Keyword Strength

Choosing the right keyword is essential for your blog. The right keyword can increase the traffic to your blog, a lot. So, have you ever consider thinking about your keyword?

People tend to focus on the thousands of visitors that come to the site for the most popular terms. Most site managers are very happy to see the numbers increase for those specific terms, and even happier to see those terms consistently ranking well. Conventional thinking applies the 80-20 rule that the top terms provide 80% of the business, but in evaluating multiple sites, this has proved to be the opposite.

In most cases, the top 10 terms provide a lot of traffic, but not nearly as much as the total terms after the top 10 or 20 most popular. Add up the terms that refer 1-3 visits during the month, and chances are, they will add up to more total visitors than the top terms. On closer examination, most sites will have the majority of their business (sales and leads) generated from these terms that are rarely tracked. This is the heart of the long tail -- the length, or total number of low-number referred terms outnumbers the height, or the total of top 10 terms.

Names are important on a Web site. Choose them carefully because they affect promotion and site maintenance!

Try to include keywords inside your file names (including image files), directory names, and even your domain name if possible. Remember that the search engine algorithms try to determine how important a keyword or keyword phrase is relative to a page's content. A page named "buy-used-dvds.html" score higher than if the same page were named "buy.html" or something less descriptive.

Be careful though if you decide to start renaming image and page files or change your directory names! You'll also have to update your navigation links and any other pages that use the image files or link to them. Let HTML toolbox analyze your pages for broken links before you post the changes.

Also, remember to check your backlinks and alert other webmasters to changes in your site. That way, you won't lose incoming visitors from those sites or the goodwill of the site owners!