Choosing Keywords and Understanding Their Importance

They have been mentioned previously, but what exactly do keywords do for a website?  How do they work in SEO or Search Engine Optimization?  Read on and learn more about what could very well be the mortar in between the bricks that make up the bulk of the internet, and learn the way to choosing keywords to your advantage.

Keywords Are the Lifeblood of SEO

That last metaphor was quite apt actually. Most web pages use a lot of text, which are the bricks.  What holds the web page together are the keywords and the concepts behind these keywords.  The keywords are the essential descriptions of the page.  For example, a web page about internet marketing would have “SEO”, “social networks”, and others as its keywords.  Choosing keywords for your web page is essential, as you will soon learn.

Why Choosing Keywords Will Affect SEO?

SEO works by a search engine analyzing web pages and determining their general content for improving results during search queries.  Since it is a computer program doing it, it will do so mathematically.  One of the ways it does so is to count the frequencies of important words, particularly nouns.  Words like “the”, “is”, and other often-used words are discarded, since they would just slow the whole thing down.  The more frequently a keyword appears, the likelier it is that the web page is relevant to searches asking for the keyword.

What this means is that choosing keywords early on will let you know what keywords to use more often in your web page’s text and metadata.  By choosing keywords that are often used in the social circles your web page serves, you increase the perceived relevance and thus can improve the likelihood your web page will come up high in search results.

Keyword Principles and Ethics

The golden rule when choosing keywords for your web page is to use relevant words.  Avoid using keywords that do not relate to the actual content of your web page.  For example, if you have a web page for marketing homemade products, do not insert the title of the latest hot movie in the metadata or in the text.  The addition of keywords that are currently popular but have no actual bearing on the specific topic is considered unethical.  Avoid doing this, regardless of how it might improve  the page’s presence.

Another ethical folly is to use the keywords excessively.  For example, after choosing keywords which do relate to the content, you might use them every three or four words.  This is an exaggerated example, but it can happen.  Not only does this make the text hard to read and unnatural-sounding, but search engines are programmed to avoid these, or to rank them lower.  It is not only impractical but also frowned upon in general.

Achieving Frequency and Distribution

Aside from choosing keywords for quality and relevance, you also have to achieve frequency with proper distribution.  If the search engines spot the keywords clustered in a small part of your web page, it will rate the keyword factor lower.  If a keyword is distributed throughout, then it is more likely that the entire page is about the topic behind the keywords, so the keyword factor in the SEO calculations is higher.

To Your Success

Gee Hollings

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