Keyword research is often known as a “process” rather than just simple research, comprising of selecting the most popular keyword phrase(s) that will help internet users find your website (and therefore the information they are seeking!). Most web designers and administrators spend weeks and months on their web pages, fine-tuning them so that their pages can get a good ranking on major search engines but still find that they are listing near/at the bottom. This happens because of the simple fact that they have not chosen the RIGHT keyword phrases or their keyword research was not adequate/relevant to their audience needs. You should not make the same mistake (as long as you keep reading) if you are unable to reach your target audience and generate business – then what is the point of creating a website? Hence, the focus should be more on identifying the target audience as well as keyword research.

A good marketing strategy is one which focuses on its target audience and that should be your aim too. You need to reach out to them. Your focus can be geographical or demographical, region specific, location specific, age group specific, sex specific or even country specific. The focus can also be industry specific like trade, business, service, or products. It is about going niche!

Keyword Research Process
Now let’s get down to understanding the keyword research process. The process of keyword research involves certain steps, which can be identified as:

1.    Discovering Keywords: The discovering keywords phase will focus mostly on identifying as many optimum performance keywords as possible and at the same time they should be related to your website, business, product, service, and target audience
2.    Analyzing Keywords: In the analysis phase, you will be adding more information to search for keywords like identifying existing competition, certain limitations that are PageRank based and the actual potential for page ranking
3.    Selecting Keywords: Selecting keywords is the most critical phase in the entire process and requires objective measurement based short-listing of all optimum performance keywords. You need to focus on the website, how you want to project it to the customers and on the target audience within any limitations that you have identified or analyzed.
4.    Deploying Keywords: The Deployment phase focuses on how well you use the selected keywords or keyword phrases through HTML code, website copy, as well as tags.

NOTE: Avoid the “keyword density” pitfall! Don’t stuff your web pages with keywords as this will backfire and the SEO campaign will fail completely. Try SEOintelligence Today to increase your rankings and choose the RIGHT keywords the beginning!

The rule is: you should always add the “alt” attributes to all images on your website and you will need to add the “title” attribute only if the image is being used as a link. Let’s take a look at an example:

If there is a simple image of laptop on your webpage that is not linked to any other page or objects on other pages then it will consist of the ALT attribute only. The code will be as follows:

<p> <img src=”laptop.jpg” alt=”laptop” width=”400” height=”400”/> The laptop is a great portable computer.

Now if the laptop image is linked to the IBM brand of laptop then it will have a TITLE attribute so that the visitor knows where the image is being linked to. The code will be as follows:

<p> <a href =http://www.laptopscheap.com><img src=”laptop.jpg” alt=”laptop” title=”Check out some of the top models in IBM laptops” width=”400” height=”400”/> The laptop is a great portable computer.

Some of the benefits of using the “alt” and “title” attributes include:

•    It will enhance the overall browsing experience of those visitors who have disabilities
•    Using the “alt” and “title” attributes will increase the keyword density score as well as the relevancy of each of the targeted keywords for your web page.
•    Using the “alt” and “title” attributes will ensure that all visitors to your website or that particular page get valuable information related to other pages as well.
•    In a way, the use of “alt” and “title” attributes will ensure that your page is search engine optimized
•    It will also help in increasing the visibility of images on various search engines like Yahoo and Google.
•    You can use relevant keywords in your “alt” and “title” attributes

Apart from the fact that “alt” and “title” attributes should be added to images, you need to ensure the following:

•    When using a title attribute, ensure that additional caption or text is added for describing a link
•    Add a citation for the URL and keep it short
•    Add the title of the image as well as a caption describing that image
Adding “alt” and “title” attributes are considered as good practices and should be used more often by designers and web developers.

The Purpose of ALT and Title tags
The ALT attribute has been specifically designed to act as the text description where images are concerned. When you browse on the web, you will find that on several websites, some text will be displayed before the image gets loaded; this is the ALT tag. It will show up in all the major or top browsers. In text-specific browsers like Lynx, instead of the image, people will get to see the ALT tag/text.

On the other hand, the Title attribute can be used for any type of page element even though it is not a mandatory requirement for all page elements. You can use the Title attribute for describing tables, links, individual rows in a table, and even some of the other structural elements in HTML. A comparison will reveal that the Title attribute is much more versatile vis-à-vis the ALT attribute and there are several search engines whose ranking algorithms consider the text mentioned within a Title attribute as standard page content.

There are quite a few benefits of both ALT and Title attributes and here are some of them:

1.    They play an important role in enhancing the browsing experience of all visitors and especially those who have disabilities
2.    Using ALT and Title attributes, you will be able to not only increase the keyword density score of your web page but also the overall relevancy for each and every targeted keyword used on your web page.
3.    One of the important aspects of the ALT and Title tags is that they offer valuable information to a visitor by displaying descriptive text and link titles regarding different page elements.

Some people think that adding the ALT and Title attributes to a webpage might be difficult but that is not the case. In fact, it is quite easy and simple to add the ALT and Title attributes to the existing code. Here are some examples that will help you to understand how they can be added to an HTML tag.

{<img src=”trekking.jpg” width=”500″ height=”300″ alt=”trekkers walking towards Lapah at 12000feet”/>

<table width=”100″ border=”2″ title=”summer camp 2008 in Himalayas”>

<a href=”page1.html” title=”summer camp 2008″>summer camp 2008 in Himalayas</a>>

<form name=”application” title=”summer camp 2008 application” method=”  ” action=”  “>

</body>}

Here is how it looks:

To know how best you can use ALT and Title tags, check out the various features of the SEOiQ Testing Center. Take advantage of the 14-day free trial by signing up now!

Get to Know SEO: The technique of writing keyword rich content, fixing the website code, adding META tags, etc that make your website search engine friendly is known as SEO. Search engine optimization is implemented to make your website or blog site accessible to all search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo!, and MSN among others. These search engines store your website information in their vast databases and help the internet users to look for information/services/products related to your website.

Implementing DIY SEO techniques: The DIY SEO techniques are easy to implement and can be used in all the webpages of your website/blog site; they can resolve many design and content issues as well. That being said, it’s best to start with one page of your website, clean up all the basic optimization issues, and move on to the next page and so on. So, we’ll start at this point. Look for consistent as well as redundant issues and fix them in all the webpages/blog pages. This assures you and search engine robots/crawlers to scan your website content and collect information and stack it on their databases.

Checklist to become a SE favorite: Following the below mentioned checklist will bring you recognition and success as you land on the first couple of search engine page results. I followed the check list and reaped rich rewards, you can do the same and here’s what you need to do.

1. Remove any or all roadblocks/obstacles that may prevent the search engine crawlers from reaching your website. Test, test, test, and test your website before you go live. Remember, an error ridden website is also an unfriendly website for search engine crawlers.

2. Open all doors (read all webpages), wide open for the SE crawlers allowing them to examine each and every web page of your website or blog site. Categorize, maintain, and keep your website clean. Remove/delete any or all broken or orphan posts/links etc.

3. Maintain keyword density to a maximum of between 2-4% only. Use key phrases that categorize your web content efficiently. A crucial clue for search engine crawlers, keywords are all important. Spread keywords through the content on every page for better identification. Content is the KING!!

4. Your META tags should be labeled, categorized, and well-recognized so that they can be correctly tagged by the web crawlers.

5. Take full advantage of the pinging services.

Of course, I may let on that I have not included anything that is related to advertising your website. For me, SEO is about making a website completely accessible to all search engines and not about the amount of money it can make for you!

If you are interested in making your website search engine optimized then you can sign up for the free 14-day trial account with SEOintelligence and take advantage of our cutting edge SEO tools.