by David R. Chase

Created on: March 10, 2010   Last Updated: May 03, 2010

In order to maximize your traffic, you’ve got to be optimized for search engines so everyone can find your content.  Using keywords has almost become standard – but you can take it all one step further!

Google shares its SEO software that can tell you how many people, on average, look for any given keyword in a month.  By knowing what the most popularly searched keywords are, you’ll be a step ahead of everyone else because you can specifically target all of your keywords to maximize traffic to your articles, web sites and blogs.

 How to use it

First, figure out what keywords you’re going to make the best use of in your articles.  The SEO software Google uses can help you determine what kind of ads you want to attract to your pages.  Visiting Google’s Keyword Tool and entering the words you might like to use will present you with a list of possible keywords.

Correlate what you find with Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool.  Enter each of the keywords you’ve chosen to find out just how many people actually look for them; sometimes the numbers are staggeringly low.  That’s a good indicator that you might need new keywords – if no one is looking, your content won’t be found.  However, if you’re on to something fresh and trendy that you know people will soon start looking for you should forge ahead anyway!

How do you optimize your articles?

When you have the right keyword and the numbers are reasonable, it’s time to optimize your content.  Include your chosen keyword(s) once in the first sentence or two, three or four times in the body of your content, and then once or twice in the conclusion.  Don’t smother your content with them, though – keep your article readable and relevant.  If you use too many, the web crawlers that find relevant pages will consider your page “spammed” with keywords and ignore it altogether.

By lightly sprinkling your keywords throughout your article, you’ll be able to attract a little traffic… but that’s not enough.

 What more can I do?

When you’ve got great SEO content, you need to improve its visibility with links.  Post them to your MySpace, your Facebook and your blog; include them in your e-mail signatures if possible, and tell others to share if they can.

That’s a good start  but you still need to do a little more.

Having links to your content all over the Internet is the cherry on top of the sundae.  Search engines know that you must have great, relevant content if others are linking to it – so post your links helpfully on blogs and forums whenever you can.  Be careful not to spam anyone with your self-promotion, though; people get very irritated over that sort of thing.  Make sure when you’re putting your links on blogs or in forums you do so tactfully – and only in a community where you’re already a respected contributor.

Using these simple SEO tips may help SEO software pick up on your content, and in that case, everybody wins.

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