Website Optimization & Online Marketing: Choose Your Words Wisely

“We’ll get you to page one of Google in just WEEKS.” How many times has a telemarketer told you this?

Anyone can be listed on the top of the search engines in a short time. Just come up with a phrase no one else is competing for. For example, put the phrase “3-legged home inspector” all over your website and you’ll come up first when someone searches for that phrase. Of course, no one is searching for that phrase.

The goal of optimizing your website is not just to be at the top of the search rankings, but to be at the top for phrases people are searching for. In almost every area of the country, the best phrase is going to be “City Home Inspector.” The rare exceptions are very rural areas where they might type in a county. Just ask yourself how would you look for a local pizza place online, city or county?

Now, take that keyword phrase and work it into each page of your site multiple times. Your keywords should, at a minimum, appear in: page content, testimonials, blogs, photo galleries, photo alt text, page descriptions, page titles, link text and page URLs.

Don’t stick 500 city names into your content, keywords, description and page title. Search engines look at the percentage of the search term to its occurrences on your page. If you type in 500 cities and someone searches for one of them, your percentage is 1/500 or .002%. Not very efficient.

To get the best results, target at most five cities. Any more than five starts to dilute your keyword efficiency. A few items to consider when choosing cities: population, travel distance, new home growth, new jobs and home values.

Have a question? Ask me on the ASHI Forum’s Marketing Board.