As you sit before your web designer to plan your corporate website, does your web designer discuss the selection of keywords with you? Most probably not, right?

Checking with a couple of web designers who have done various web design projects, and researching on other web designers who have their works displayed online, I come to understand that they are remarkably good at what they do.

The graphics are great and the accompanying music is just excellent! But, they are just impressive and creative with web design.

Very few will sit with you to discuss what keywords to use, your content, etc.

Optimising website visibility

You may want to ask yourself: "What is the purpose of having a Website? Are my potential clients looking for impressive graphics or real information about the products or services that my company is promoting?"

Next, think of some keywords that consumers are likely to use when they search for your products or services online.

This is an area of paramount importance as you plan your website. Website owners, who are in the business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) enterprises, tend to overlook this area.

So what kind of keywords should we be looking at?

Let's say we have a website promoting shoes.

Generic keywords

"Shoes" is a very generic keyword.

Now, do people searching for certain types of shoes simply type "shoes" in the search box?

Not likely, right?

They would likely place in the search box words such as "shoes for infants", "winter shoes", "non-slip shoes", etc.

Niche keywords

Now, we are getting into niche keywords.

This caters to clients who are really searching for a specific item, not something general in nature.

Related keywords

Among keywords, we also need to think of related keywords.

What other words will people use in place of "shoes"?

Maybe "footwear", "moccasin" or "boots", some keywords that your clients might be thinking of too.
In addition, shoe stores may not sell only shoes. Besides a variety of shoes, they may also sell related items, such as shoe polish and socks.

Keywords research

To do research on popular keywords to use for your website, you can either employ a search engine optimisation (SEO) consultant to help you or, you can do it on your own with research tools available online, including WordTracker.com or KeywordDiscovery.com.

It may be worth the experience to learn it and do it on your own.

Back to where I started about designing a website to impress. The search engines, whether it is the big ones, such as Google or Yahoo!, or even less prominent but more specialised vertical search engines, will only look at your website content and rank you according to the keywords that are in it.

Get educated on this.

Jolly Tan is an SEO trainer and consultant with Finggle Pte Ltd (http://www.Finggle.com), with a mission to train and educate web designers and decision makers to strategise their websites, and to improve search engine ranking and visibility, through workshops and courses in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.

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