Keywords

How Important Are Keywords?

There have been a multitude of books and articles written on Keywords and how to use them to increase your PageRank and Website traffic.  There are just about as many opinions on how important keywords really are.

Let's go straight to the source and see what Google has to say:
In Google's Information for Webmasters, they state "Google's order of results is automatically determined by more than 100 factors, including our PageRank algorithm."

A quote from Google's Search Engine Technology Overview
"Hypertext-Matching Analysis:
Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query."

So Google's search engine looks at page structure, page content (which should include keywords) and many other factors.  Keywords are one "piece" of the Web Popularity puzzle.  There are many other search engines besides Google, and to some of them, keywords are more important to their search engine rankings, and to others, they are less important.

Search engines look for matches to a visitor's search criteria throughout the head and body of the Web page and they look for them in specific places.

Search engines give a keywords weight or importance based on how they are used. The weighting algorithms vary for the different search engines, and the details of those algorithms are closely guarded secrets, but there are some things we know:

Search engines look for keywords in:

• The Domain name
• Keywords Tags.
• Heading Tags: (The h1 through h6 tags, but the h1 and h2 tags are the most important ones for keyword usage.)
• Body text: Use keywords in your content but don't overlook the fact that you are writing content for people to read, and also in hopes that they will want to link to your pages.
• Hyperlinks Anchor text: Even keywords contained in the anchor text of a hyperlink will help with your search engine ranking.  The anchor text is simply the text that people see and will click on to go to another page.

Forget keyword density - search engines pay very little attention to it any more.

The Keyword Challenge

When we talk about keywords, it refers to several things:

• The words that are placed inside the Keyword Tag of a Web page.
• The usage of keywords in the content of your Web pages.
• The words or search terms that are typed into Search Engine Queries by people who are searching for a particular topic.

These people are searching on specific "Keywords" and these are the keywords that you want to use on your Web pages.

So in your Web pages, you want to use the keywords that people are searching for and that relate to your Website and content.  On-Page Search Engine Optimization using keywords is as much an "art" as it is a "science".  When the search engine spiders crawl your Web pages, they see how you use your keywords.  Your pages and keyword information will be filed in a huge data base which is accessed when people perform their search queries.

The challenge for a Web builder who wants to drive traffic to their site is to know what keywords the searchers are using and then to optimize their Web pages using these keywords to get the highest possible ranking by the search engines for those keywords.

Consider using one of the Keyword Tools I discuss in the Topic on Keyword Tools. These tools can not only help you pick good keywords, but also tell you how popular they are in search engine queries.

Consider Your Keyword Niche

In creating a list of keywords, you want to choose keywords that are popular and that many users will be typing into search engine queries.  The problem is that the competition is fierce for popular keywords.  A popular keyword is going to be used by hundreds of thousands of other sites, so you will be competing against all of them in trying to get good search engine results.

You might want to consider using keywords that are not so popular so the competition will not be as fierce.  Which relates to a special niche for your Website.  Consider keywords that are less popular, but more descriptive of a particular niche that you would be in.  Use the Keyword tools listed above to help you discover some of these keywords and how often they are used.

Even though these words won't be searched for by as many users, the people who will be searching with them know exactly what they want and essentially, they just need to find your site. 

Instead of your page information being included in an extremely large query return to an extremely large number of users, it will be included in a smaller query return to a smaller number of users, but your chances are higher that these "niche searchers" will find your site.

In the next section on Keyword Lists and Placement, I'll talk about how to build a Good Keyword List and how to properly place Keywords in your Meta Tags and Content in order to maximize their potential and to get better Search Engines rankings.

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