Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Choosing Words that Search Engines Notice

Just as we suggest that you use industry buzzwords to talk to your customers, you can use these same types of words to “talk” to search engines.

Think about how search engines work to help promote your site. A search engine starts by classifying your site, or putting it into a group of similar sites. Then it ranks your site depending on how relevant it is for that particular category of sites. That level of relevancy makes the search engine useful when potential customers search for particular terms.

When you're ready to gain a thorough understanding of how to master search engines, check out Book VI, Chapter 6. For now, we simply want to make you aware of the importance of thinking about search engine rankings while you're writing the initial content for your site.

When you're writing content that's search-engine friendly, remember these two brief rules:

• Think like a customer: Scatter buzzwords, industry-specific phrases, and words that specifically relate to your type of business throughout your site's content. Incorporate the words that customers would use in conducting a search on Google or Yahoo!.
• Avoid saturation: Keywords should be a natural part of your content, not overly obvious. For instance, if you were to write just three relevant phrases repeatedly, the search engines would flag that as a problem and probably lower your ranking or throw you out of the listings.

  Before writing your content, do your own search using a popular ...