I hope that you have a good feel for the importance of keywords. Have you
started researching keywords for good niche ideas and started your keyword
list?

Today I'm going to show you even more about why you have to concentrate so
much on keywords and how you're going to use them.

Let's say you have decided that "Travel in Colorado" is the niche you found
which had sufficient numbers of searches and is profitable because
advertisers are paying top dollar for that keyword phrase. This is the
theme that you are going to center your entire web site around. You know
that search engines like keyword themes. You're more likely to get high
search rankings if you are focused with your keywords.

People visiting your web site will focus on the narrow theme because that's
what they're searching for information on. And it was that theme they went
to Google specifically to type into the search box and click on "search".
You know from your keyword research that there are thousands doing this.

YOUR DOMAIN NAME

With the decision on the website made, you now have to get a domain name.
This is the first critical step. You must make your domain name search
engine friendly by using your main keyword phrase, "Travel in Colorado".
Many of the domain names may be taken. So, you go to a domain search site
on the web (google for one), and start your domain search. You decide on
www.travelincolorado.com. You find it's taken. Also taken are the .biz,
.org, .us, dot everything. You try variations. www... travel_in_colorado,
travel-in-colorado, every variation. All taken. You really would like
travelincolorado.com because most people don't associate the - and _ with
web names. What to do?

I was faced with this very same situation. I wanted a domain called
makingyourownwebsite.com All variations taken. I overcame this problem
very simplistically. I bought and registered the name
www.4makingyourownwebsite.com 4 is the text messaging number meaning "for"
and it fits with my keyword phrase. (4 is a number to keep in you head when
thinking domain names. U is a good letter, etc.)

Now, this may seem a simple fix but it has political advantage too. Search
engines are numeric then alphabetic. In other words they place numbers
over/before letters. What this means is that if you have a tie, in the
rankings by the alogrithm, between two sites and the one is named
www.travelincolorado.com and the other named www.4travelincolorado.com,
Google will put the latter web site at the higher ranking, just because of
the number at the beginning.

In my case, my "4" doesn't mean anything (cept, maybe I got something close
and similar to whatI wanted), because all of the other competing domains are
directory sites and Google de-ranked all directory sites with the latest
"Google Dance" called "Jagger". More on Google dances at a later date.

YOUR WEBSITE TITLE

Yesterday, I said that keywords were important because you would use them in
your web site title. The title is not the caption or the headline that
people see at the top of your web page. It is what the search engines read
and use to title your site in that blue area at the top of your browser when
someone brings up your page.

The title is found in the "HEAD" section at the top of your web
page's html code (anything in this section can only be seen by the search
engines). If you're not sure what html is or where the "HEAD" and "TITLE"
areas are, just bring up a web page on your internet browser and go to
"view" on the taskbar, click on that, go to "view source" click on that and
a new window will pop up showing the html code for that page. The header
with title is near the very top. (NOTE: in html, the HEAD, TITLE, and other tags are surrounded by the symbol "<>" at the begining and a "" at the end. These symbols are referred to as tags)

If I keep with the example I've been following, you will name your title::
"TITLE" Travel in Colorado "/TITLE" Now, when the search engines spider your
homepage, they will see "travel in colorado" in both your domain name and
title. They've seen your main keyword phrase twice and they've seen it
before they've even started reading your text. See the politics?

YOUR WEB SITE DESCRIPTION

The site description is a meta tag also found in the section viewed
by the search engines. With some search engines it is used in the little
blurg you see when you do a search describing the page. Not many of them do
that any more but they do read your description and use it in the page
rankings.

You want your site description to reflect your main keyword phrase. You
might put "The"Travel in Colorado web site gives you travel information for
the state of Colorado"" You decide, but get that keyword phrase in there
somewhere. And intact.

Now the search engines have seen your (intact), main keyword phrase three
times. How can they not rank you highly when someone searches for "travel
in Colorado"? Well, they might not see it that way, so you have to give
them more to nibble on. But so far, you've given the search engines a very
focused, keyword weighted introduction to your web site through the landing
page, or homepage.

CONTENT IS KING

The web designer's pet phrase these days is: "content is king". This is
because people are searching for information on the internet. They want to
find it and they find it through content on your web site. The search
engines gobble content up.

I like to say that what makes content "king" is keyword weighting. You want
to write your content with the focus of your primary keyword phrase.

Jim Bruce has been making his own web sites and marketing online since 2000. He brings the expertise of experience to his web site design and online business writings. You can find out more about starting your own web site and online business at http://www.ristvinmarketing.com