Keywords Keywords Everywhere
Enormously important in the world-wide-web. Not surprising really. The internet is, after all, one huge computer network and computers have no real ‘intelligence’. They all use software and software can only recognise the symbols used in documents and web pages.
Keywords or keyterms are the words and phrases that are most relevant to a particular page, document or resource. A website that is selling insurance, for example, would have the word ‘insurance’ as one of their most relevant keywords. But they may also want to be found for terms like ‘car insurance‘, ‘travel insurance’, ‘home insurance’ etc. These will also be relevant keyterms for the website.
Determining the keywords and terms that are relevant to a website is an acitivity that is best carried out even before a site is designed and built. Some might think that this is very early to be considering keyterms. Thoroughly researching relevant and potentially powerful keyterms early in a website design project can identify terms that are of highest priority. This essential research can help to define the key landing pages that a site requires in order to attract searches that use the identified keyterms as search queries.
A good rule of thumb is to identify about 3 or 4 keyterms for eachto each page of a website. Many novices try and make their main site index page the landing page for numerous keyterms. Generally this is a mistake. By limiting the number of keyterms applicable to each landing page you can make that page much more focussed and stand a better chance of getting your page to rank well for the identified terms.
Having associated a limited number of keyterms to each of your site’s landing pages you’re ready to Use them effectively. The first three key elements in which to use your keyterms are your page title (between the title tags in the page header), the page meta description (in the page header) and the main page heading that should be enclosed within H1 tags.
A good page title can result in a web page ranking well for its keyterms. It should not exceed sixty characters and your primary keyterm should be at the start of the title. For example, a page on ‘car leasing‘ might use a page title like this: Car Leasing – Lease Cars and Vans – Cheap Car Leasing. The primary keyphrase is ‘car leasing’ but the title also uses ‘Lease Cars’ and ‘Cheap Car Leasing’.
Your page meta description is limited to around 150 characters and this should reinforce your page title and provide a little more detail about what is on that particular page.
The main page heading is the appropriate place to use the main keyterm for that page. The less important keyterms might be used in lower level headings .
Then we come to the all important copy. The text content of each page should also use the identified keyterms, but mustn’t overuse them. Keyterm use must be natural and readable. Overusing keywords can result in a page being penalised by the search engines.
This is just the basics of effective keyterm use but I hope that it’s enough for you to improve your own use of keywords.
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