Recently, I had a visit from a highly technical software engineer. He’s on the leading edge of Web 2.0 technology. This guy really knew his stuff and has been involved with the Internet since 1995, a couple years after I entered the scene. But, he couldn’t understand why his website wasn’t breaking the Alexa top 100,000 mark.

After analyzing his website and then sitting down with him for 45 minutes, I realized exactly why his site wasn’t ranking. He has no touch with his consumer’s mindset, language, or dialect. The guy is obviously intelligent and knew exactly how Google, Yahoo, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) worked, but he wasn’t applying my first rule of SEO: Focus on Your Keywords.

Our Words versus Key Words

I’ll say it again, if you want people to find your website then you need to optimize your website with the keywords that your prospective website visitors might use to find you, NOT the words that you would use to describe yourself. The following table illustrates the difference between our words and their words:

Do you see the difference?

So, as you prepare your website content, be conscious of the laymen’s terms that your perspective clients might Google to find you, your competitors, and other websites or services like yours. If you have any doubts, pick up the phone and call some of your best clients. Ask them, “if you were to Google 2-3 words to find a website like mine, what words would you use?” Ask 3-5 people this same question and focus on these keywords.

Search Engine Optimizing Keywords

Once you have these keywords in mind, be sure to tag them properly within the HTML code of your website:

• Page title (title meta tag)
• Page headers (h1, h2, h3 tags)
• Un-Ordered lists (bulleted list)
• Numbered lists
• Bold (strong tags)
• Hyper links (especially the anchor text)
• Images (alt and title tags)

If you need assistance, please contact me directly.