Keywords and keyword phrases are actually the search terms that people use when looking for anything on the Internet. And as already briefly touched upon, they are extremely important in the website optimization process. The importance of selecting the right keywords and using them at the right density on your website pages cannot be overemphasized.
All search engines rank websites in their directories based upon keywords. They don’t necessarily use the same ranking processes from a technology point of view but keywords still provide the basis.
From a general perspective, selecting the correct keywords for your website requires a bit of detective work. It comes down to figuring out what search terms people will use when searching the major engine directories for products or services like yours.
The most used search terms or keywords will obviously bring you the greatest number of visitors provided that you apply them properly. It is also quite probable that you will face more competition that you must ‘beat out’ for top directory rankings.
Keyword Density
Keyword density, or how often your keywords should appear on a given website page, is often a controversial issue. There are still people who place far more importance on density than is necessary. In fact, when keyword density gets so high that it cripples relevance and readability, it will result in a lower ranking on the directories and especially on Google.
The actual definition of keyword density is the ratio of the word being searched for vs. the total number of words on a given web page. In other words, the more a given keyword or group of keywords appear on a page, the higher the keyword density.
Today, all search engines consider keyword density as part of their ranking algorithm. However, they also consider relevance of your text to be important since that is what attracts and retains visitors. Here are some SEO tips regarding keyword density:
- Consult WordTracker’s large database of keywords and keyword phrases. Be certain your website’s keywords include similar, relevant search terms. This will go far to making you more visible on search engines as people search for products or services that your site offers.
- Be certain that the keywords you select and include in your site are relevant to your website topics. Some webmasters try to include every keyword or phrase they can and this can result in you being banned for “spamming”.
- Utilize the most critical keywords and phrases in their full form. Avoid referring to them as ‘it’ or ‘that’, words that won’t mean a thing to the search robots.
- Don’t ‘overuse’ keywords or resort to very short text to increase keyword density. Search engines today are a lot smarter than they used to be and all the old ‘tricks’ people used to get high ranking no longer work. Always remember that now, relevance of what you say on your pages really matters to both the search engines and your visitors.
- Shoot for a keyword density of between 2% and 5%. This is more than adequate when the keywords and key phrases are combined with truly relevant text.
Keyword Tools
Fortunately, there is a wide variety of different keyword tools available to help you determine keywords for your website, research your competition and more. These are available from Google and other sources as well. By now, you should understand that the keywords you choose and use throughout your web pages are critically important to your SEO success. You must know if certain search terms (keywords) and search phrases (keyword phrases) are actually the ones that the visitors you want at your website will use. These tools will help you determine if a keyword or phrase is actually worth using.
