Keywords in Articles, Links and Domain Names

If I am running a pet clothing store, I can check out Google’s AdWords and input my main keyword phrase of choice: ‘pet clothing’. It will spit a bunch more back at me, from cat capes to puppy hoodies, and I can mix and match for keywords in my content.

For links, I have two possible avenues I can take. I can depend on surrounding text for my inspiration, and let it lead me in my decision, or I can try to pop out as an original take on whatever subject in an effort to stand out from the crowd.

The first road is simple enough. If your link will appear on a site about cats, you will probably use a link with the words “Cutest Cat Outfits” or something similar. A site dedicated to pet photography could include a link like “Dress your pets up for their photo shoot!”

The second method figures that there are a lot of links with the words pet, dog and cat already… so you might want to play around. Some viewers can get jaded from overexposure to a certain word – you know how after a while a word can start to look like gibberish?

Try something out of the norm, even if it’s just adding a kind of jazzy appellation to your product. “Home Dawg Hoodies” “Kitty Kapes” or “Doggie Duds Depot“. All of these could be utilized as text links, and you could emphasize on the landing page that they are located at PetStyles.

If you have the spare change, you can even purchase these as domain names, and funnel the traffic to landing pages on your main site by using automatic redirects. That way if people remember Home Dawg Hoodies but not PetStyles, they will still end up at your site.

Using keywords in your urls, your content and your links is a symbiotic process that should always be looked at as a whole. If you narrow your focus to concentrate on only one aspect, you are cutting yourself out of a huge chunk of the market!

Do the basics. Get your keywords out there, associated with your links, your content and your domain name. Then expand, and think outside the box. Utilize alternate urls to maximize keyword exposure and take advantage of secondary keywords to pick up the fringe business that scorns the mundane and the obvious. Then you can grow your site in a million directions at once!