If you have read the earlier article please skip the introduction.

Imagine this web page as the tip of a very large iceberg. What you see on screen is actually the smallest part. To be successful on the World Wide Web / Internet takes time, effort and money.

Introduction

Deciding to get onto the World Wide Web / Internet today has never been quicker or easier. There are so many options from "do it yourself", Choose a pre-made template or choose from over a million Web designers ranging from the ridiculously cheap to the mega expensive.

Most first ventures onto the Internet end in disillusionment, massive expense, or with you simply walking away the project and forgetting the whole thing.

Why is that? The Internet is a massive beast and is built on a highly technical environment. The reality of the environment is hidden from us by friendly front-end systems; which is great as it encourages more people to use it. However, by not understanding how it all works, you can not use it to your advantage. With so much competition on the Internet this means you will not get the results you want or expect.

This article is the third in a series of 10 over which we will provide a simple guide to services for web design and to provide the winning inch of knowledge to ensure your success on the Internet. If you missed the earlier articles, it would probably make more sense if you read them first.

We have adopted a process of nine steps courtesy of Services Web Design

1. Introduction

2. Consulting

3. Keywords

4. Domain Naming

5. Design

6. Hosting

7. Integration

8. E-commerce

9. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

10. Internet Marketing

Keywords

Keywords are words or phrases used when searching the Internet via a search engine.

A Keyword can be just about anything! However, the ones that matter are the ones that lead prospective new client to your Website.

To find Keywords that are commonly used there a variety of sources and the good news is that most sources are free. Every search is recorded and ranked according to its popularity.

Using the same example from one of our early articles entitled "Considering a web site or unhappy with the one you have?" we focused on setting up a restaurant.

Here is an abstract to save going over old ground:

Try this exercise using your preferred search engine:

Create a search using these words: "Restaurant"

At the time of writing this article I got 329,000,000 results

Repeat the exercise using: "Bristol Restaurant"

At the time of writing this article I got 1,800,000 results

Repeat the exercise one final time using: "Bristol Vegan restaurants"

At the time of writing this article I got 101,000 results

Why is this important? Well if you publish your new web site based on "Restaurant" as your keyword you would enter the competition for a top 20 result spot at number 329,000,001st. Which, I am sure you will agree, is not a great place to start.

Whereas if we used "Bristol Vegan restaurants" with only 101,000 competitors the opportunity to get a top 20 spot is relatively easy, in web terms 101,000, to a good web designer.

In fact if you chose to call your web site / business "bristol-vegan-restaurant" you would get the number one spot within 2-3 months just based on the name!

The exercise is a good one and it will be interesting to see if anything has changed since it was published.

For the purposes of this article we want to emphasise that Keywords are an integral part of the Website design process.

Bristol Vegan Restaurant is a good keyword for the home page. But there are going to be more than one page in the Website. So what alternatives page keywords are there and how are keywords used in the Website.

To begin with we are going to base this exercise on a Google utility, it is free and simple to use. So open a new window and search for "Google keywords" Number one on the result list should be "Google adwords Keyword suggestions". If it is not number one on the list then look for it, as it should be near the top! Or you can just use this link https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Follow the link and enter the following into the search box (without the quote marks): "Website design"

You now have a list of keywords on the left of the screen, a number of boxes under the heading - The actual months Search Volume i.e. "February Search Volume" and a third column displaying "Advertiser Competition"

The boxes below each column, partially to totally greened out, indicate the volume.

Making sure that is being sorted by Advertiser Competition. Place your mouse / pointer over "Advertiser Competition" and click There will a small downward arrow to the left of A in "Advertiser".

Congratulations you can now see the top Keywords for "Website design". To see just how fierce the competition is in this area do a regular Internet search using the same keyword.

On the day of writing this article I got 447,000,000 results. That is pretty tough competition by anyone's standards.

So being a new kid on the block, it would be foolish to begin to compete using that Keyword.

So this is where the actual "Search Volume" column comes into play. This column represents the actual search volume by the like of you and me. By clicking on that column so that the small arrow appears to the left of this column. We can work out how many people are actually searching the Internet using these keywords.

The first practical keyword based on actual search versus advertiser competition is "CSS Website Design" followed by "Designer Clothes Website". Please note that this result is likely to change as more advertisers start using these keywords!

In both examples there is a low search volume, but there is also very little competition. Now try the regular Internet search using "CSS Website design". The results have changed dramatically from our original 447,000,000 to just 85,300,000 (on the day of writing this article). The number one result I got was for a company called CSS-Website.com. So these guys did good! As in our restaurant example they went for keyword in their name.

Play around with this for yourselves using keywords that would meaningful to your Website.

Now we know where to find keywords. It is now time to focus on how to use them.

Naming your Website with a keyword will clearly give you a slight competitive edge. But there are more to keywords than that.

Meta tags. A meta tag sits in the HTML of your Website pages. It is not readable from the Website itself. You can however look at meta tags by using your browser.

Find "View" in your browser's menu, and select "view source / page source ". You will see the XHTML code and the meta tags at the top of the screen.

These are the actual Keywords that a site is competing with.

Meta tags are now only used by a minority of search engines.

Today, but always subject to change, the page title is used so must contain the keywords relevant for that page. The Keywords must also be repeated in the Web page content at least 3-4 times in context to the actual content.

The meta tag / page title indicates what the Web page is about to a search engine robot. But if the robot does not find the keyword in the body of the page it will ignore it.

In Web Design Keywords work best if they are built into the URL and in the design of every page. This will include page title, using "H" tags, Image Alt-tags (covered in section 9 SEO) the Web page content, navigation menus, links and meta tags.

<strong>Things to take away from this sections:</strong>

1. The importance of Keywords
2. Where to find Keywords
3. How to use Keywords
4. The use of Keywords in Website design

About the Author

BIO - Kevin is the is the Managing Designer at Services Web Design and founder practitioner at eureka NLP.