Keywords

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What are keywords?

 

Keywords are literally the key into the Web. Surfers seek information by using keywords in search engines. Keywords are so important that you should build your Web pages around them. Keywords could make or break your search engine positioning. You must be aware of the keywords that are likely to attract visitors to your site. I would recommend that you make a list of your top 30 keywords on a spreadsheet or database. Each page of your Web site should concentrate on no more than two keywords. These keywords should appear in the various parts of your web page, including the title, header, body text and the keyword-, description- and content-META tags. Whilst you will be able to see the page title, body text and text links on the Web page, the tags can only be seen in the 'source' HTML. The keywords should appear at the top of the body text. If you have 30 keywords you will need at least 15 pages with two keywords per page. Remember, the more specific your keywords are, the better the chance that people who find your site through search engines will actually benefit from its content.

 

It is apparent that ideally each of your pages should concentrate on just one or two keywords as you would be hard pushed to optimize your page for more. The search engines will refer surfers to the most relevant individual pages and not usually to your home page. Remember your page title is the first element that search spiders will find and it follows that the title of each page should be carefully considered.  It is the task of Web designers to optimize each Web design for high Search Engine ranking.

 

To see the importance of keywords, undertake a search of the most important keyword for your Web site. Look at how the top ranked sites have this keyword in their pages by looking at their 'Source' HTML. Some search engines, when presenting their rankings for  a surfers search, may include the top line of the page text, others the META description tags or the title of the page.

 

Use your keywords in your graphic file names: wordphrase.gif is better than image1.gif and image alt tags.

 

Keyword weight or density is the number of times that your keyword appears on a page compared to the total number of words. By using your keywords frequently and reducing the remaining text, the keyword density will increase. Whilst keyword density may be important in your search engine rankings, you must also ensure that the text is sensible to your visitors. Some search engines may penalize pages that contain less than a hundred words.

 

IBP9 will compare your web page with the top ten competitors. In this example an analysis for Web site design has been performed and the program has found the top ten competitors.

 

 

The program shows the main elements of your page and compares this with your competitor sites. In the following section of the report, the program recommends that I should most criteria for my page title are correct but makes the suggestion that I should consider reducing the length of the title.

 

 

 

In the following section of the report, it is interesting to note that the top ranked page does not offer a META-keyword tag, confirming that the importance of this tag is no longer pre-eminent. The report shows that I should adjust the placement of my keyword in this META-tag.

What are keyword variations?

Search engines may include an evaluation of your Web pages according to the number of variations of the keywords. Use keywords or keyword variations in the navigation system for your Web site. Overture (formerly GoTo.com) provides a great free tool for finding out how many people are searching for different keywords. You'll get lots of ideas for additional keywords there as well. Overture keeps moving this tool around. Please drop me an email if you find it has moved. This tool assists you to find keyword variations and also the keywords that surfers are actually using which may be different from the ones you would have expected: