Please stop designing web sites backwards!
Choose keywords and keyword phrases first.
Author: Peter Mansfield
I am firmly committed to encouraging and assisting companies and organizations to get on the web and to do so successfully.
Despite the dot.bomb debacle, the Internet remains the most
significant mega-trend of our age and its usage continues to
grow and spread at an amazing rate.
leads or sells your products, services or ideas, the first thing you need to ensure is that you have thousands, preferably tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors flocking to your web site each month.
Unless you have a large budget to market the URL of your web
site, your visitor traffic is going the depend heavily on your
search engine listings. Whether or not your web site appears in
the Top 10 results offered by search engines to visitors
searching for the kind of product, service or information you
offer, is a critical issue.
Even with a big advertising budget, the majority of visitors to
your web site are going to come via the search engines.
Search engines - one thing in common:
Search engines vary in the algorithms (formula) they use to
determine the relevance of web sites. But they all have one
thing in common - their search results are based on the
'keywords' and ‘keyword phrases’ that searchers type into their
search boxes.
Despite the vital significance of keywords in attracting
visitors to a web site, most designers and their clients insist
on choosing keywords as the last stage of the design process!
Effectively, they sort out the 'look and feel' of the site,
insert the text and then check their text for keywords. If they
remember to do so at all.
The bottom line is that, in terms of effectivness, they are
designing web sites backwards!
To achieve high search engine rankings, by far the most
effective web design process involves very carefully choosing
the keywords and keyword phrases first, and then designing the
look and content of the web site around the selected keywords.
Keywords and phrases must be selected for every page of the
site, not just for the index or home page.
Why design forwards? Because search engines judge and rank your site on the basis of keywords and keyword phrases. Choose the right keywords and use them right, and you will get high search engine listings and high visitor traffic. Without high visitor
traffic your web site is bound to fail.
Choosing the 'right' keywords:
What are 'right' keywords? Obviously they are specific to each
site and each page. To be able to select the right keywords for
your web design you need to get yourself deep into the brains of
typical members of your target market. What words or phrases
would Mr, Mrs, or Ms Searcher use in trying to find a web site
offering your products, services, information or ideas? > Anny's
Hideaway
Imagine you own a guest house called Anny's Hideaway. Would your
would-be guests be searching for Anny? If they were, they
probably would not be looking for what you have to offer! Would
they be searching for Anny's Hideaway? Not unless they had heard
of your establishment and had remembered how to spell your name!
Words and phrases like guest house, accommodation, bed and
breakfast, country lodge, and words that describe your location,
or what you have to offer (fishing, tennis, bowls, yachting,
gourmet meals, great wines, fireside chats?) are more likely to
connect you to your target market.
Even when you have selected your list of keywords your work is
not done. You still need to check your choices. Is there a high
demand for your selected keywords (frequently searched for)? And
what about the supply (how many pages do search engines have to
satisfy the demand)?
The best keywords and phrases are those with high demand and low
supply. They can be found for any site. But it takes time,
effort and skill. And it cannot be done last – after the design
is complete and text written by then it is too late!
