Does your site have ineffective and useless keywords?

A client asked me recently if I could add some keywords to her website to drive traffic from searches. The assumption from her request was that I would add them without incurring additional charges to a site that was already very affordable. The site is fairly small, just a few pages and completed in record time before an event that was taking place.

This reminded me of a comic book I had when I was a kid from Archie Comics. You may recall, it was a group of teenagers named Archie, Betty, Jughead, Veronica, etc. There was a scene in which Archie walks into a CB and Ham Radio store and asks the sales person behind the counter, "what can I get for five dollars?" The sales person replies, "a fake antenna to put on your car so you can have the CB-look".

Just adding some keywords to a site will give you the SEO-look but it is useless and will not drive traffic to your site. I come across many sites that appear to have the SEO-look with words that the business owner or employee put into the header that seem to relate to the business but are not what people may search for. On the flip side these words may actually be exactly what everyone is putting into the searches but that can result in pulling many competitive sites as well so your site appears far down the list, many pages from the start of the results.

So what I recommend to clients (really a must) and often include as part of the new site or re-design is an "On-Site Optimization Package". This is the most affordable and smallest step to take in SEO (search engine optimization). Here is an overview of the work we do with this package.

Keyword Research:
- Review content on pages to create keyword phrases
- Run Analytics on specific pages/keyword phrases
- Edit/Modify Keywords/Keyword Phrases

Optimize Page Content:
- Edit content to reflect keywords/keyword phrases
- Integrate into titles, headings, description, alt tags
- Rename image files and re-link
- Check for broken links
- Add content next to images and/or videos for relevancy

Meta Tags:
- Embed Meta Tags based on the new keyword phrases into the code

Site Maps:
- Create and place link to an html site map on index page
- Create a XML site map and upload to Google, Bing and Yahoo


This is a very basic package and yet our clients get good results a short time after the work is completed. In general SEO is far more complex and requires an on-going monthly commitment in terms of work and investment. The package above is a good start and certainly far better than just throwing some keywords into the site.


Feel free to contact us; we'd love to talk about improving your website's search results. Uson Consulting. Web Design & Creative Marketing.