Websites – Finding Keywords Manually

October 17, 2008 by Butterfly Filed under: Search

When searching for a product or service online the first thing I do is enter a word or phase to describe what I’m looking for. If I’m looking for toys for my puppy I might enter “puppy toys” into the search box. Well, if you sell puppy toys and you do not have “puppy toys” listed in your site’s keywords, your website will not be returned as a possible resource for “puppy toys” and I’ll never know that you had exactly what I was looking for.

So, how do you find out what keywords people will use when searching for your services or products? A simple but slightly labor intensive way would be to research your competitor’s sites. Go to the search engine of your choice. In the search box type a word or phrase that you think your customers would use to find businesses like yours. When the list comes up, select a competitor and click on their link. When the page comes up right click on the page and select “view source” from the menu that appears. A file with a mesmerizing amount of what looks like gibberish will open up in notepad. Look for a line that begins “meta name=”keywords” content=” and take note of the words.

Copying and pasting them into another document would be a good way to keep track. After visiting several of the top sites (the more the better), you will find that certain keywords appear more frequently than others. Try adding the top 5 or ten to the keyword section of your website. If you don’t know where to find the keywords on your site or how to add to or change them, please send me an email or submit a comment and I’ll help you to locate them as “painlessly” as possible. (It’s a free service!) There are several other ways to determine the right keywords for your website. I’ll address additional methods in future posts. “Stay tuned!”