The third in the series to help visitors better navigate the details of the website development process, DuVall Designs in Phoenix, Arizona, provides a look at the details of web design that all business owners must face.
As you begin to work on the content of your website – what products you will sell or what information is available – it is important to consider how your potential customers will find you. Most of your web traffic will come from search engines. It is therefore truly important to use the same words that your visitors will use in a search and to use those keywords as often as reasonably possible on your site.
For example, if your site’s primary purpose is real estate, then you will certainly want to have real estate in your titles and text. But, understanding that there are tens of thousands of sites dedicated to real estate, you need something else to help you stand out from the crowd. Keywords and keyphrases are the primary search terms that will bring up YOUR site higher in a search than all others. In the example of a real estate site, you will focus more on key phrases. For example: “real estate Tinyville State Name”. If you live in a large or populous metro area such as Phoenix, Arizona, even adding the city and state may not be effective. You might need to focus on: “Real Estate Richburg area State Name”.
There are several good programs available at no charge to help you test your keyword choices. Google AdWords provides a strong tool that you can use without signing in or creating an account and, more importantly, is free. When using these tools, a little bit of counter-intuitive thinking is needed. Choose phrases that are LESS popular in searches. For example: the term “real estate” was searched millions of times, so you might think it is a good choice. But, really, what are the odds that your site will stand out among millions of hits? Experiment with variations of “Richburg area State Name”, and you will find that it is searched mere hundreds of times. Your odds are much better of being found in hundreds of search returns than in millions. And your odds will go up considerably as you add new, more specific keywords and key phrases to your website.