What is to be done then? The answer lies in a long term strategy. Along with these highly desirable phrases, there will be many that can be immediately optimized for. Phrases with a relatively low number of searches, but an even lower relative number of pages optimized for it. The two types of keywords require different strategies. One is long term, and one is short term.

One way is to incorporate the long term keywords into the main body of the site. The short term keywords can be added to an ongoing text addition such as a wiki, a blog or a forum. These posts will then link back to the main site with the long term keywords as anchor text – thereby improving the internal linking architecture and drawing more focus to the long term keywords.

Once this is implemented, you can measure the success of your keyword strategy in order to track your progress.

Available as a download from SEO Book, the name of the software is Rank Checker and it’s available as a Firefox plugin (To IE users out there – shift to Firefox if you’re serious about SEO. You need the add ons) after a free registration. After installing onto Firefox, you can select in from the “Tools” menu or from the bottom right of the screen. There you can enter the URL  whose rank you wish you check, as well as the keywords to check for.

You can set the delay between queries and what’s more, you can remove personalized results from Google that can skew the rankings. I’ve found that it hangs if you have a very large number of keywords for a single site (like if you have 30 or more), but if you need to periodically check Google or Yahoo in an easy and cost free manner, this is the tool for you. The best part however, is the way it collates data from the past and presents it chronologically so you can see your rankings history over a period of time for each keyword.

Rank Checker has more features and you should visit the website of SEO Book to view the updates for this remarkable tool. Several of my clients have asked me how I’m able to generate the reports that I do, and I gratefully direct them to the source – as should you!

The more traffic you direct to your website, the more business you can potentially drum up, so be careful and choosy when you pick your keywords. Be specific in your phrasing and stay away from general terms that are too broad for the search engines to find your business.

Research other websites that have a business, product or service that is similar to yours. Get an idea from the metatags your competitors use in the html coding of their website to give you an idea of how to properly use keyword phrasing.

Use 3-4 significant keyword phrases for your Meta description tags. Incorporating the same keyword phrasing in your title tags and page copy is essential for consistency and readability.

For Meta keyword phrasing, be sure you use keywords and phrasing that actually appears on your webpages. Using a tag that doesn’t appear on your site will not help your website ranking in search engines. Other helpful tips include pluralizing your keywords.

For example, if your keywords are “educational tutorial”, you would also want to include the keywords “educational tutorials”. Spelling errors must be considered when configuring your keywords. If it is common to misspell a word you use in your keywords, include the misspelling of the word as a keyword. When users misspell the word, your site will appear in the listings.