Search Engine Optimization Keywords
Picking the right keywords is crucial. You need to pick targeted phrases that get a good amount of searches in order for your search engine optimization to be effective. You don't want to choose words that are too general, or words that are too focused! It can be tricky. You don't want keywords that are too general because there will be millions of other pages found under those searches, your chances of being in the top 10 or even top 30 are very, very small. If you choose words that are too targeted, there is much less competition, therefore is is much easier to be in the top listings, however, not a lot of people probably search for that keyword, it certainly doesn't help if you are #1 for a word no one is searching for. That won't bring you many visitors, if any at all. Balance is the key, you want to pick keywords that people are searching for but that are not too competitive. It certainly helps if your site is in a niche area. Your job will be much easier. I recommend using targeted phrases of 2 or 3 keywords. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer, what would you type in if you were on a search engine and looking for your product or service? Ask friends, family members and colleagues for their opinions on what they would use if they were looking for your company. If you have competitors who are already on the net, look at their website for ideas. You can view their keywords meta-tags, if they included one, by right clicking on the page and selecting "View Source", that will launch your text editor and you will view their code. Look for their list of keywords. You can get some very good ideas from your competitors but never just copy and paste anything from someone else's site, that's bad netiquette! Carefully craft your own keyword list instead, it will be to your advantage anyway.
When creating your keyword list, don't leave out any common misspellings, singular and plural versions, shortened and alternate versions of words.
Here are some excellent resources for putting together that all-important list of keywords and phrases:
Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool - Should be your first stop! Bookmark it!
WordTracker
Once you've got your keyword list down, continue
on...
Title
The title is the single most important element you can optimize! Pay attention to it. If you optimize nothing else, optimize your title. Just about every major and not so major search engine will look at this tag for keywords and their placement in it. The title is what will show up as the title of your listing on all the engines plus it is shown at the top of the browser window when a visitor is at your site, plus it is shown as the title of your link should a visitor bookmark your website. You want to include your most important keywords in the title, but keep it short, as too many keywords will lessen the "relevance" or effectiveness the keywords that are included will have. It's a good idea to have no more than 6-10 keywords in your title.
This is what the title looks like in your code:
Title text goes here
Here are some examples of good and bad titles:
New Page 1
Very BAD Title - This is the standard title given to new pages in Microsoft FrontPage. Useless.
My Company Name Home Page
BAD Title - This title includes your company name but fails to include any keywords at all, it is highly unlikely that people would search for your company name.
My Company Name - keyword phrase, keyword phrase
Good Title - This title contains your company name but also 2 different keyword phrases. This title would be effective in your search engine listings as it gives your company name but also an idea of what you offer in the keyword phrases AND it gives the search engines keyword phrases in your title. This title would also be good as a bookmarked link.
keyword phrase, keyword phrase at My Company Name
Good Title - Same as above but places the keyword phrases closer to the beginning of the tag for maximum effectiveness.
Whatever keywords you choose, it's also a good idea to look at the listings for that particular keyword or phrase on sites like Google, Altavista and HotBot and see what sites are coming up first and what their keyword placement is like. Take your cue from them but don't copy them.
Body Text
As meta-tags continue to lose effectiveness, body text seems to be rising in importance. The body text is the normal text that appears on your site. What you are reading right now is body text. It should be descriptive and keyword rich but also "sell" your product and instill confidence in your company and whatever it offers. Seems like an awful lot to do, but your body text will make up much of the content of your website so you must craft it with care. Remember, keyword rich but descriptive while selling your company and it's products. Be liberal with the features and benefits the customer will receive if they contact or purchase from you.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is simply the ratio of a keyword or phrase to the total words in your page. Some quot;experts" recommend the density for your important keywords be between 1% and 7%, which means 1-7 words out of every 100 words will be your keyword or phrase. However, there is no magic number as far as keyword density.
Meta-tags
Meta-tags are not as important as they once were. This is due to people including irrelevant keywords or too many keywords, in other words, abusing the meta-tags to the point that they had little or no effect. Most search engines don't read the keywords or description meta-tags anymore. However, some engines and smaller engines still do. So it's smart to include them anyway.
Here are some example meta-tags and how they should be used:
Its best to keep the text inside each tag down to 10-20 total words.
The meta-tags should be INSIDE of the tag in your code, if they are not, they will not be read.
Heading Tags
To optimize with the heading tag, you should take the keyword or phrase you want to optimize and use it as a heading. Since a heading usually gives an important idea about what a website is about, the search engines will think that your site must have a strong relation to this phrase.
The heading tag looks like this:
Your Keyword Phrase
You can usually make it any font size in a good editor but some will force the font to be very, very large.
Page File Names
This page file name is "site_optimization.htm", this is self explanatory. There is some evidence that suggests that naming your files with keywords or phrases can be very effective.
Example optimized file names for Classy Classics Vintage Jewelry:
vintage_jewelry.htm
costume_jewelry.htm
designer_jewelry.htm
signed_costume_jewelry.htm
Link Names
There is also some evidence that suggests that having keywords in your links can increase your rankings for those keywords.
Here is an example:
Keyword Phrase
Alternate Image Text
The alternate image text is what a visitor will see when your graphics do not load for whatever reason. It is helpful to have alternate text for the search engines as well as your visitors. Some search engines do look at this tag for keywords. The alternate text is simply another addition to your code, here is an example image tag with the alternate text code portion in bold text:
alt="description of link with keywords">
The alternate text should include a description of the image but also try to include some important keywords too, keep it short.
Font Sizes
Some search engines will give more relevance to the words that are in larger font size than the rest of your text. Words that are written in large font sizes can be assumed as important since they must be headings to a portion of body text or other content. Larger font sizes are usually considered as 4 or 14 pt or above. Examples below in Arial:
Text - 1 (8 pt)
Text - 2 (10 pt)
Text -3 (12 pt)
Text - 4 (14 pt)
Text - 5 (18 pt)
Text - 6 (24 pt)
Text - 7 (36 pt)
Also, the presence of very small text, usually example 1, especially in large masses, may be construed as "spamming"! try to avoid using size 1 or 8 point fonts.
NoFrames Tag
When a site has frames, it is extremely important that the designer make use of the noframes tag. It looks like this:
<![CDATA[Keyword rich description of your website.]]>
Since most search engines will not be able to venture past your frames, they need something with keywords to read. This is where the noframes tag come in. Not only do the search engines read this but if a person comes to your site and they are using a web browser that does not have frames support, this is what they will see.
When using frames, you should consider having an entrance before your frames to submit to the search engines. The noframes tag can help but you still run the risk of not being indexed by search engines because they cannot get into internal pages of your website.
Thing To Avoid (and may get you banned or rejected)
- Little or no body text or content - When you have very little or no body text on your page at all, some search engines will take this to mean that you have no content on your website worth indexing! Body text is a must.
- URL redirection - If you are re-directing your URL from a registrar or other host, a search engine spider may not be able to follow the re-direct to the destination page and may not add you because of this! If a re-direction is unavoidable, you'll either want to submit the destination page of the re-direction or create a search engine optimized doorway page on the index page of the site that has the re-direct.
- JavaScript/CSS - These elements have been known to have an effect on indexing. They are used widely in site design, so I would hope that the search engines have gotten smarter about it. Javascript is a jumble of coding that the search engines do not understand. It's something to think about if you are having trouble getting listed and have one of these elements on your site.
- Large file size - This refers to the total size of the code. If your site has insane amounts of text, your file size could be very large. A search engine spider may give up if the site takes a long time to read. This is another reason why it is a good idea to break up large amounts of text to separate pages.
- Keyword stuffing - This refers to large amounts of keywords placed together on a page. Here is an example:
keyword, keywords, keyword phrase, keyword phrases, keyphrase, phrase, keyphrases
keyword, keywords, keyword phrase, keyword phrases, keyphrase, phrase, keyphrases
keyword, keywords, keyword phrase, keyword phrases, keyphrase, phrase, keyphrases
keyword, keywords, keyword phrase, keyword phrases, keyphrase, phrase, keyphrases
keyword, keywords, keyword phrase, keyword phrases, keyphrase, phrase, keyphrases
Keyword stuffing can get you banned, don't do it. - Tiny text - Tiny text has been used, often with keyword stuffing to try and subvert a search engine's results. Try to avoid excessive use of small text.
- Flash - Flash can be a fantastic element in web design, you can create an entire site in Flash or just use it in smaller elements. Flash is great as a part of web design but can be poison to the search engines. If you are going to use Flash, you might want to create an entrance page without flash that is search engine optimized, this page should be submitted to the search engines.
- Hidden text - This refers to text that is the same color as the page background. Search engines will think you are trying to hide this text from them. A big no-no.
- Fancy navigation - A fancy navigation scheme can make it difficult for a search engine spider to crawl other pages of your website.
- Frames - As explained in the noframes tag area above.
- Cheap hosting - If you've chosen a cheap host for your website, they will often place your site on the same server as many other websites and all of them under the same IP address. This is very,
very bad! If you have the same IP address as other sites already in a search engine's database, they may not accept your site. If you have the same IP address of someone who has been banned from the search engines, you may be banned as well. Also, your site may be slow or inaccessible because another website on your server is hogging all the resources. This can also cause your site to be rejected if the search engine spider visits your website during a down time. Spend a little more to get a unique IP address and more reliable service. It's worth it.
http://www.websitepromotionguide.com/search-engine-optimization.htm
