SEO - Optimized Keywords

What Is A Keyword?

Keyword refers to a word or group of words that is used to match with the query a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. The words inputted might consist of two to five words, and such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive. 

Keyword Optimization Concepts

The following concepts help in optimizing the keywords on a web page.

Keyword Frequency

This refers to the frequency at which a keyword appears in a website title or description. Be careful not to go overboard with frequency, because some search engines penalize for spamming or keyword stuffing.

Generally, you can repeat your keyword in the document as many times, preferably up to 3-7 times in your list of metatags.

Keyword Weight

This is the number of keywords appearing on your web page compared to the total number of words appearing on that same page. The weight is helpful for determining the ranking of your website by search engines for a particular keyword search.

A technique often used is to create some smaller pages, just a paragraph long that emphasizes a particular keyword. By reducing the number of words, you can increase the "weight" of the keyword emphasized.

Keyword Proximity

This is the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword. Matching a keyword by its keyword proximity is what is used for grading by some search engines. A linked phrase student loans will outrank a citation that mentions student home loans assuming that you are searching only for the phrase “student loans".

Keyword Prominence

This is the measure of how the keywords are found, either early or high up on a stage. Try to place keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph - at least, in the first 20 words on a page are best.

Keyword Placement

The right placing of keywords on a page is of huge importance. For example, in most engines, placing the keywords in the title of the page, or in the Heading tags will give it more relevance. Some search engines, add more relevance to keywords placed in the link text - the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser.

Best Places to Put Keywords

The below list contains places(HTML tags) where your main keywords should be used.

1. Keywords in the <title> tag(s).

2. Keywords in the <meta name="description">.

3. Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">.

4. Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.

5. Keywords in the <a href="http://yourcompany.com">keywords</a> link tags.

6. Keywords in the body copy.

7. Keywords in alt tags.

8. Keywords in <!-- insert comments here> comments tags.

9. Keywords in the URL or website address.

Finding Keywords

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

1. Words people would use to find your product or service.

2. The problems these customers are looking to solve with your product or service.

3. Keyword tags used on competitor's websites.

4. Visible page copy used on competitor's websites.

5. Related search suggestions on top search engines.

6. Using the online tool Keyword Tool by Google

• By carefully analyzing a website and finding out good keywords, this could be done by expert SEO copywriters.
• Find out the root word of any keywords to be used, especially what Google considers to be a match for that word when optimizing pages over time.
• Also, try to identify correct keywords for your site by brainstorming.

What is Word Stemming?

Word stemming is a feature used by Google, that allows all forms of the word - singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a given search query.

So if the word "vacation plans" is typed into a search engine, not only the pages that are optimized for that phrase but the pages that contain all variations of that phrase are returned. For example, "vacation plan", "vacation planning", "vacation planner".