Keyword Mastery – Unlocking The Doors To SEO Success - 09/05/11

Search engine optimization is becoming a widely used term in marketing meetings these days. Many businesses are employing traditional SEO techniques, while others use press releases to draw specific audiences to their sites. Whether you’re using online press releases or traditional SEO in order to drive traffic to your site keywords are the base of these operations. If you don’t define the keywords you won’t see the traffic.

Using the correct keywords based on your targeted audience is imperative when building a successful online identity. Determining the words and phrases that the target audience uses to search for your product or service will allow you to tailor your SEO and marketing materials to them. Keyword research provides this data and allows the company to analyze and execute online marketing campaigns properly. Chances are your webmaster has already done extensive keyword research for on-site SEO. If you put those keywords together with your marketing strategies they tend to create success for one another. It creates brand awareness, consistency, and an overall sense of purpose. If you don’t have a webmaster there are a number of keyword research tools out on the net.

Keep your competition in sight. You always want to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing as far as SEO and keyword building. Are they dominating an area based on certain keywords? Find those keywords – do the research, get the data, compare, and put together a more focused campaign.

When building a press release it is important to avoid marketing speak and slang terms the general public may not be aware of. For example, when people search for “baking soda” on the internet, generally they don’t go typing in “sodium bicarbonate.” They’re the same thing but “baking soda” is the more appropriate term here. You’re not doing yourself any favors by alienating your audience with complicated keywords and insider jargon. Keywords in your press release should make up between 1.5 and 3.5 percent of the content. Keywords must relate to the topic of the article and not the industry. The purpose of a press release is to focus on or highlight a product or event rather than give a broad overview of your company. Work your keywords into headlines, titles, and subtitles. Search engines can recognize these and they place more relevance on these keywords. Think of an inverted pyramid when designing your press release. Fill the top with your specific keywords and bring it down as you write.

Loading down your press release or site with keywords can be very beneficial to you but it is possible to over-do it. Keep in mind that press releases are meant to be read by people, while on-site SEO is read by computers. Press releases must contain the keywords but also engage the reader and give some sense of value to them. Images, videos, and other forms of multimedia are great examples of engaging content. They add a little bit of extra oomph and another level of interaction.

Keywords are important; they are the base of any online marketing campaign or SEO strategy. Without the keywords your online marketing and SEO strategies are much less likely to succeed. By doing keyword research, analyzing competitors, putting the data together to create killer press releases and working hand in hand with on-site SEO you will go far, all due to simple search terms and phrases.