How to turn 2 keywords into 1000's of keyphrases

By Robert Brady
Posted Thursday, October 21, 2004

Are you happy with the hundreds of carefully chosen keywords and keyphrases that you have included within the pages of your treasured website? Are you thinking to yourself that there can be no more possibilities left?

Read on....

Look up the keywords used by your competitors in trade journals, Yellow Pages, directories, outdoor advertising posters, etc. Right click and view source on web pages to see what other people are using in their META tags. (More information on META tags at (http://www.ed-u.com/metatags.htm))

Set your target for hundreds or even thousands of keywords and phrases if possible; your competitors will. Ask friends, colleagues and children what words they would type into a search box to find you.

META Tags:

Use different META Tags on different pages: In the META name="keywords" list use:

o lower case
o Capitalisation
o UPPER CASE
o iNVERTED tEXT
o Misspellings (see below) o Hyphenation
o Join words i.e. ice cream = icecream, ice-cream o Pluralizations = icecreams, ice-creams o Use commas to separate key words and key phrases within your META tags on some pages, on other pages just use spaces. o Extensions i.e. fast = faster, fastest. Many search engines use string queries when indexing sites.

Ask friends and colleagues how they would misspell your keywords. Children are a very productive source for misspelling; they often come up with ones you might not have thought of yourself. Do not under-estimate the need for misspellings. Even the less obvious variations of words and phrases attract traffic.

Always use the correct spelling on the META name="description" content=" and the visible part of your site and try to repeat your most important keywords and phrase a few times throughout the page. Include them in descriptive sentences of what you have to offer and place the very important keywords high on the page.

Pluralization of words is important with some search engines. It is recommended that you use it so that you don't lose possible visitors.

Examples of keyword possibilities for META name="keywords":

ice-cream(s)
ice cream(s)
icecream(s)
ice-creme(s)
ice creme(s)
icecreme(s)
ice-craem(s)
ice craem(s)
icecraem(s)
find(ing) ice-cream(s) ice-cream(s) for (on) sale ice-cream(s) for (on) sale (in) London, New York etc. ice-cream store, shop, outlet etc. cheap(est) ice-cream(s) ice-cream site(s) ice cream recipe(s) homemade ice cream(s) home made ice cream(s) homemade ice cream recipe(s) home-made ice cream recipe(s) ice cream maker(s) ice cream machine(s) vanilla ice cream recipe(s) ice-cream information, info, info., infomation buy(ing) ice-cream buy + (all the misspellings of ice-cream) ice-cream sundae(s)
(all the misspellings of ice-cream) + (all the misspellings of sundae)
(all the misspellings) sunday ice-cream flavours (flavors) (all the misspellings of ice-cream) + (all the misspellings of vanilla)
(all the misspellings of ice-cream) + (all the misspellings of chocolate)
(all the misspellings of vanilla) + (all the misspellings of ice-cream)
(all the misspellings of chocolate) + (all the misspellings of ice-cream)
choc-ice (and all of above) ice-lolly (and all of above)

The above list has 1000's of possibilities; the longer you spend on the keywords the more traffic you can expect.

Some words will attract no visitors while others will attract many. Even if you operate in a very niche market and only get two or three visitors a year on each key-word or key-phrase, that should still net you hundreds of extra visitors. Other sites can expect thousands. Visit (http://www.ed-u.com/payperclick.htm) where you will find a list of pay-per-click directories that you can submit all of your new keyphrases to.

Robert Brady mailto:trafficplus@ed-u.com ed-u.com - The Education Mega-Site (http://www.ed-u.com)

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