How to find and change key words

Drawing a Head 28th February 2008
pencil on Saunders Waterford Hot Press
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This follows on from my post earlier this week on Keywords, site descriptions and meta tags - how search engines find your website and content. It concerns itself with

• How to review/revise page descriptions and keywords for individual pages in SiteKreator
• How to use Google Ad Words to identify keywords
• How to use keywords in Blogger
• How to use keywords in Squidoo
  

I've gone cross eyed this week reviewing and updating keywords and site descriptions so my first recommendation is to try and make this something you do as a regular maintenance task rather than all in one go.

(Having gone cross eyed, I couldn't focus properly at my drawing class on Thursday. My first effort with a pen that was on its way out wasn't very good and the above is just about passable in my opinion - and I went home before the third session as there didn't seem much point in drawing if I couldn't see to draw!)

How to review/revise page descriptions and keywords for individual pages in SiteKreator

This is for people who have Sitekreator websites - which quite a few people do have. I was a very early adopter and I think I started a trend with mine!

There doesn't appear to be a tutorial for this so this is my version.

• Open up the page properties menu for the page you want to change
• The Page Properties screen has a Special Features item. Click 'show options'
• This then unfolds to show to the detail for identifying the page.
• Under the page URL, it now has two lines in the menu - one for keywords and one for page description
• If both are left blank then the site keywords and site description operate as the default option (assuming you've actually completed the site keywords and site description on the site properties/special features screen - remember site description is how your website gets described on Google et al)
• If you want to tailor the page so it can be found more easily by people doing searches then include keywords appropriate to the page. Check that the keyword you are using can be found somewhere in the title or text on the page.
• Similarly, write a more tailored description for the page. You might find that you have a common front end for all your pages "gorgeous pics by youknowwho" and then just change the back end to reflect the particular content of that page
• It's best to keep your site description under 200 characters
• When you've completed the changes, hit the update button and then publish the page
• Next check whether the change has taken place by reviewing the code for the keywords and site description by viewing the page source for the page
• Go to View/Page source
• Look for where is says keywords and site description near the top of the page - just to the right of meta tags.
  
• read what it says to the right of each. If you've made any errors, return and correct and then repeat.

That's it. It's not difficult. Try a page that is less important than the rest to try it out.

The difficult bit is the next bit - finding which keywords are the best ones to use for your site.

I'm a great believer in using free resources if you can find them. There are undoubtedly very good services out there for finding keywords - but I do wonder how many of them will work accurately for artists working in different ways. That said I'm sure somebody will make a case for why their service is best - but just not in the comments part of this post!

FREE: How to use Google Ad Words to identify keywords

The first difficult bit is finding the bit of Google which can help you. If you don't know then I suggest you bookmark this post and I'll give you the quick link (for when you have the time to review keywords) plus explain how to get there.

• first off I think you need a Google account - but you can always try clicking the link.
  
• starting from Google's main page go to My Account (top right of screen)
• Scroll down until you find Ad Words
• Click the link. On the new screen, underneath the bit where it says Learn About Ad Words is a hyperlink in the middle of the page which says 'Get keyword ideas'.
  
• Click on that and you reach the main page which you will be using to try out ideas for key words
  
• Mine says that it's tailored for English, United Kingdom - but that can be changed
• Here are some advanced tool tips for using Google Ad Words. Remember that you're using this to generate keywords and not ad words - but they are essentially the same thing.

What I then did was a combination of trying out each webpage URL to see what came up and using what I thought might be important keywords phrases. It was very educational.

What I found was Google came up with some really weird results at times. I mean why did 'border terrier' come up on more than occasion? But what is useful is to see the relative traffic for different keywords and phrases - see this example for flowers

I'd recommend trying to cross check results with other keyword tools. I also used the free keywords suggestion tool at Wordtracker.

How to use keywords in Blogger

• Use your labels function - for each post. (You can always change or labels to posts after publication)
  
• Make sure the labels used match with the content of the post.
  
• Make sure you've got it as a module in the right hand column so people can check out all your posts under a particular label eg all you've had to say on the subject of eg. composition.
  

How to use keywords in Squidoo

• Use the edit/tags function
• Make sure that the tags have a connection with the content of the Squidoo lens
• check out what browser searches caused people to arrive at your lens. Try checking for the last 30 days not just the last 7.

For the record I reviewed and changed tags a few lenses to test the impact. It was virtually 'immediate' in browsing terms and I could see how my traffic changed overnight.

Keywords for images

Go back to the previous post on this topic (see top of this post) and read the comments to see what actions should be taken to identify images in such a way that they can be 'spidered'.
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I hope this helps. Do comment below if you have any queries or comments - but please do not promote your own sites/spam or behave like a splog! Or else!