II. Keywords – the Most Important Item in SEO
Keywords are the most important SEO item for every search engine –
actually they are what search strings are matched against. So you see
that it is very important that you optimize your site for the right
keywords. This seems easy at first but when you get into more detail,
it might be a bit confusing to correctly determine the keywords. But
with a little research and thinking the problem of selecting the
right keywords to optimize for can be solved.
1. Choosing the Right Keywords to Optimize For
It seems that the time when you could easily top the results for a
one-word search string is centuries ago. Now, when the Web is so
densely populated with sites, it is next to impossible to achieve
constant top ratings for a one-word search string. Achieving constant
top ratings for two-word or three-word search strings is a more
realistic goal. If you examine closely the dynamics of search results
for popular one-word keywords, you might notice that it is so easy
one week to be in the first ten results and the next one– to
have fallen out of the first 30 results because the competition for
popular one-word keywords is so fierce and other sites have replaced
you.
Of course, you can include one-word strings in your keywords list
but if they are not backed up by more expressions, do not dream of
high ratings. For instance, if you have a site about dogs, “dog”
is a mandatory keyword but if you do not optimize for more words,
like “dog owners”, “dog breeds”,
“dog food”, or even “canine”,
success is unlikely, especially for such a popular keyword. The
examples given here are by no means the ultimate truth about how to
optimize a dog site but they are good enough to show that you need to
think broad when choosing the keywords.
Generally, when you start optimization, the first thing you need
to consider is the keywords that describe the content of your site
best and that are most likely to be used by users to find you.
Ideally, you know your users well and can guess correctly what search
strings they are likely to use to search for you. One issue to
consider is synonyms. Very often users will use a different word for
the same thing. For instance, in the example with the dog site,
“canine” is a synonym and it is for sure that
there will be users who will use it, so it does not hurt to include
it now and then on your pages. But do not rush to optimize for every
synonym you can think of – search engines themselves have
algorithms that include synonyms in the keyword match, especially for
languages like English.
Instead, think of more keywords that are likely to be used to
describe your site. Thinking thematically is especially good because
search engines tend to rate a page higher if it belongs to a site the
theme of which fits into the keyword string. In this aspect it is
important that your site is concentrated around a particular theme –
i.e. dogs. It might be difficult to think of all the relevant
keywords on your own but that is why tools are for.
For instance, the Website Keyword Suggestions Tool below
can help you to see how search engines determine the theme
of your web site and what keywords fit into this theme.
You can also try Google's Keyword Tool
to get more suggestions about which keywords are hot and which are not.
When choosing the keywords to optimize for, you need to consider
not only their relevancy to your site and the expected monthly number
of searches for these particular keywords. Very often narrow searches
are more valuable because the users that come to your site are those
that are really interested in your product. If we go on with the dog
example, you might discover that the “adopt a dog”
keyphrase brings you more visitors because you have a special section
on your site where you give advice on what to look for when adopting
a dog. This page is not of interest of current dog owners but to
potential dog owners only, who might be not so many in number but are
your target audience and the overall effect of attracting this niche
can be better than attracting everybody who is interested in dogs in
general. So, when you look at the numbers of search hits per month,
consider the unique hits that fit into the theme of your site.
2. Keyword Density
After you have chosen the keywords that describe your site and are
supposedly of interest to your users, the next step is to make your
site keyword-rich and to have good keyword density for your
target keywords. Keyword density is a common measure of how relevant
a page is. Generally, the idea is that the higher the keyword
density, the more relevant to the search string a page is. The
recommended density is 3-7% for the major 2 or 3 keywords and 1-2%
for minor keywords. Try the Keyword Density Checker below to
determine the keyword density of your website.
Although there are no strict rules, try optimizing for a
reasonable number of keywords – 5 or 10 is OK. If you attempt
to optimize for a list of 300, you will soon see that it is just not
possible to have a good keyword density for more than a few keywords,
without making the text sound artificial and stuffed with keywords.
And what is worse, there are severe penalties (including ban from the
search engine) for keyword stuffing because this is considered
an unethical practice that tries to manipulate search results.
3. Keywords
in Special Places
Keywords are very important not only as quantity but as quality as
well – i.e. if you have more keywords in the page title, the
headings, the first paragraphs – this counts more that if you
have many keywords at the bottom of the page. The reason is that the
URL (and especially the domain name), file names and directory names,
the page title, the headings for the separate sections are more
important than ordinary text on the page and therefore, all equal, if
you have the same keyword density as your competitors but you have
keywords in the URL, this will boost your ranking incredibly,
especially with Yahoo!.
a.
Keywords in URLs and File Names
The domain name and the whole URL of a site tell a lot about it.
The presumption is that if your site is about dogs, you will have
“dog”, “dogs”, or “puppy” as part
of your domain name. For instance, if your site is mainly about
adopting dogs, it is much better to name your dog site
“dog-adopt.net” than “animal-care.org”, for
example, because in the first case you have two major keywords in the
URL, while in the second one you have no more than one potential
minor keyword.
When hunting for keyword rich domain names, don't get greedy.
While from a SEO point of view it is better to have 5 keywords in the
URL, just imagine how long and difficult to memorize the URL will be.
So you need to strike a balance between the keywords in the URL and
site usability, which says that more than 3 words in the URL is a way
too much.
Probably you will not be able to come on your own with tons of good suggestions.
Additionally, even if you manage to think of a couple of good domain names,
they might be already taken. In such cases tools like the Tool below can come very handy.
File names and directory names are also important. Often search
engines will give preference to pages that have a keyword in the file
name. For instance http://mydomain.com/dog-adopt.html
is not as good as http://dog-adopt.net/dog-adopt.html
but is certainly better than http://mydomain.com/animal-care.html.
The advantage of keywords in file names over keywords in URLs is that
they are easier to change, if you decide to move to another niche,
for example.
b. Keywords in
Page Titles
The page title is another special place because the contents of
the <title> tag usually gets displayed in most search engines,
(including Google). While it is not mandatory per the HTML
specification to write something in the <title> tag (i.e. you
can leave it empty and the title bar of the browser will read
“Untitled Document” or similar), for SEO purposes you may
not want to leave the <title> tag empty; instead, you'd better
write the the page title in it.
Unlike URLs, with page titles you can get wordy. If we go on with
the dog example, the <title> tag of the home page for the
http://dog-adopt.net can include
something like this: <title>Adopt a Dog – Save a Life and
Bring Joy to Your Home</title>, <title>Everything You
Need to Know About Adopting a Dog</title> or even longer.
c. Keywords in
Headings
Normally headings separate paragraphs into related subtopics and
from a literary point of view, it may be pointless to have a heading
after every other paragraph but from SEO point of view it is
extremely good to have as many headings on a page as possible,
especially if they have the keywords in them.
There are no technical length limits for the contents of the <h1>,
<h2>, <h3>, ... <hn> tags but common sense says
that too long headings are bad for page readability. So, like with
URLs, you need to be wise with the length of headings. Another issue
you need to consider is how the heading will be displayed. If it is
Heading 1 (<h1>), generally this means larger font size and in
this case it is recommendable to have less than 7-8 words in the
heading, otherwise it might spread on 2 or 3 lines, which is not good
and if you can avoid it – do it.
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