, you reach for a thesaurus when you have a word in mind and you are looking for a similar term. Keep in mind that no two words mean exactly the same thing. We turn to a thesaurus to find different, more expressive ways of speaking and writing, this is particularly important when related to keywords.
   
   WebReference - http://thesaurus.reference.com/
   
   Merriam-Webster - http://www.m-w.com
   
   
2. Singular and Plurals
   
   Using the plural form of a word in many of the search engines, may result in a different batch of search results, than a search using the word's singular form. It is important that websites be optimized for both singular and plural forms of critically important keywords or phrases.
   
   
3. Meta Tags
   
   Look at competitor or similar web sites meta tags to determine if you have overlooked any obvious keywords or phrases. This is very easy to do, simply view the source of the web page and look for a tag in the header that says [meta name="keywords" content=].
   
   
4. Conjugate Verbs
   
   Conjugating verbs in keyword phrases will also vary search results. Epitomize a variety of pages for critical past, future and present tense keyword phrases.
   
   
5. Qualifiers
   
   Use qualifiers to vary the meaning of a search phrase or keyword and bring additional results. Qualifiers usually are adjectives or adverbs that helps modify and limit the extent of the meaning of a noun or pronoun, while an adverb helps modify a verb in a similar way.
   
   
6. Abbreviations & Acronyms
   
   Abbreviations and acronyms should be employed in a variety of forms. Extend abbreviations and acronyms to full word phrases to encompass as many possible combinations as possible.
   
   
7. Misspellings
   
   A significant number of searches conducted each day are misspelled. Include common misspellings in the meta tags of optimized pages to capture any traffic that is mistyped or misspelled.
   
   
8. Shake it Up
   
   Mix up the order of keywords in phrases to encompass a broad range keyword phrases. Keyword phrase word order variations can be a great source for new keyword phrases.
   
   
9. Hyphenate
   
   Consider hyphenating search terms, as this is likely an area competitors are unlikely to venture. The hyphenated term could score well in search engines.
   
   
10. Determining Keywords
    
    Additional Resource for Determining Keywords -
    http://www.small-business-software.net/determining-keywords. htm

Optimizing a site for a variety of keywords will give your site the advantage of being found by relevant searchers. The extra keywords could result in increased profits from customers who might not have otherwise located your web site.

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net awireless text messaging software company.