Home › WEB DEVELOPER REFERENCE LIBRARY › SEO LIBRARY › Monetize your site - the Process

Keywords - SEO On-Page factor

in

Keywords

This is a whole science in itself and beyond the scope of this article. I expect you know or can read about this and do the relevant brainstorming, keyword analysis for popularity, frequency, and competition. Suffice to say:
  • Advisable to focus on 1-2 main keywords per page.
  • Your page is topical around those keywords - give high value content around a topic/keyword.
  • It relates to the main theme of your site.

Though not everyone subscribes to this, I will make 2 distinctions that I find helpful when I am using keywords with a focus to page creation for SEO purposes:

  • specific keyword(s) and
  • general keywords

Specific Keyword

The word or phrase that a page focuses upon.

For example:
Your a building a page about "Swarovski Bicone Crystals".

"Swarovski Bicone Crystals" is a specific keyword, probably best suited for a Level-3 page (see: SEO - Big Picture Overview)

"Swarovski Crystals", still a Specific Keyword, is less specific and might do well as a Level-2 page.

General Keyword

A word/phrase with a broad meaning, that is somehow related to the Specific Keyword for that page and to the overall theme of your site.

Following on from example above, General Keywords might be "Swarovski, crystal, crystal beads, beads"

Specific or General Keyword?
If you are unsure if the main keyword you have chosen is a Specific Keyword for your page, ask youself, "If a user entered that keyword into the search engine, would my page answer/match her needs?" If you answer, "Not necessarily" or "Only maybe", then the keyword you are considering would be a General Keyword.

Use of Specific Keywords

Use your Specific Keyword in the
  • Title tag - the <title> tag in the <head> section. This is one of the important factors influencing search engine ranking algorithms. Most search engines will use this as the text-link title in their SERPs.

    By populating your most important keywords in the Title tag, you can help increase the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.
  • meta-Description - the 'content' part of <meta name="description" content="..."> within the <head section>
  • main Header of your page (visible to users) - recommended to be in <h1> tag.
  • should appear in file name of page
  • sprinkled throughout the body copy of page.
  • do not over-stuff it in the body - rather, use synonyms, related words, or variations. SEs today will still recognise the Specific Keyword's on-page criteria. Most search engines will penalize you for overuse as it can be seen as an attempt to artificially inflate rankings.
  • Less important: Suggested to have in the first 90 characters but not essential.
    Also no longer so important to have it a specific number of times.

Are Meta Keywords Important?

Meta keywords reside in the <head> tag.
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, ..,keyword5" />

Not all SEs rely or use the meta-keywords, but those that do will look for your keywords in this meta tag to determine relevance.

Meta Keywords Basics

  • Within the <head> tag of page:
    <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, ..,keyword5" />
  • Comma-separated list of words/phrases.
  • Do not use quotes around any keyword - will mess up the search engine's interpretaion of the words.
  • Do not end with a comma after last keyword.
  • Recommended 5 keywords. More will just dilute the relevance of your Specific Keyword
  • No more than a maximum of 3 repeats of the root word
    (e.g. Swarovski wholesale supplier, supplies, supplying swarovski
    The root word "supply" has been repeated to a max of 3 times. No more than this.)
  • Put your Specific Keyword as the first keyword in the list.
    You can follow this with an important 2-word variant or singular/plural version.
    Followed by General Keywords and also synonyms.
I find it useful to have just a quick SEO keywords checklist for page creation and SE submission.

Out-going Links

This is often forgotten or ignored by many webmasters but out-going links can make a difference. Out-going links are when you point to another site from yours. Not exchanges. Link-out to some quality. related sites will not only provide good value to your visitors but they "count" with human editors of directories and with engine algorithms.

Be sensible. You don't want your site to be a hub of out-going links, no matter to how good a site. More backlinks than outgoing is always best. Rule of thumb: no more than maximum of 3 out-going links on any page (with exception of the "Links" page if you have one).

Comments

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

 

Healthful Soulful Things

more
Custom Search