What is the target keyword for a website? Previously, we mentioned that SEO optimization is focused on optimizing web pages, and each website has its own target keywords. Target keywords are divided into main keywords and long-tail keywords. Today, we will mainly talk about target keywords.

Target keyword definition: Target keywords refer to the "main" keywords of a website that are determined through industry keyword analysis. In simple terms, they are the keywords that potential customers of a website's products and services may use to search. For example, for a car website, "car" and "car prices" would be target keywords.

Characteristics of target keywords:

1. Target keywords are generally used as titles for website homepages and navigation pages.
2. Target keywords are usually composed of 2-4 words, mostly nouns.
3. Target keywords have a certain number of stable search volume on search engines daily.
4. Users who search for target keywords usually have a demand for the website's products and services, or are interested in the website's content.
5. Target keywords should be set based on the website's products and services, and the main content of the website should revolve around target keywords.
6. The traffic of small and medium-sized websites can be estimated based on the ranking of target keywords, but this may not be applicable to large websites.
7. Generally, when users search for target keywords on Baidu, they mostly land on the homepage or second-level directory pages of websites.

Selection of target keywords: To optimize target keywords, the first step is to select and determine the target keywords for a website. Here is a detailed step-by-step process:

1. Search for main keywords in the industry and collect the top ten ranked websites for each keyword. Then collect the target keywords of each website and analyze them. You will find that most of the target keywords overlap, and these are the target keywords you are looking for.
2. After obtaining the keywords, you can't use them immediately. You need to organize them in a table and then check the search volume and number of indexed pages for each keyword. You can use official Baidu Index or third-party tools like Webmaster Tools, Aizhan, etc. After collecting the statistics into the table, sort all the keywords. Usually, keywords with higher search volume and indexed page count have greater optimization difficulty.
3. After detailed data comparison, you need to determine the target keywords based on your own development plan and estimate the optimization time and traffic they can bring. For example, "furniture" and "solid wood furniture" are both target keywords, but the difficulty of optimization is definitely different. After analyzing and comparing, you can determine the target keywords and set them up in combination. It is important to note that the format of the title combination should be: keyword1_keyword2_keyword3 - company name, or for companies that focus on brand names: company name - keyword1_keyword2_keyword3. The title should not exceed 30 characters, as it may affect the display.

Optimization of target keywords: Compared to long-tail keywords, target keywords have greater optimization difficulty, but they also have their own unique advantages. So, how should target keywords be optimized? Here are a few important points:

1. Website structure: Target keywords are generally optimized on the homepage, and as the center of the entire website, the structure of the website is very important. The entire website structure should revolve around the homepage. It is not acceptable for a furniture website to have an entertainment news section, for example.
2. Code structure: Search engines crawl page codes, so if your page code is messy or contains loops that trap spiders, it will be impossible to achieve a good ranking.
3. Server: Search engines are paying more and more attention to access speed. If the server where your website is hosted frequently encounters problems or has long response times, it will definitely not provide a good user experience.
4. Content layout: In addition to structuring the website around target keywords, the content generated by the website every day should also expand around target keywords, and appropriate internal links should be made to target keywords.
5. External links: The importance of external links has been mentioned before. It is worth reiterating that in addition to quantity, relevance is very important. Don't just focus on the quantity of external links and neglect the relevance of the links, as this often leads to more harm than good.
6. Basic elements: For example, 404 pages, URL redirection, robots.txt standards, determining preferred domains, h1 tags, etc. We will analyze and introduce these specific operation methods one by one in future SEO tutorials, so stay tuned!

Dongming, the SEO mentor in the Small Z blog's SEO column. WeChat ID: wx5785370. SEO discussion group: 68973910.