Making A Website? Get Started Right!

It's amazing how many people actually start making a website without knowing about keywords.

Wait a minute. I was one of them.

Oh well, now you can learn from my mistakes and save yourself a lot of time and frustration.

The first time I tried to make a website, I didn't know anything about them. I didn't do any research. All I did was type up a couple of paragraphs and throw my site online.

That was a big mistake.

But like most people making their first website, I didn't know how things worked. Therefore, my website stayed hidden from my intended audience.

Here's the definition of a keyword:

"The words or phrases searchers type into a search engine when looking for webpages."

Twitch's Cool Info: "All the fancy graphics in the world won't make up for crappy keywords."

Say for instance a person wants a recipe on how to cook chicken. That person goes to one of the major search engines - Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask - and types in the search box: chicken recipes. He then gets several million results back. Well, that phrase chicken recipes is the keyword he used.

How does this information apply to you? Well, of those several million results for "chicken recipes" which one do you think our friend is going to click on first? Most likely one of those on the first two pages.

Therefore, if you're making a website about cooking chicken, then it's important that you get on those first two pages. And knowing which words are being used by searchers will go a long way in getting you there.

Let's get one thing clear before you start making a website: A search engine is a business.

Google isn't giving you free search results because they like you. Yahoo doesn't provide a free search engine because they're nice people. And Bing isn't challenging Google and Yahoo for search engine dominance just for bragging rights.

These companies are out to make money. Using our "chicken recipes" example above, here's how they make moeny:

1. After typing in the phrase "chicken recipes", the search engine brings back millions of results
2. The searcher clicks on one of the links and goes to an Asian food website that also has a page about cooking Asian-style chicken
3. The searcher likes the information and is about to start cooking when he sees a Google ad about "fried chicken recipes"
4. When he clicks on the ad, he's taken to another website about Southern homestyle cooking
5. The owner of the Southern homestyle cooking website is charged $3.00 by Google for getting that click
6. The owner of the second website gets a new visitor and Google get's paid.

See how keywords and search engines work together? Do you see why you must pick the best keywords when making a website?

Now let's learn how to choose good keywords.

Suppose you're the one making a website about cooking. Your website may not be just about cooking chicken, but you do plan on having pages devoted to the subject. How do you make sure your webpage gets in the first two pages of Google or Yahoo or Bing?

I'm going to assume you are not ready to spend any money on keyword research yet. That's fine. You can do a lot of keyword research without spending a dime.

Blink says: "Build each page around one or two keywords."

First you gotta brainstorm. Try to put yourself into your customer's (visitor's) shoes. What would you type in if you were looking for chicken recipes?

Make sure you write (or type) all of your ideas down. You don't want to forget valuable information!

Type in some of those keyword ideas into the search engines. Click on the first result. After the page opens, right click on the page and choose "view source," or "view page source".

Hit CTRL+F on your keyboard and find the word "keyword."

This will give you an idea of what keywords your competitors are using. Do you have the same words? If not, write those down also. You can do the same for as many websites as you need.

Hopefully this will give you a good mix of keyword choices to begin making a website. But if you need more, then you can also check magazines, books, and talk to friends to get more ideas.

There's more to making a website then just choosing keywords. If you are competing against thousands or tens of thousands of websites for those same words, you'll have a hard time breaking through the top twenty results.

Therefore, you must find out how much competition you have for those keywords. There are many fancy and expensive ways to do this, but I'm still assuming you're not ready to pay for this stuff yet.

So here's the poor man's way to decipher keyword competition:

1. Sign up for a Google AdWords account
2. Go to their keywords tool and type in one of your keywords
3. See how many people have used that keyword in the past month
4. Go to Google's main page and type in the following: allintitle:your keyword
5. If Google brings back less results than there were searches, then you have a good chance of competing for this keyword

Please bear in mind that this method is a cheap way of understanding competition. It's not the best way. Unfortunately, if you really want deep, valuable information about keyword popularity and competition, you will probably have to pay to use someone else's software.

But these tips will get you off to making a website that ranks well. I've used this same method for my websites and several of my pages have reached the top twenty.

Use the information in this page about making a website with these website tips.

Related Articles:

How To Build A Website The Right Way
How To Plan A Website
Registering A Website

Blink's Final Word: "Sitesell offers the best keyword research for the price."

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