SEO: fixing keywords and meta tags

Hello, everyone!

after I published my first hubs, I have received a few emails from people that would be interested to start with basic information about SEO. So, today I am publishing SEO basics - keywords and meta tags optimizaton - best tips and tricks, and by reading this hub you will be able to quickly understand where and how you need to start seo for your website.

Here is a very common sutiation: you've spent a lot of time to build a very informative website/blog and two weeks later you realize that you are invisible on the Internet. No visitors, no sales, - nothing. At this point you are probably ready to start an Adwords campaign, right? Here are the first two steps that will save you money AND time

1. Before you even register a domain name or build a website, spend some time by doing quality keyword research. You will have better understanding of the products and/or services that you are going to promote and about your potential customers. You will be able to properly optimize your meta tags as well, I will explain it below. So, how to build a list with right keywords for your business?

Let's say that you decided to buy a bicycle. You go online and you start "googling" with general keywords, for example "bicycle". Why? Because you need to get general information about the product: available brands on the market, models, pricing etc. Next, you will compare a couple of brands that you choose and finally you will buy the product. While you are looking for general information, comparing or buying you use different keywords. For example, first you use "bicycle", then you use "best titanium bicycles", finally "Mitsubishi bicycle sale". Get the idea? By understanding the keywords that your potential customers use, you will be able to properly optimize your website and to target them through an AdWords campaign (if you decide to start one) . Below is the screen shot with example: I stated my search with "bicycle", then I choose "Sierra" brand and finally I picked up a model that I want to buy.

Some people will make a purchase right after comparison, so you don't want to overlook these valuable keywords. At this point you would probably ask me: "What is the best way to build a valuable keyword list"? There are dozens of keywords tools on the market right now to help you with the list, I tested 99% of them and...ironically I found that Google Adwords Keyword tool is the most effective and yet a simple tool to use. In addition, Google's tool provides the most accurate traffic estimates (by comparison with other tools on the market).

The other popular keywords tool is WordTracker, where you can set up "keyword projects" that allow your to create, manage and save multiple keyword lists, find hundreds of misspellings of your original keyword with the wildcard functionality.

Keyword Discovery is an example of other very popular keyword tool. This tool is even more advanced than WordTracker but if SEO is a new thing for you, it will take some time to learn some functions and get familiar with with this tool.

Tips and Tricks:

• use common misspellings (bysicles - example)

• plural and singular variations (bisycle, bisycles)
• geo-targeted keywords (bay area bycicles)

Now, that you have a basic understanding of how to create your keywords list, you will be able to properly optimize your meta tags, and that would be your step #2 (remember I was talking about two steps at the beginning?). So, what are meta tags and where you can find them? Here is the example.

1. go to www.Wagg.it
2. click on "View"
3. choose "Page source"

As you can see, there are "description" meta tag, "keywords" meta tag and "title" meta tag. Now, when you know your keywords, it is easy to set up these meta tags! A few years ago meta "keywords" was playing major role in on-page optimization, today meta "title" is the one. Based on my work with small businesses, I can say that there is a huge disadvantage of running Godaddy shopping cart, you will not have an access to the code and won't be able to optimize each product page. If you are in e-commerce and have multiple products, that can be a huge problem in optimization. If you want me to review your meta tags, leave your comment and url, I would happy to help!