Before You Build Your Website . . .
Okay, so I’m not writing as much as I promised. But it’s not a big deal since nobody is reading this!!!
If there is one thing that drives me absolutely crazy, like to the point I want to start beating myself over the head with my friggin’ keyboard, it’s got to be sites that don’t have reasonably relevant keyword phrases on their pages.
You know you’ve seen them.
They’re usually trying to get traffic from a niche market (such as rodeo cowboys) but doing it with such vague keyword phrases (such as “shoes”) that they have absolutely no chance in hell at breaking into the top 500 of Google’s, MSN’s or Yahoo!’s SERPs. You know you’ve seen them. And if you magically found this blog, you may even be guilty of this.
If there’s one piece of advice I’d give anyone looking to build their first site, or hell, even their hundredth, it would be to identify reasonable, relevant keywords that actually appeal to the market they’re going after and represent what is actually sold on the site. Doing this will make your internal linking structure reflect what’s on your site better and work to build relevance to important keyword phrases. You’ll also have a better idea of what to put in your page titles, meta-tags (if you choose to use them) and develop your content around.
Seriously, if you’re thinking of developing a new site, consider sitting down, thinking about what the site has to offer and developing a list of keyword phrases around them. Even if you only identify a dozen top level keywords for category pages, you have a good starting point. From there, analyze if that is truly the most descriptive keyword phrase that describes the page you’re going to develop. Are you selling “shoes” or “roughstock boots”? Are you offering “clothing” or “western clothing” or only “embroidered western shirts”? Do any of those words actually appeal to your audience?
Don’t do it for me or for some other search marketer you’ll do business with further down the road. Do this for yourself. It will seriously make your life that much easier. I don’t guarantee you’re gonna’ see instant results and make a million bucks, but identifying and targeting important keyword phrases and then implementing them into your site structure and page elements is going to help you in the long run.
