The Importance of Keywords in a Social Media Environment

Keywords are words ad phrases used by people on Google and other search engines when they want to find something. You may have used keyword phrases without thinking about it, such as when you needed to find a “potato salad recipe” and you typed it into Google and got a page full of results.

Those pages are called SERPs – Search Engine Results Pages. Google takes your inquiry and goes through its massive listings to find the most relevant pages that would be exactly what you’re looking for.

As a business owner, think of what keywords and phrases you’d like to be know for – and try to think like your customer, too. If you were a marriage counselor, you’d want to be showing up for that phrase, but also for phrases such as, “save my marriage.”

Before you enter into the social media scene, take some time to use free keyword tools like Google’s tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and amass a list of 50 or so keywords to get you started.

Whenever you make a new page in a social network, such as a Squidoo lens, try using one keyword at a time. So using our example, you might create a lens (page) on Squidoo with a URL address like this: http://www.squidoo.com/save-my-marriage. And then your article titles on that page as your content would also weave that keyword in a few times. Only so that it’s present – you don’t want to stuff too many in where the text reads awkwardly.

Keywords and phrases are very important. The longer phrases are known as longtail keywords and can be more profitable in many cases than a broad keyword. For instance, someone searching for “save my marriage book” is more likely to buy a book on it than someone just typing “marriage” into Google. Take time to do your research and you’ll find yourself being presented to consumers on a regular basis by search engine giants on the web.