Taking advantage of organic keywords rock - showing up on page 1 on Google or Yahoo for key terms is a great way to build traffic and is the dream of many webmasters. Lets look at how you can use organic keywords coupled with a little PPC to generate your site some amazing search results.

So, what is ‘organic keywords’? Organic keywords are those that appear naturally on your web site and contribute to the search engine ranking of the page. By taking advantage of those keywords, you can improve your site rankings without putting out additional budget dollars. The problem, however, is that gaining organic ranking alone can take four to six months or longer. To help speed the time it takes to achieve good rankings, many organizations (or individuals) will use organic keywords in addition to some type of PPC  or pay for inclusion service.

To take advantage of organic keywords, you first need to know what those keywords are. One way to find out is to us a web-site metric application, like the one that Google provides. Some of these services track the keywords that push users to your site. When viewing the reports associated with keywords, you can quickly see how your PPC keywords draw traffic, and also what keywords in which you’re not investing still draw traffic.

Another way to discover what could possibly be organic keywords is to consider the words that would be associated with your web site, product, or business name. For example, a writer might include various keywords about the area in which she specializes, but one keyword she won’t necessarily want to purchase is the word “writer,” which should be naturally occurring on the site.

The word won’t necessarily garner high traffic for you, but when that word is combined with more specific keywords, perhaps keywords that you acquire through a PPC service, the organic words can help to push traffic to your site. Going back to our writer example, if the writer specializes in writing about AJAX, the word writer might be an organic keyword, and AJAX might be a keyword that the writer bids for in a PPC service.

Now, when potential visitors use a search engine to search for AJAX writer, the writer’s site has a better chance of being listed higher in the results rankings. Of course, by using more specific terms related to AJAX in addition to “writer,” the chance is pretty good that the organic keyword combined with the PPC keywords will improve search rankings.

So when you come to consider organic keywords, think of words that you might not be willing to spend your budget on, but which could help improve your search rankings, either alone or when combined with keywords that you are willing to invest in.

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When the Internet first came into being, web sites were all about disclosing information. The only interaction between a web site and a user was the reading the user did while on the site. Today, reading is still important. Users search for web sites to learn more about products, services, or topics. However, there’s much more to web sites today than just text on a screen.

We now live in the Interactive Age. Most of us want to interact with the web sites we’re visiting. That interaction might take the form of a poll, the ability to comment on a blog post, the downloading of a file, or even a game that relates to the site content. No matter what the type of interaction, users expect it, and search crawlers look for it.

Site interactivity is essential to achieving a high SEO ranking. Sure, you can garner a high ranking without interaction, but it won’t happen nearly as fast, and the ranking will likely be lower than that of a site that has some form of interaction with the user.

Why is interaction so important? Simple. If you can influence a user to interact with your site, you have more of a chance of gaining a goal conversion. Goal conversions are the completion of some form of activity designed to gather further information about your user. A goal conversion can be something as simple as enticing users to sign up for a newsletter, or it can be more specific, like persuading them to make purchases.

No matter what goal conversion you’re seeking, the way to achieve it is to create interactivity on your site. And the more frequently the user interacts with your site, the more likely it is that this person will reach that goal conversion page that you’re monitoring so closely.

Goal conversion is the purpose of many web sites. For example, the target goal conversion for an e-commerce web site might be for the user to make a $25 purchase. If you can entice a user to purchase from your site — that is, meet the goal conversion — you have more of a chance of getting them back to your site for a future purchase, to find additional information, or simply to interact with your site some more.

All of these are important aspects of your web site’s traffic patterns. And search engines will look for elements of interactivity to judge the value of your site to users. One goal of search engines is to provide value to users. Those users turn to the search engine for help in finding something specific.

Just as it’s important for your site to land high in the search results, it’s important for the search engine to provide the information that a user seeks within the first page or two. Making the user happy is one way search companies make their money. Another way is through the dollars that advertisers will pay to have their pages ranked high in the search results or their advertisements shown according to the keywords for which the user was searching.

In other words, search engine optimization is two-way street. It’s also a business, and search engine companies are always trying to find ways to improve their business. For that reason, these elements, and many others, are an essential part of search engine optimization techniques.

So what features do you have on your website which encourages interactivity? Allow yourself to get interactive now by leaving a comment with your thoughts on the topic.

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It would seem that picking out the right keywords and then employing them in keyword advertisements would be an easy enough task. But don’t let the simplicity of the concept fool you. There is much to learn about how to use your keywords effectively to draw traffic to your web site. Today we are looking at the dangers of keyword stuffing on your web page.

As you’re maximizing the value and return of the keywords that you’ve selected, you should be aware of one danger: keyword stuffing. This is the practice of overloading your web pages with keywords. The problem is, it’s hard to know exactly how many times to use a word on a web page.

Search engines don’t publish the maximum allowable number of keywords or keyword appearances on a page, so you’re left to determine how many times you should include keywords in your tags, titles, text, links, and headings.

Keyword stuffing, purposely or not, occurs in several ways on web pages. The first is when the writer includes on the web page (usually at the bottom, but it can be anywhere) a block of text that is nothing more than a repetition of the chosen keyword, like this:

AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding
AKC Breeding AKC Breeding AKC Breeding

Sometimes, this block of text is shown in the same font that other text on the page is shown; however, it’s not at all unusual for a block of text like this to be colored the same color as the page background so that it’s invisible to visitors, but perfectly readable by search engine crawlers. When it’s invisible to visitors, it’s called invisible keyword stuffing.

You also run the risk of accidentally falling victim to keyword stuffing on your page. This can happen when you’re placing too many keywords into tags, text, and other elements of your web page. As a general rule, you’ll want to keep the occurrence of keywords (called keyword density) at seven to ten percent of the words on your web page.

Keep in mind that seven to ten percent keyword density isn’t a hard and fast rule. It’s more a guideline that you should try to stay close to. Some search engines will allow a little higher keyword density before flagging your site as a spam site, whereas others might allow less than 10 percent. It’s a game that you’ll have to experiment with to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Tip: SEOChat has a cool keyword density tool which helps with determining the density of keywords on your pages.

One way to ensure that you’re not overdoing it with your keywords is to use several on each page that are unique to that page. These keywords should come from the topic of the page they will appear on. Many webmasters make the mistake of creating some general keywords which relate to the whole of their website, and then using those keywords on every page. This is the wrong approach; to get the best results, tailor the keywords on each page, to the topic of the page they will reside on.

Keywords are still one of the least expensive methods of advertising your web site. However, they’re not a simple select-and-forget-it solution. You’ll have to put plenty of effort and experimentation into learning what works and what doesn’t with your PPC ad and keyword placement. Keep the efforts consistent and regular, though, and you’ll eventually find the right combination that will not only provide the increased traffic and conversions you’re looking for, but will also do it within the confines of your budget.

Popularity: 13% [?]