Three Keywords is all you Need to Improve your Search Rankings

In the early days of the web, putting in 200 keywords on your page was the norm. I tracked down my company website from 2001 - and here are the keywords I was using:

Graphics, Web Design, Web Site,  Web Page, Frontpage, Design, 3d, Site, Business, e-commerce, entrepeneur, Small Business,  html, authoring, site creation, layout, style sheets, hypertext markup language, web, home page, website, media, communications, animation, marketing, page, designers, mulitmedia, scripts, web sites, html design, PHP, Perl, web hosting,  hosting, hosting services, computer, web pages, web design professionals, web page authoring, graphic, new website, new web site, Web master,  web page designer, web site designer, webmaster, webmasters, web masterst, web designing, Professionals, dhtml

Yes - that was on ONE page! The sheer volume of keywords became popular because search engines used to actually use this information to rank pages. Now - keywords are virtually useless when used in this way. Instead, there is a much better way to choose and place keywords on your site - and it's proven to be very effective for me. I call it the 3-1-2 rule.

The 3-1-2 Rule

When doing your keyword research, pick three keywords for each page on your site — one keyword as the primary topic on your page - and up to two secondary keywords that will support your primary. Don't get lazy and use the same three keywords on other pages of your website — take the time to choose a unique set of keywords for each page. It will pay off later.

Once you have selected your keywords, you can begin writing the search-engine-friendly copy. Here is the general format I recommend:

Heading1 that includes your primary keyword
Paragraph(s) that talk about your primary keyword - and be sure to include synonyms. Don't spam this paragraph with keywords - you are writing for humans!

Heading2 with one or both of your secondary keywords
Paragraph focusing on your secondary keywords and synonyms - with the occasional mention of your primary keyword if it makes sense. Repeat this section if necessary.

Closing paragraph. Be absolutely sure you end the content on this page going back to your main topic idea that is represented by your primary keyword. This lets search engines know your page is about that main topic and clearly relevant.

Choosing Good Keywords

When I refer to keywords, I almost always mean keyword phrases. Let me give you an example to demonstrate why this is important.

Let's say you choose the keyword 'coffee' for your seattle coffee roasting business. There are a few problems with this:

1. The keyword 'coffee' is too generic
2. Ranking for a generic keyword like 'coffee' is going to be very difficult, time consuming, and costly (in terms of resources)
3. Even if you rank #1 for the word 'coffee', the traffic you get will be highly untargetted. Perhaps the searchers are looking for coffee cups or researching the history of coffee

Gettings tons of traffic to your site from a keyword like 'coffee' is just going to cost you more in terms of bandwidth and hosting expenses. Meanwhile, you could have been optimizing your site for 'seattle gourmet coffee' and received much more targetted traffic who is looking for what you are offering. These visitors will convert better into prospective customers.

When you are choosing keywords, make sure you choose highly specific, multi-word keywords that are targetted to the type of visitors you want coming to your site.

Choosing Between Keywords

Scenario: You are going to optimize your site according to the 3-1-2 rule, and you believe 'blue widgets' is the best primary keyword with 'red widgets' a close second. Google it and see who is ranking for 'blue widgets' and what the likelihood is that you can compete with them. If you find that 'red widgets' is less competitive, you may consider making 'red widgets'  your primary keyword because you will ultimately attain higher search rankings.

Geo-Target Your Keywords When Possible

If you provide a product or service that is geographically constrained to a particular region, there is no point in coming up #1 for 'widgets manufacturing.' You'll spend your time turning down customers in other regions and may not get the amount of local organic search traffic that you need. Instead, why not 'phoenix widget manufacturing' or 'phoenix widget makers?' You'll immediately and drastically reduce the number of competing sites (which in turn should increase your rankings).